Physical Beauty

As you find yourselves as adults feeling beholden to looking a certain way according to societal standards, you have gotten so lost in that externalized perspective that it is difficult for you to come to that place of inner love. There are too many leaps to take in order to come back home to yourself that you cannot really find your way. Be gentle with yourself here. This externalized perspective, this self-consciousness, is very carefully choreographed by different societies in order to make citizens behave in certain ways. You are not dealing with a simple thing here, you are dealing with a mechanism that has been in place in societies throughout the world for hundreds, if not thousands, of generations to make you feel bad and behave accordingly.

It is no small feat to come up against this inside your mind and heart, and yet the answer remains relatively simple. You must begin to see the world from your own eyes and stop imagining how the world sees you. One step toward doing that is to begin to train your mind to think differently about every situation you walk into. You might need to start with doing this once a day and eventually you will do it all the time. The way to start is to plan one event you will be attending – a class, a meeting, lunch with a friend –anything. Plan one event where you will practice this. Decide in advance so you can be prepared for it. When you arrive at that event, before you walk in, decide that every time you wonder how people see you or every time it occurs to you that everyone is looking at you, you are going to take a breath, try to ignore that thought and immediately focus on what you are seeing. You are going to ask yourself the question, "What do I see now? What am I noticing now?” Look around and see everything from your own perspective. Do not let your mind be occupied by what you imagine others see. Keep asking yourself, "What do I see? What is my friend wearing? What are the colors in the room? Is it hot or is it cold? Do people look happy or sad?" Just keep asking yourself every question you can think of in order to keep looking at the events around you from your own perspective.

This is the way you begin to train your mind, slowly but surely, to not get so lost in the imagined perspective -- the things you imagine other people are seeing or thinking about you. Once you have mastered this to some degree, then you can start to do it more often throughout the course of your day. Eventually, as this becomes an easier thing to do, it becomes easier to stay on track with your own perspective. At that point, it is time to cultivate a genuine joy and celebration for your perspective. To take the time to take the light in what you see and what you are sensing. You will begin to get lost in the pleasure of noticing the colors, noticing the smiles on people's faces, noticing the insights you have as you pay more attention to how you see things. You will have insights into what people are really feeling. You will start to care more about them because you will be paying more attention to them. This becomes a celebration of yourself and your unique perspective.

As you relish all the things you see and all the things you notice that the feeling of joy and celebration resonates with the feeling of love. Eventually you begin to love how you see the world. You will find that you love going out in the world and exploring it. That feeling of love eventually occupies you. This is the experience of self-love. It is feeling love so consistently that you love yourself and you love everyone around you.

This is a slow process. You have much to heal and many habit to change. It takes practice, so take each of these steps and give them several weeks or months. You must retrain your minds from a very early age to cease the self-consciousness and the inner critic that has reign there. Instead, become occupied by the joy of noticing everything, of participating in everything and enjoying your own perspective of the world.

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