Escaping the ‘Beauty Trap’
One of the more regrettable effects of the rise of social media across the world is the impact it is having on young people. Although there are many young people who do have an awakened social conscience, care about the environment, and eschew what is artificial, others seem to be losing social skills. They have lost their ability to communicate with even their peers, as they sit ‘together’ scrolling through their mobile devices. However, one of the most insidious effects is the growing obsession with physical image, and even the very young are searching for beauty enhancers – all based on images that they see on screen
– little realising that those images are already false. The pursuit of illusion is destined to bring suffering, and anything that is unreal will lead to deception, dissatisfaction, or unhappiness.
One of the first things that is learnt on the spiritual path of Rajyoga is how powerful an impact the physical body has on us. Having an overly strong identification with the body is an imbalance. We do not deny the body but recalibrate our conscious awareness of the self, the being, inside the physical body. Secondly, we question our relationships with what we call ‘mine’. My house, my country, my relatives, my car … these ‘possessions’ have a deep effect on our inner feelings. Attachment to these possessions lays us wide open to unhappiness. If anything happens to any of these things, we are disturbed. There is an underlying, inbuilt desire to possess more, and to secure them at all costs. The third layer of living in imbalance with the body is more subtle. We become attached to the invisiblethings we also call ‘mine’; my culture, my role in society, my personality, my belief system. All of this is still connected to a limited sense of identification with the body.
In meditation, we say that the influence of these three layers is illusory – they partially define who I am, but they are not the whole truth. The quality of detachment is powerful in freeing us from this ‘illusion’. Many think that by being detached we stop being able to love, but it is not that. It is creating a small distance between the self and everything else so that whatever happens to ‘my’ body, ‘my’ possessions, ‘my’ ideas and beliefs does not happen to the real ‘me’, the soul. It is a very useful quality to maintain a certain state of mind, or equilibrium, when things go wrong on the outside.
This does not mean we reject or deny anything, we just rebalance. We begin by learning to be 10 per cent aware of the soul, the non-visible part of me. What is it? How does it feel? How do I recognise it? Thoughts, feelings, and personality are the soul expressing itself. As we increase the awareness to 20 per cent, 70 per cent, or 80 per cent, we become increasingly ‘spiritual’. It re-establishes a different lens through which I see everyone else – as a soul. Conflicts in the world are all based on discrimination – a very low level of consciousness. How did we ever arrive at the state we find ourselves in; that we have to
pass laws to say that we are all equal?
Every single human soul is worthy of regard, respect, love, and kindness. Some we see may be ‘broken’, but they need even more love. There are terrible things happening in the world, but I should be able to remain slightly detached, to be able to see beyond, be one to generate hope and inspire a new generation to move in a different direction. Being trappedin illusion and falsehood, building a sense of self from that which is destined to deceive, is to cause great sorrow to the self. I need to find spiritual energy to generate the beauty within to bring real beauty back to the world. Those who first ventured into outer space were able to be totally detached. The moment they saw the beautiful planet from space, with love and detachment, they say it had a profound impact on their awareness of life.
They returned completely transformed. That is what meditation does. It makes us see things, everything, differently. It is only then that I can contribute in a naturally beautiful way to a new reality.
Eric Le Reste was a producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for more than 35 years. He coordinates the Brahma Kumaris centres in Canada and is based in Montreal.
