from my experience

So what a wonderful breath of fresh air- thanks Ken- to a life style.

In my own spiritual practice I began with an affinity with Japanese architecture and gardens. Something spoke to me when visualizing myself in those gardens and doing life around such order and minimalistic beauty. Discovering Ikibana and the Tea Ceremonies furthered my original intuitions of beauty in spirituality. What was also glaringly clear was all the resistance that I encountered from within my own will. This, I found, in reflection, was shadow and/or addictions of will. How I struggled with the turmoil of creating order and beauty in my home and self apperance was comical. I felt ridiculous practicing beauty in my life. I grew up with the notion that these things were in the column of "how to poorly judge others" and "he/she's performing for there own selfish reasons" (an inability to realize that the motivation for beauty was the deciding factor). I also was deeply aware of the confusion that resided inside over the attraction to beauty and my twisted moral perspective of who could be beautiful and who was just an asshole for "trying" for beautiful. The adventure of working with the Shadow has few rivals.

Later in my practice... sitting at my ashram in SouthFallsburg, NY I listen to the speaker share a story about self-less service (Seva) and talk about witnessing our shared guru prepare for his day. They spoke of the care put in to bathing and cleaning their personal items, the spirit of preparing food and eating. I was struck at that time with the realization of that ever present Zen comment of "how you do one thing is how you do all things". I took to contemplating what it meant to live like god. How would it to do all things in reverence of god or as if god was participating in all acts. I noticed how I marginalized certain activities to spiritual and non-spiritual. Of those in the catagory of "non-spiritual" I took to practicing them in a I, we, it perspective and was astonished at what came up for me. I began to practice food preparation as an homage to Spirit; same with showering and brushing my teeth, to pooping and doing laundry. I found myself in greater trust of my environment and those who filled my life. It came to my awareness that in practicing these "mundane" activities I compartmentalized God and thus my own expression. I unearthed a great guilt, a guilt of being human and doing these things that I considered dirty as well as being "un-spiritual". As if dirty and un-spiritual were synonyms. 

Beauty as God, for God, in God is an interesting way of doing life. I feel that it is the root of the creative instinct of all art. The artists dire need to be with God expresses itself as their art. I am a "bodyworker" and teacher of massage therapy, they are my mediums', I sit in this realization often.