Creating beauty
By Amy
In the old days, if someone asked why the ocean was blue, they may get a satisfactory answer, “God made it so”. Now we are usually satisfied with a longer explanation like this, “The light of a particular frequency range hits our eye, and then the brain somehow makes you feel the sensation blue”. But how? Where is the missing link between the brain and sensations that happen in the space of experience? I wondered if I could find out where my dreams come from.
Ever since I heard about making requests for dreams, I have been receiving some dreams that I asked for. (To request dreams, you need to sincerely ask for what you want before falling asleep.) I’ve received a massage in my dream that left me feeling relaxed. I’ve gotten guidance and inspiration for problems I struggled with during the day. There is a sense of responsiveness, which suggests that dreams are made by something intelligent.
It’d make sense to think that my dreams are made by my unconscious mind. But who and where is this unconscious mind? Does it talk to or connect with anybody else’s unconscious mind? Could it be “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower”— the force that created the universe? Or the energy that the universe is made of? It fascinates me.
It’s natural to wonder what the purpose of human life is. After all, it takes so much energy to keep a human alive.
It’s easy to think there is no defined purpose to life. Or that the purpose is whatever each one of us makes it to be. That purposes are only a constructs in our minds to help humans make sense of the world. For example, what is the purpose of the fruit tree in my backyard? To produce fruits and provide shades for humans? Photosynthesis? Being a part of the ecosystem? Why does it matter anyway? It’s just a tree, and it lives on happily until it disintegrates into the earth.
But somehow thinking there is no purpose to my life feels like giving up. It feels like deciding that all I know is all there is.
Let me explore the idea that the purpose of human life is to create beauty. What if the beauty we create somehow reverberates into the unconscious mind and makes all the energy we take worthwhile?
Let me first consider if beauty is intrinsic to beautiful things only. It doesn’t seem true, as I found people have different capacities of seeing beauty in different aspects of life. Some people find beauty in nature, some in arts, some in other people, and some are lucky enough to find it in themselves.
Visually, we are conditioned to relate symmetry, consistency, and certain kinds of contrast to beauty. In some cultures, naturalness, imperfections, and signs of age signify another kind of beauty.
Beauty is more than visual though. You can also find it in kindness, love, courage, intelligence, truth, and almost anything.
Beauty is the delight we feel when we experience appreciation. Beauty may feel universal, but it’s perceived in our minds only.
When we appreciate ourselves, we are confident. When we appreciate knowledge, we learn. When we appreciate people and objects, we cherish.
The quality of life depends on your ability to appreciate. When we appreciate, we create beauty in our minds. This makes us happy.
When we are no longer able to create beauty, we live in a world full of adversity. In such a world, many lose the hope to live on. When we have the strength to create beauty, we can find encouragement in the smallest blossom. We can think that although there’s little food on the table, we still can find simple delights.
So everybody wants to be happy. In what kind of system would the designer make it so? What if the creator of the universe feeds on happiness?
And why does it feel scary and evil to think the Great Creator, if such a thing exists, designed a system that scores the quality of life by the ability to create joy? I guess I feel powerless in comparison to the energy that created the universe. And this thought reminds me of The Matrix, where we are being used as batteries. Except for this time, we are batteries of beauty.
But let me let the battery imagery go.
Fear not, I’m made of the same energy that made the universe. We all are. We could also say that the creator of the universe, if it exists, wants us to be happy. This is usually interpreted as love if it was from another human.
So the universe loves each one of us. That’s great.