Her Beauty is your Beauty because All is One

I'm sitting here on my couch with my little shih-tzu on my lap as she's licking my hands.  I'm looking at her scraggly hair (thanks to my poor attempt to keep her up-to-date with her grooming...I really need to comb her and cut out the tangles), and her choppy hair around her face from the last time I did cut that.  But she's happy.  It makes no difference to her what her hair looks like.  She doesn't think twice about the fact that she has little short legs while my rottweiler mix has long legs and can easily step up onto the couch without even the slightest jump.  Little Betty (the shih-tzu) gets along just fine. She climbs all over the couch, making her own way. 

I wish we humans didn't compare ourselves to other humans so much.  I think the world would be a much better place.  I know I, for one, would be happier. 

Although I've gotten better as I've gotten older, I still look at other women and compare their attributes to mine.  She's prettier than me, but I'm prettier than person, that girl has better boobs, a nicer butt, prettier hair, a better smile.  The comparisons are endless. 

Thanks to all my comparing nearly my entire life, I'm left feeling "not as good as" certain other women I see.  I think, well, she has better this, this, and this, so why would anyone want me over her?  It brings my own assessment of myself way down. 

Like I said, I am better than I used to be.  At least now when I recognize that I'm doing the comparing, I can stop myself and remind myself that I, too, have beautiful, desirable qualities.  That I'm perfect just the way I am.  As are you. 

According to the Tao (via Wayne Dyer's book, "Change Your Thoughts, Change Your life" ... sorry I keep referencing the book in a lot of posts lately... but I want to cite my sources), we shouldn't try to be good.  We should just be good.  Our essential nature is already good. 

"Nature is good without knowing it."  We are part of nature, so that applies to us too.  Just by living your essential nature, being you, you are good. 

It's when you start to think in terms of "what is good" that your mind automtically considers "what is bad" and compares the two. That's when you lose your connection to your essential nature, your inner spirit, that is good just the way it is. 

After my journal writing on that topic, the very next day (this was about a year ago) I wrote another journal entry.  It's funny the second event happened when it did.  I had been someplace, with my boyfriend, and saw a really pretty young girl.  Young as in eighteen or twenty-one or so.  Not a little child.  My first reaction when I noticed her, aside from noticing how beautiful and stunning she was, was fear.  Fear that she's prettier than me.  Fear that my boyfriend would see her and prefer her over me. 

That's when the realization hit me (according to my journal entry).  Her beauty doesn't make me any less beautiful.  I had felt up until that point as if there's only so much beauty to go around.  As if, the more people who are stunningly beautiful, that only makes the rest of us less beautiful.  But that's not true! 

This was a major revelation for me (I actually wrote those words in my journal).  This other girl can be pretty and I can be pretty.  (And you can be pretty...or handsome, for you guys out there). 

Her beauty IS my beauty because all is one.  Everything is one, according to the Tao, and I happen to agree.  We all come from the same loving Source, and all return to it.  We are all pieces of the same thing.  All beautiful.  All pure love. 

It's like a giant wheel and we're all spokes on the same wheel.  We all have our unique attributes, otherwise we'd look and act exactly the same.  But at the core, we ARE all the same.  We just show it and act on it in different ways. 

So if we truly love ourselves, we will love everyone else.  Because they are us, and we are them. 

Have you ever had an experience where you looked at another human being, or perhaps it was an animal, or a tree, and felt overwhelming connection?  You just knew, at your core, that you were connected?  Part of the same thing?  I have, and this is what that's all about.

This was a good reminder for me, reading these past journal entries.  I continually fall into the trap of comparing.  This was a good wake-up call. 

No need to compare because we are ALL pure love.  We are ALL beautiful in our own, unique ways.  We are ALL good (aka perfect) just the way we are because we are a direct product of Love. 

Let's act on that love, and BE that love, instead of fearful "comparison shoppers."    



Quotes of the Day:


"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”  (Herman Melville) 

“Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event.”  (C.G. Jung) 

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”  (Chief Seattle)