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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Did you ever heard of this phrase? “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. I did many years ago and, at first, I really liked it but didn’t understand much about it.

This phrase belongs to Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, an Irish novelist who lived and wrote in the 19th century and who wrote this phrase in the novel called Molly Bawn. Many literary critics and analysts thought that this phrase meant that the perception of beauty is subjective, which means that it depends according to everyone’s belief systems or creeds, or ways of thinking etc. In other words it all depends on everyone. Of course, a criminal may see beauty very differently from a normal, so to speak, human being and so on. The differences are in the amount of subjectivity everyone has.

Back in history, we may find this phrase also in the Classical Greek literature. But only in the 19th century do we find it in printed literature, according to many information on the internet.

Many people may interpret this phrase in many ways and it is not to blame, for all of us interpret according to our values, both intellectual and emotional etc. But that is not all. What about the conscious values? :)

Ok, so let’s analyse this a little bit, shall we? First of all, what do we refer to? We may tackle the word subjective and see what it means. As this world says it, subjective comes from subject which in the conventional grammar in any worldwide used language means I, me, myself, meaning it is a pronoun in the first-person singular and it suggests exactly a way of perceiving the world according to me. In other words, do I actually see reality or do I see what I desire to see, or what I think of seeing?

It is also the persona, the personality, the ego of the introspective psychology, which has a wide explanation in the religious teaching of all ages and cultures.

As we all know, we all have our minds filled with yesterday’s ideas, opinions, notions, preconceived ideas that inhabit our minds and condition our vision to a state of exactly subjective, unconscious perception of the world we live in. There is no perception of reality here, as we all see the world through the vintage lenses of yesteryear’s thought processes.

So, subjectivity is a false state of consciousness that bottles our reality, our own real values of the Soul, of our conscious identity. Who we are is not our ego, not our subjectivity. When we visit a friend late at night and we ring the doorbell, our friend asks us the well-known question “who’s there?” what do we answer? Of course, “it’s me”. But who’s this me, who is this I?

So what about beauty? Isn’t it worthy of contemplating? I guess it is, but what really make us, or break us is the exact moment of cleared consciousness that allow us to perceive the world as it is, although it lasts very little. And should we say that it is beautiful? Conscience always has a certain quality of awe inspiring and mesmerizing ability which governs our entire Being. That is why it is called contemplation. It’s a state far superior, if we can say that, to the pure state of pleasure, or pain.

I also think that beauty and contemplating beauty occurs only in those who are able to recongnize it. Let’s analyze this word, now: recognize. What do you really think it means? Shall we break it down in order to understand it profoundly? :)

Well, I think that the word “recognize” means the ability to make ourselves conscious again of the experiences we go through, or we went through, or of what we perceive… I repeat, to make ourselves conscious again, which means that we were conscious of it before this recapitulation journey and all we have to do is to recap it, to cognitize it (if that’s even a word in the dictionary :D ), meaning to become aware of it, and this time again, to cristalize it within ourselves as self-conscious experience. This is memory with an upgrade. :D

So, recognizing beauty means, actually, that we can acknowledge beauty elsewhere because we have it inwardly as well. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” – indeed. ;)

It is about the conscious values that we all have and when we see a beautiful sunrise, or sunset, a beautiful woman, a beautiful, tender moment between two lovers and so on, it means we have a sympathy towards those and sympathy belongs only to the consciousness. It’s an innate ability of the human being to be sympathetic to everything beautiful, inspiring, noble and of high-value, so to speak. We recognize, then, the inner values of our own conscience.

That is recognizing beauty! ;) It is like contemplating ourselves, or parts of ourselves.

There was a beautiful (again, beautiful :D ) film that I saw a while ago about a dervish prince called Bab’Aziz, and it was called “The Prince who contemplated his Soul” that moved me profoundly and I want you to go see it.

God bless you all! Thank you! :)

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