Through Your Eyes: A World Full of Beauty by Jobi Manson
As Aldous Huxley once said, “There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” Through Your Eyes explores the ideas and experiences of the unique individuals in our world with you. Our featured guest writers come from diverse backgrounds, ages, and occupations to create a greater understanding of the world us. And therefore, a greater understanding of ourselves. This series is full of stories and advice about life, work, and everything in between.
I find beauty in the dramatic. In the moments where it feels as if my heart is going to beat its way out of my chest. Our world, is beautiful. It is so, because it is diverse. To live in a beautiful world, I must be intimately familiar with beauty as a lens through which I perceive my surroundings, relationships, and the inner landscape of my emotional terrain.
Hello world of Bhansali! My name is Jobi, and I am delighted to have your attention for this brief free flowing conversation with myself.
One of my favorite poets says that, “beauty is the harvest of presence”. Beauty is the harvest of presence - a moment of recognition between what lives within us, and what lives just beyond us in the outside world. Beauty blossoms at this cross-section and is readily fruiting for the pleasure of our nourishment.
In the ancient world, the genius of beauty wasn’t so much attributed to a person, as it was to a place. This idea was coined in latin as, “genius loci” meaning, the spirit of place. When I hear beauty, I always see vast landscape, big nature. Blanketed by space, by tranquility, by presence that often cannot be seen, only felt.
These quiet spaces are my sanctuary, my temples. They are where I go to sense the wild that dwells within. I believe the nature of our environment shapes the outcome of our experience. That is to say that landscape, or more specifically nature is the critical factor in sculpting every moment of our lives.
I put this to you:
How often do you pause to reflect upon your own beauty?
Have you been told you are beautiful ?
Do you tell yourself?
I offer this to you because it’s important. If we don’t know the beauty that lives within us, how can we possible expect to appreciate the beauty that surrounds us?
The truth is, we forget. We forget to acknowledge ourselves for aspects other than our achievements, our successes, our failures, our looks, our intelligence…. The list continues indefinitely.
I am proposing we all spend a great deal more time investigating, what do we find beautiful / where do we seek it / how can we cultivate it with care / and can we share it without apology?
I have a practice that I begin each morning. I am telling you all because I feel it is my duty --- my service to help people remember. Remember, that they matter. That they are all incredibly unique creatures of beauty -- with inherent superpowers.
The practice goes something like this:
#1. Set a timer for 9 minutes
#2. Articulate all the ways in which I am / feel beautiful in these moments
#3. Celebrate my permission to tune my focus and attention to genuine self embrace &
acceptance
#4. Take note throughout the day the positive feedback I receive that perhaps mimics what I may have secretly shared with myself earlier that very same morning
#5. Revel in my work as a magician of energetic dynamics
And yes, I do this every day. And you know what, I grow more magical and more powerful as a result. My wish for anyone reading this is to be open. Be open to discovering what is hidden about yourself, to be open to the surprises life has to offer you, and to find beauty everyday -- everywhere. I promise, it truly is all around us.
May awareness be with you.
Be well, be water.
X J
About the Author
Jobi Manson is the artist and creator behind Sēfari. A platform & practice of inner exploration through water immersion. She guides Sēfari immersions for individuals and leaders in Ocean environments around the world.