Imagine yourself in a relaxed mood looking out over a very landscaped area and notice how soothing and beautiful it is. Imagine yourself in a forest where there is no landscaping, where it’s been allowed to grow on its own, and still, there’s a majesty to it and something beautiful about it. Watch the ocean as the waves pour into the shore, there’s a majestic nature to the continuity of the waves. Their persistence and their beauty as they hit the shore, dissipate, and retreat, and hit the shore again. Look into the night sky and see the moon and its glow, and the stars behind it, and contemplate the serene beauty of that vision. Look at faces of people and see the beauty in the faces of people, especially when they smile. Look at animals in their habitat and notice how beautiful they are, how serene they are, how majestic they are.
Understand that you have been given the ability to see beauty. Understand the gift that you’ve been given to allow you to see the majesty of the creation and the beauty of the creation, the overwhelming emotional gratification that these beautiful scenarios can give to you. Sometimes they’re so overwhelming they bring tears to your eyes because of their great beauty. Then imagine the Creator who made them all whose beauty is beyond anything He made, and whose beauty is unfathomable.
So every time we see a beautiful creation we should be thinking of the Creator. Everything of beauty within this world is an arrow that points to the Creator, that takes you to the Creator.
A fruit-seller in a market was selling watermelons and screaming at the top of his lungs, “The sweetest there is! The sweetest there is!” A dervish walked by and fainted. He thought he was talking about Allah. And we need to be in that kind of a state. We need to be in a state that sees beauty, because when you see beauty it means that that part of you that can see beauty has been activated. And when that part of you that sees beauty is activated, the parts of you that don’t see beauty have been put to sleep, and we need to be in the state where we see beauty.
When Bawa spoke to us he would always begin his discourse similarly. He would say, “Children, gems of my eyes.” Which indicates that when he looked out he saw beauty; he saw the highest possible for each of us, the highest possible for our development. He didn’t see us just where we are, he saw us where we can be.
And when you see beauty you have activated the beauty inside yourself because only beauty can see beauty. Nastiness cannot see beauty. Ugliness cannot see beauty. Only beauty can see beauty.
So contemplate the fact that something like beauty exists, contemplate the fact that you have been given the gift to see it and to understand it, and for it to become part of your being. This is one of the many gifts that Allah has given to you, and as you develop your ability to see beauty you will begin to see beauty in everything…
