Hello,

Soul, Longing, Beauty and Being

by Alan Lowen, founder of The Art of Being®

The further I progress through this life, the deeper the recognition that above all, I am and will always be a learner. I like it so; to be always meeting existence as this new happening, this endless procession of moments in which I have never been before. In this presence! The Zen priest Shunryu Suzuki talked of “Zen mind, beginner’s mind”. That’s what I mean.

Beginner’s mind sounds flimsy if you receive it only with your mind. Zen – which could equally well be Tao or Tantra or Mystic – puts it in another dimension. Mind and soul are woven into each other. If your soul is listening, your mind lives in wonder. Without soul, mind is merely a calculator, more or less clever, but devoid of inspiration, which is why our presence means little if our soul is not in it. And there is nothing our soul longs for more than to be involved in our here-and-now – to be always in on the miracle of being, to be always opening into this newly emerging mystery. Beginner’s mind is rich with soul.

But what a journey to get to the beginning! How much we have to grow! How much we have to open in ourselves, to accept, to let go of, to surrender, to awaken… so that we can really be here, at home in our nature, in friendship with our feelings, open in our heart, and our soul keeping us constantly connected with the spirit that pervades all that is. When it is so, we don’t need to believe in God. Our experience makes belief redundant. Our soul is awake to the intangible mystery of spirit and lets it into every ordinary happening, no matter how inconsequential. In every moment we breathe eternity.

This is mystical presence. It is as down-to-earth a state as it is high-flying. “Roots and wings”, Osho used to say. Our real presence contains our true intelligence and our greatest resourcefulness. All that we have ever experienced, all that we have learned, is included. So our beginner’s mind becomes over time a wiser beginner’s mind. For all of us there are mistakes that have to be repeated over and over, others that need only to be made once or twice – until something is transformed within our being so that we happen differently. This is how I understand real learning: we meet the present differently because learning has changed something in our being.

And beauty! It is living so, with our soul alive in our being, that makes life beautiful. It is sadly fascinating to me to observe how many people are not allowed to let themselves or their lives be beautiful. I’m not talking about the skin-deep artifices of the beauty industry. I mean the beauty that we naturally love and look after when our soul is awake and attentive. When soul is present, so is beauty. One of the most touching and moving aspects of leading Art of Being workshops all these years has for me been the privilege of witnessing that moment when suddenly - always unexpectedly - someone allows their soul to flood their being. Beauty happens and it touches everyone. This is what beauty is for! It nourishes the soul in existence so that spirit can be sensed and celebrated.

Deep down, no matter how much we may have shut it down, our soul has to be longing to be allowed into the light of our day. It yearns to inspire our days and our nights with its light. I think this is the dearest longing in all beings. All we are waiting for is our own permission to be here now. To get that permission is our Odyssey, our personal journey of opening and awakening. It is a very mysterious journey because the goal is simply to love the journey. This is the art of being.