http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philokalia
I have seen beauty on Earth and sky. During the August Perseid meteor shower I have floated naked in a geothermal pool in Yellowstone Park, on windowpane acid, with 100 other naked people, watching flaming bollides fall from space and explode lighting up the night sky to reveal a silent moose standing yards away. I became a star-child amidst silently copulating couples in our cosmic amniotic womb of water, air, earth and fire.
But, for me, Beauty most often manifests through the form of a woman. It goes beyond mere lust because the lower, middle and higher 'parts' of my tripartite being are engaged and riveted by the vision of feminine form and movement. I can have the spell broken by what words might reveal her inner substance. But if she is not shallow and childish, or so narcissistic as to have become stupid from looking at a mirror or shop windows more so than the pages of books, then I feel like Very Deity has been revealed to me. This makes it possible to fall in love with more than one woman at the same time, which is very difficult from a relationship point of view. It becomes imperative to raise second chakra motivations up from Fire to Heat (in the third chakra) to Light in the Fourth Chakra. That means constant sublimation to the Place of Realization wherein I remember the Divine Being in the particular manifestation.
It is my attachment to the feminine form that keeps me in the world, else I would have entered a monastery long ago, yet simultaneously, women represent for me the veil that prevents me from seeing all beings with complete equanimity. I cannot be in a crowd without my second chakra singling out beautiful women, even though I choose to be in a monogamous relationship and acting upon perception is not even a choice. As Mr. Spock once responded to the come-on from an etherially beautiful Stratus cloud-dweller (he was not in the 'pon-far', and could not therefore mate): "Extreme beauty is always disturbing." And so it goes - approach-avoidance conflict - blessing and curse simultaneously.
It is true that I have desired to merge completely with an internal state of mind - true Platonic Eros - that was transcendentally beautiful because it was completely fulfilling, annihilating all traces of the yearning that led to it. Such states have been rare blessings but everyday life enjoins me to begin with the personal and transmute it to the transpersonal. Of the Eternal Feminine in the form of the Goddess Kundalini-Shakti, Sir John Woodruff wrote in The Serpent Power, She could be contemplated "as Will, Knowledge and Action...the Lord of Beings and resplendent like ten million suns," or,
"... as your Ista-Devata [Lord], as being ever in the bloom of a damsel of sixteen in full bloom of her first youth, with large and beautifully formed breasts, decked with all the varied kinds of jewels, lustrous as the full moon, with ever restless eyes." p.340
Sixteen is a bit young for my taste, but the classic work in Tantra expresses my experience. That arousal, intentional or inadvertant, must be 'raised' from psychophysical beauty to psychospiritual beauty. My own physical beauty wanes with time, it will leave me eventually. How tragic to continue to yearn for physical beauty when one's own physical beauty has vanished - obtainable with money a la Hugh Hefner, but even if emulated, to what end? Certainly not a spiritual finish to this trip called Life.
And with end in mind, I will end this ramble here. It was not my intention to begin the New Year with a seemingly grave tone, yet transcendence may leave discarded shells behind. We would not grieve over death if we really saw dead bodies as little more than cocoons for beautiful butterflies to take flight from.
Peace, and thank you for your patience, those who endured it to the end 
Unknown fellow college student to Mark[ostheGnostic] (circa 1974): "What you're looking for is a Transcendental Babe. Good Luck."
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.iloveulove.com/images/Parvati1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.iloveulove.com/spirituality/hindu/goddess.htm&h=480&w=292&sz=18&hl=en&start=59&tbnid=WtISQ1Ua8ibsrM:&tbnh=129&tbnw=78&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2Bgoddess%2Bshakti%26start%3D40%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN
Edited by MarkostheGnostic (01/01/07 02:56 PM)
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