Inner Beauty – Inner Light
How often do you look in the mirror, into your eyes, and see how beautiful you really are?
Have you ever done that? We tend not to see our own beauty shining out at us. We tend not to pay much attention to the inner light. Yet the most beautiful women in the world seem to radiate something special, an inner light, an inner beauty.
What do you see when you look in the mirror? When most of us look at our physical reflection we see the imperfections. We see the wrinkles or the wrong nose shape or a big bum or…..Then we tend to try to disguise those features we’ve decided are wrong about us, with makeup and clothes and expensive skin creams and treatments. Some of us don’t even look in mirrors anymore, except with the blinkers of our perception attached so we only see the part we’re attending to, and can not notice the rest.
Do you remember those funny mirrors when we were kids, often found at fairs and circuses, the ones which distorted our body shape, made us appear taller or shorter, fatter or thinner, with strange distorted faces? We laughed at them then, and we knew what we saw wasn’t true.
What we didn’t know then was that the reflections we receive from other people in our lives, and from the media and culture we live in, can also distort our perceptions of ourselves.
We’re conditioned and trained to judge parts of ourselves, both inner and outer selves, as less than beautiful. There are a number of books, including Naomi Wolf’s seminal work ‘The Beauty Myth’ which discuss the social pressures which form our self-image. Other writers have discussed the effect of this on the fragile self-esteem of our adolescents, and the disastrous results of anorexia. Even our beloved Princess Di was not immune to this. Psychologists speak of the shadow aspect of ourselves, where we store all those qualities and behavioral tendencies which our society deem unacceptable.
What is interesting is that those standards of behaviour and beauty vary from culture to culture, and over time. Rubens’ women, with their fleshy curves, were considered beautiful in his time, as were the plucked hairlines of the Florentines, and the bound feet of the Chinese. Smoking cigarettes was considered risque for young women in the 1920’s, then a mark of style in the 50‘s and 60‘s, and now in many circles makes one a social pariah.
As we grow, we learn what is and is not acceptable behaviour, and we alter ourselves to fit, concluding that some parts of us are unloveable.
So too we learn what is and is not an acceptable outer appearance. In the process we lose touch with both our outer unselfconscious beauty, and our inner beauty as well. We become caught in trying to fit the distortion the mirror of our society shows us.
Have you ever observed a cat stretching in the sun, totally unselfconscious of her exposed belly, whether her fur is the right colour or her eyes the right shape? She just is her authentic cat self, and there is beauty in that. We smile and perhaps rub her tummy as we pass. Have you ever observed a young child, playing in the garden, totally unselfconscious about whether her skin is tanned the right colour or her hair curly or straight or the shape of her legs, bottom or nose? She just is her authentic self, and we watch and smile and see her joy in herself, and tell each other how beautiful she is.
And she is beautiful! She is beautifully radiating her inner being just by being her self, uncontrolled, unedited, unselfconscious, uncovered, undistorted, and the light of that self shows on the outside. She may be physically beautiful or not, according to the current standards, but we’re noticing the more subtle beauty too. We recognise that in her, and we vaguely, perhaps wistfully, remember that it is inside us too.
Recently, in my healing practice, I worked with a woman who had no idea, had totally forgotten how beautiful she is. I was almost in tears of reverence at the beauty of her inner world, her energy, her soul, yet she didn’t know that about herself. I was able to give her an experience of that, right down to the cells of her body, so she could feel it, in a powerfully transforming experience.
So how can we get in touch with that inner light, and encourage it to shine through, so that we radiate our own inner beauty in the world?
Here are some tips:
- Take a day to rest. Turn off your phone. Listen to what your body needs, and do that. It might be to sleep all day, have a massage, read a book, go to yoga class, go for a walk. Most importantly, allow yourself to rest, be with yourself, do what you need.
- Treat yourself well. Eat nourishing healthful foods, do exercise you enjoy, remember to breathe fully and deeply, as children do. Have some fun. Laugh, play. Dance.
- Spend time in nature, without your phone or headphones. It relaxes you and breathing in all those negative ions and oxygen is rejuvenating. When we’re relaxed, the light of our soul may peek out to be seen.
- Have technology-free days. Constant exposure to the frequencies of wifi, phones beaming off to mobile towers, digital anything, is stressful to the subtle energy of beauty.
- Find ways to relax daily. The stress lines will fade from your face.
- Take timeout from wearing makeup, and meet your naked face self. If you look with kind eyes, you may be surprised at what you find.
- Spend some time in front of the mirror. Though it may be confronting, and really look at yourself. Look in your eyes. See who is there, and invite her out to play. She may be shy at first, but encourage her by telling her she is safe, she is beautiful, and you really want to get to know her.
- Identify the negative and self-defeating beliefs you hold about yourself. You know the physical ones, they surface most frequently in clothing store change rooms: “I’m too fat/thin/short/tall’. ‘I’m ugly’. ‘My bum/breasts/nose is too big/small’. ‘My skin is too freckled/wrinkled/pale/dark/stretch-marked’. ‘I hate my hair’. When they surface, press a mental delete button. If someone told you these things, or there has been physical or emotional trauma attached to these beliefs, seek professional help.
- The beliefs about your inner self are less easy to spot. They're less familiar, but they might sound like this: ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’m not lovable’, ‘no-one would love me if they really knew me’, ‘I have to hide this (fill the gap) about me’, ‘I can’t tell that secret’, ‘I’m a failure’, ‘I’m not a good (fill in your own word here)’, ‘I’m too much’, ‘people don’t like me’, etc.
Get the idea? Anything negative you say about yourself, to yourself, is a dimmer switch. It dims your inner light. Hit the delete button.
If you need help to change these, or there has been some emotional trauma involved in forming these beliefs, seek a qualified therapist. Most importantly, do whatever excites you, something you feel passionate about, something that lights you up with enthusiasm when you think or speak about it. Identify that thing that makes you want to leap out of bed in the morning, and do that. Often. It will give you joy, and that shows in your eyes and on your face. It shows in the way you carry yourself. It shows as an inner light radiating from you. And that is truly beautiful.
About the author
Kaytie Wood is a third generation energy healer, intuitive, artist, spiritual teacher and author who tunes in to the etheric template which holds the blueprint for our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual experience. With qualifications and experience in both psychology and teaching, and 25 years of personal research and training in complementary medicine and energy therapies, she offers Vibrational Energy Healing sessions, Soul Support sessions and Soul Energy portraits to a global audience both in person from her base near Melbourne, Australia, and by distant healing via Skype. She is passionate about empowering women to shine their soul-light in the world. Find out more and contact her at www.kaytiewood.com.
