February 8, 2023 by Brian Weiner No CommentsChanging The World One Thought At A Time., Lessons From The Mountain

Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.

RUMI

How do you know that something is beautiful?

Traditionally, we understand beauty, by the way that our sensory apparatuses facilitate our perceptions of reality.

Beauty is in one part, objective, and in another part, subjective, predicated upon different kinds of variables that are being ranked as beautiful.

For example, you might pick an outstanding piece of music or artwork that you think is exquisite, and yet, someone else might glance or listen briefly, before summarily dismissing it as not worth their time.

Beauty is always within the subject, only certain people have the ability to recognize it. So when the adage, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” is contemplated, we are wise to recognize that the beholder is not the best judge of the value of beauty. Beauty is inherent and can be recognized through different subjective perspectives.

Many times, if we are not in tune with the environment around us, we stumble hour by hour through our lives, making our way through our daily and weekly rituals, completely oblivious to the incredible beauty surrounding us.

Often times, just as an exercise, I will take my camera and stay within one specific room and look around until I can find one or two absolutely beautiful photographs. They may not mean a lot to a third-party, but that is really not the point. The point is that as we are aware of our surroundings, and the inherent beauty within, we become that much more alive in the process.

When we are able to live our lives, finding continual moments of pleasure in tiny recognitions of beauty, I believe it creates a considerably more joyous existence. When you stop to look at a spiderweb after the rain, and you see the little micro drops, trapped on the web, or you are up an hour before sunrise and the first rays of dawn are just starting to turn the clouds in the sky, beautiful shades of orange and pink, or if you are walking through an area and you discover there is a beautiful little seedling that has found a way to root itself in the most unlikely of places and is already starting to grow against hostile circumstances, you tune in to many more of life’s tiny joys.

Our time on the planet is so short, and life is so fragile, it is almost a complete waste to spend your time walking planet earth, and not finding microcosms of beauty, everywhere that you go. Take an extra moment today look around familiar circumstances, and seek out something that is actually quite beautiful and pay attention to it.

Once you have started this process, you will discover that you can do this almost anywhere and you will start to see things you had not seen before.

Happy Wednesday!

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Written by Brian Weiner

When I was 5 years old, I discovered that the lemon tree in the backyard + dixie cups + water and sugar and I was in business. I have been hooked on that ever since. In 1979, I borrowed $14,000 to create a brand new product... photographic greeting cards with no text on the inside, called Paradise Photography. That was the start of The Illusion Factory. Since then, The Illusion Factory has been entrusted by all of the major studios and broadcasters with the advertising and marketing of over $7 billion in filmed, live, broadcast, gaming, AR, VR and regulated gaming forms of entertainment, generating more than $100 Billion in revenue and 265 awards for creativity and technology for our clients. When I took a break from film school at UCLA to move to Hawaii, my mother did not lecture me. Instead, she took 150 of her favorite aphorisms and in her beautiful calligraphy, wrote them artistically throughout a blank journal. That is the origin of the Lessons from the Mountain series. Since then, on my journeys to the top of a mountain to watch the sunrise, I have spent countless hours contemplating words of wisdom from the sages of all races, genders and political persuasions, constantly accumulating the thoughts to guide me on my life path. I hope you enjoy my books. Please let me know your thoughts, as I highly value your feedback!