Here is a puzzler you may find amusing. See if you have the answer:
- You can’t fake it, but you can certainly hide it.
- When you show it, everyone wants it.
- You can’t buy or sell it, yet it is truly priceless.
Got it? If you need a little more to go on, most people have chimed in with answers like love, wisdom, and happiness. Some come to conclusions like integrity, compassion, character, honor, dignity, passion, altruism, and more along these lines.
So, who is correct?
It seems to me that everyone is. And what do all their inferences have in common? We could say that they all demonstrate the qualities of what can be called our “inner beauty.”
There’s been a lot of talk in the media lately about inner beauty. There’s even a TV program that entertains its audience by lampooning the stunningly gorgeous contestants for their apparent lack of “true beauty.” More and more, our so-called inner beauty seems to have gone missing, and it’s become a fad to make sport of those who possess precious little of it.
So, what is inner beauty, and more to the point – do you have it?
We may agree that everyone is potentially beautiful on the inside, and yet finding the beauty within ourselves can pose a colossal challenge. Begin here: you have met people who seem to be overflowing with gratitude, poise, charm and other qualities of “inner beauty.” What was it about them that you admired?
This is a significant question when you understand a very profound axiom: we are only able to recognize in others that which we ourselves possess.
This means that at some level of being, you are no different than those you admire. If you were, then you could not recognize what you admire in them. What you find so attractive about them is a direct reflection of your own inner beauty.
Information like this will shatter your old self-image with its criticisms, aspersions and fears, and lay the groundwork for a new way to interpret the world in which you live.
As inner beauty develops, your life experiences begin to change in profound and meaningful ways. Gone is the wretched “life story” of a fear-filled, shameful, insecure and deeply flawed human being huddled under the damning glare of a harsh and judgmental inner critic.
What displaces such tyranny is the most wonderful and useful asset in the world: the light of unconditional love.
As your inner light shines into the people you meet, you actually appear more radiant on the outside. You begin to look and feel healthier, happier, more vibrant and alive, brimming with passion and substance.
You become magnetically attractive, and the reward is much more than you had imagined. It includes communion with the very source of life itself, and the ability to bring authentic love into the world. People then recognize their own inner beauty reflected in you, and that, my friend, is a definition of true love: the recognition of oneself in another.
Things begin to occur as you would have them—from the most important virtue to the least significant event. As you become more loving and giving, healthy and fit, happy and confident, you are effortlessly blessed with true self-esteem, truly loving relationships, and a harmonious environment in which to live.
You stand at the threshold of an epic adventure which leads to the very heart and soul of your being. This is where logic and magic meet, deep within you, a luminous place of true inner beauty.
Peter