“Let the beauty you love be what you do…” 

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love…”

These two quotes count among the many beautiful words of great wisdom that I love from Rumi. As is always the case when I spend time engulfed in Rumi, everything stops and I am still at last. From this exquisite place, I can go deep into whom and what I really am. I can see clearly. I can breathe again. I can remember all that I find beautiful in our world – that which deeply resonates in me, draws me in, calls to me, sings to me, completely disarms me, beckons me, enchants me, embraces me, calms me, frees me, feeds me, lifts me, loves me.

Plato observed that “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.”

Pondering the beauty that my eyes behold, I come to see that which I find beautiful is what I really love; that which I truly and effortlessly love is what I find beautiful.  It does not seem possible to not love that which one finds beautiful or to love that which one does not find beautiful. Beauty and love are inextricable – linked down to our very Soul.

At the level of the Soul, reason has no place. Hence, explaining “…the strange pull of what you really love…” Within your Soul, there is only surrender and trust to the true Self. Here, no questions are allowed or asked; there are no doubts, only pure and unadulterated Truth. The Soul is where who you really are resides – straight no chaser, no filters, no mask, no shame, and no fear. In this quiet, fertile and vulnerable space, beauty and the love it elicits are all that matter and you are invited to lean in and be informed by the beauty you love. 

I shiver with joy at the thought of what our world could be if we all had the courage to heed the Soul’s call, longing and invitation to let the beauty we really love (that which draws and pulls us) be what we do, what we offer to each other. So says Rumi: “There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.”