The laws of beauty

Brona Balfe

Some forms of beauty we have consigned to a hidden underground life. These little folk living in the Concealed Kingdom reign according to their own laws, which are sacred and not like our laws that are written concepts used for power and repression. Theirs are natural laws, that is, rules about how things simply Are. They describe qualities and causes and effects within nature. They are beyond discussion, all manifest and ‘immanifested’ beings yield to them; we cannot change them and it is simply beyond our ability to violate them. Only humanity, however, consciously or unconsciously, chooses to neglect them and consequently suffers because of this unnatural choice.

And one of these laws is the ‘Sacred Law of Beauty’.

The Sacred Law of Beauty does no more, no less, than reflect our willingness to surrender to All that Is.

What is it that makes a thing of beauty beautiful in our, the beholder’s, eyes? Not its complexity, colours, smells, textures. No, we will understand why things of natural beauty and grace are for us so breathtaking, a joy forever, when we realise and feel their complete and total vulnerability, their unconditional readiness to surrender to All that Is. Like, for example, an Alpine meadow full of wild flowers, or an unspoiled coast line of dunes, a new-born baby or a young fairylike maiden. And this is the source and also the secret of all natural beauty. Nowhere in the wild can we find any creation or creature that is not in a permanent condition of complete, constant and total surrender to, and in agreement with, All that Is. The little fairy ones who are expressions of intuition know it and behave according to these laws. But sadly, this secret has been lost for a significant part of the human species.

For many of us ‘adults’, we associate the thought of surrender with weakness, picturing perhaps soldiers, exhausted, wounded, humiliated, spat upon, waving the muddy white flag. It is tasting defeat, even dying. We don’t see a place for heroism and courage. Nothing could be further from the truth than such thoughts. The greatest warriors of all times have understood that the first principle of the martial arts is to humbly accept What Is. It is trusting higher and stronger powers and admit to defeat, proudly, with dignity.

This vulnerability in its purest form, this modest attitude, completely natural and simple, is at the same time synonymous with strength. It is a paradox within the greater paradox of life and death. Most things in nature do not defend themselves against stronger forces in nature. A tree subjected to a forest fire cannot run away: it neither fights, nor complains, but it does change into fire; a flower cannot sprinkle itself against a burning sun, but offers its own fluid to return to thirsty earth and sky. All is interdependent in an endless variety of changing forms. All these life forms that are balancing on the edge of mortality are of an awful beauty, and another word for this very defencelessness is innocence. Innocence is the still abeyance to the laws of nature. It is purity.

I concluded that innocence is almost identical to 'unawareness'. It is an ignorance of evil. It is trusting happily in All that Is, because evil isn’t evil until it is mistrusted and accused of being evil. Evil dances with innocence and as long they are trusting one another, no harm can ever happen. An innocence that looks the more beautiful to those who are past it, those who have suffered and know the world and display a mistrust, whose defence now consists of cynicism and prejudice.

Many people may believe that, as in the story of the Beauty and the Beast, if they consume beauty, they will become beauty, change into beauty and perhaps even return to beautiful innocence themselves. Why else would beauty be desirable to touch, to devour?

The beings and expressions of the Concealed Realms are living just beyond the horizon of our daily consciousness. Our sub, or night, consciousness envelops this Otherworld where they dwell. During hours at dusk and dawn when we shift consciousness and our sight softens, their beautiful shiny forms can be witnessed. In hard times of suppression and inquisition the gates to their lands will remain firmly closed. The fairy folk are among the most courageous on earth. Why? Whatever happens, their innocence stands to what they are, whether or not they are being erased from our consciousness.

The fairy are a process, an energy journeying through the realms of our own awareness. On those rare occasions when we are granted to watch them rise to the daylight of our consciousness, we will dress them in forms of what we love, admire and adore most, such as the soft transparent tenderness of an awakening-to-adulthood female human body at the age of twelve.

At that age of around twelve, beginning adolescence, some sooner, some later, most human individuals begin to become aware of the self. They reflect on self. With it comes insecurity. They begin to wonder who they are, what they look like and then an identity is grown, while looking in the mirror, that is the important ‘other’. Thus becoming aware of their own beauty as reflected in the eyes of their environment, is as if to consume it and therefore to become it. And growing aware of the effect of their own beauty on others is also to become aware of their own desire to be consumed - to be desired. And in this manner they wake up to the sexual hide and seek play, which is a gracious aspect of nature. To become self-aware of their own beauty is to live a beautiful gracious life.

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