As we engage in our personal work of healing, our transformation to authenticity and wholeness, it becomes clear that we no longer fit within the current constructs of western society/culture. We realize that we need a new way of being in the world that connects us to each other, to nature and to the divine.
This leads to questions regarding how shall we live? What are our values? What will sustain us as chaos and collapse deepen? Western society presents a long list of so-called values that we could adopt, however most of them have been co-opted to serve modernity.
We need something that is grounded in what is real and can provide a strong foundation for living in alignment with who we are becoming. Ancient philosophical systems can provide guidance, but have often become mired in academic over-analysis.
Goodness, truth and beauty can provide the foundation we need. They are three essential, interlocking cornerstones of a way of being and living. And in their essence are useful guidance.
Goodness prescribes right action in relationship, expressing qualities such as kindness, generosity, gratitude and respect. Applied to all our relationships, with the human and more than human world. Goodness alone is not sufficient it requires the other cornerstones of truth and beauty to avoid becoming fawning or conflict avoidant.
Goodness compels and calls us to compassion.
Truth prescribes knowing and abiding by what is real, right, just and honest. In today’s world it counters deception, delusion and denial. It tempers goodness.
Truth compels and calls us to courage.
Beauty is often thought of as an aesthetic, and it is that, but also much more. Beauty is what delights and creates awe within us, underpinning the perception of harmony, proportion, rhythm, and elegance. Beauty also honors and reflects the flow and reciprocity of creation and life. It represents aliveness, the flow from the primordial source of creation, including death and decay. What is stuck, distorted, willfully destructive, isolated or malignant is not beauty. Beauty places goodness and truth in the context of the divine and the cosmos, and emphasizing our connection to creation; beyond our individual pre-occupations.
Beauty compels and calls us to awareness
These three cornerstones are not separate but interconnected aspects of underlying reality, bound together and dependent on each other for integrity. Truth is accessed by intellect, goodness by action and beauty by perception. They revolve around the transcendent central element of consciousness, manifest as love.
To live by goodness, truth and beauty, we are called to the completeness of all three – not just to pick and choose. They are not a checklist of what to do. And upon contemplation we can realize the depth of what they mean regarding how to live.
We are called to serve them as much as live by them.