“I See Your Beauty”
By 
By Reba Linker
“Take full account of the excellences which you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.” ~ MARCUS AURELIUS
Do you know how beautiful you are?
Well, I do.
How do I know something about you that perhaps you don’t quite know or
believe about yourself just yet?
I know because I’ve traveled the path from insecurity, depression and
defeatism (behind a confident-ish façade) to the deep knowledge and
acceptance of my own power and beauty. I know what it is like to live
without my own inner sense of beauty, and living through that experience
taught me how essential a healthy sense of self-love is to our
existence.
It’s like the drowning man who, as he thrashes to reach the surface
suddenly and profoundly understands the importance of air. He may have
lived his entire life without giving air a thought, yet in his moment of
need he knows its importance and he knows it not just for himself, but
for everyone else as well.
Self-love is just like that. If you have it, it doesn’t require a second
thought. It’s as natural a part of your being and actions as the air you
breathe. But if you lack self-love, you understand it in a different
way. Missing self-love, and feeling the debilitating consequences of
that lack, you know its vital importance, not just for yourself, but for
everyone. You know that it is as essential to life as air, food or
water.
Luckily, despite the childhood lessons that led me to squelch my inner
flame – lessons that taught me that my feelings, thoughts and needs did
not matter – I held onto a glimmer of the light that is my essential
being, and a distant memory of the pure innocence and beauty that I once
felt.
It has taken many years to recover what was lost, reclaiming what was
mine, and re-learning a whole new way of being that accepts and honors
my feelings, thoughts and needs, and I now have fanned the faint spark
into a beautiful flame.
My experience allows me to see the spark in you, and recognize it as the
same divine spark that lives in me.
I know the difference between what’s true and what’s false, and what
brings happiness and what does not. I know that what you seek is already
within you. I see your beauty and I see your divinity, just as I see my
own. I see it so clearly. I see the light shimmering within you,
waiting, hoping to receive the healing gust of truth and recognition
that will fan it into full flame. You are already all that you seek.
Experiencing that will change everything.
I see my own beauty, and yours, in two distinct ways:
I see the divine spark. I see the holy, sacred fire that is and always
will be: pure, radiant, and limitless.
And I see the container, the vessel of that flame. I see the shape and
form. I see the nicks and scratches that tell the story of where we’ve
been and how we’ve moved through life.
And the trick is that we have to love the container, the shape, the
nicks and the scratches, in order to get to the divine holy spark.
And we are beautiful. All the nicks and scratches are beautiful, for
they tell our stories.
For example, one might easily think of me: “How sad to have lived
without a feeling of self-love for so long!” And yet at the same time,
how glorious, for that lack is precisely what gave me the insight that
enables me to see my beauty. And that experience is what allows me to
recognize the beauty in you, and gives me the gift to help others see
their own beauty as well.
So my nicks and scratches – the marks of my journey – are beautiful, as
are yours. Love them, and love your divine inner light, for I am and you
are, truly, divinely beautiful. All of me and all of you, inside and
out, is beautiful, lovable and precious.