Beauty, Love, & The Power of Meditation

I experienced the blessing yesterday of meeting Deepak Chopra. I shook his hand, and thanked him for how his work significantly shifted my mindset, my self-worth, and my spirituality 6 years ago.

I then had the privilege to hear him lecture on the "Neuroscience of Self-Awareness & Higher Consciousness" for the next 90 minutes, and while I could not take notes fast enough, I managed to scribble 5 pages of single-spaced notes. Some parts of his lecture I recognized from lessons I've learned before in his meditation series; Other parts related to some of the philosophy I learned in my yoga teacher training program.

One of my favorite lessons he shared, I'll paraphrase:
"Nouns aren’t real - they’re human confounds, limited by our perception. There are only verbs - everything is moving. And when we see a pillow (for example - gesturing towards the chair on the stage), we see the color, the shape, the form. It's through our perception that we call it a pillow. The act of you seeing and defining the pillow is consciousness (pointing at the waves of light reflected back and forth between your eyes and the pillow). When you see yourself in the pillow, that’s beauty. When you see yourself in another person, that’s love."

This completely changed my perspective on beauty in an enjoyable manner, and I found the thought... well, beautiful.

My take-away: When we see our true self in the non-living, it’s beautiful to us. When we see our true self in someone else, we love them. To be love, to be beauty, we must embody it so radiantly that everything around us becomes so, which we can achieve through meditation.

As a side, I'd like this share one last thing on the power of meditation. Prior to this conference, I visualized myself at a book-signing event where I was able to meet Deepak and thank him the way that I did. The morning of the conference they were selling some of his books, and I bought one called "The Healing Self" (which resonates a lot with where I am in my life right now). A couple hours later after the lunch break, I saw him sitting in the auditorium, and I approached him nervously and asked him to sign my book. He was so kind with such a gentle demeanor, welcoming me graciously, and signing my book "To Susie, Love Deepak".

My thoughts came true. Yours can too.