In Common Light

When you hear the word beautiful, what comes to your mind? Maybe makeup or fashion, maybe a sunset or ocean scene. What if the true beauty is something that is already within us? What if true beauty is our consciousness — the awareness of being alive?

Our Current Idea of Happiness and Fulfillment

We tend to seek beauty and happiness from the external world. Such as a beautiful vacation, a nice spouse, a big house. However, once we get those things, the happiness is short-lived. Once we get those things, we will want something more.

Joy Comes from The Process of Attaining

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, one of Russia and the world’s most famous writers, claims that it is the process of attaining, not the thing to be obtained, that we are really after. In his novella Notes from Underground, he says, “Granted that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he transverses oceans, sacrifices his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it, dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be nothing for him to look for,” (pg. 26). Mathematical certainty, in this case, refers to the “answers” of life.

He then says, “He loves the process of attaining, but does not quite like to have attained,” (pg. 26). 

In other words, we seek conscious experiences rather than items. He says “Perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained,” (pg. 24).

It’s About the Journey — Free Will and Personal Growth

We hear all the time the phrase “It’s about the journey, not the destination.” This phrase seems to come up only in difficult times — times where we feel defeated and when we will never get the tangible things that we want. But it holds wisdom and is more than a motivator. This phrase encapsulates the beauty of experiencing consciousness rather than the external world.

Kobe Bryant depicts this idea by claiming that the real dream lies in hard work:.

“Those times when you get up early, and you work hard, those times when you stay up late, and you work hard, those times when you don’t feel like working, you’re too tired, you don’t want to push yourself, but you do it anyway. That is actually the dream. That’s the dream. It’s not the destination; it’s the journey. And if you guys can understand that, then what you’ll see happen is you won’t accomplish your dreams; your dreams won’t come true; something greater will,” (My Fancy Story, 2023).

When you get up early and when you stay up late to work hard, that is a special conscious experience. You are exercising free will to grow, you are utilizing discipline. A non-conscious bird or tree cannot do that. Us humans can. We can expand, stretch our capacities, utilize our potential.

From journeys, experiences, processes, rather than from end places, we gain wisdom, skills and stories to share. Through growth and discipline, through fear and doubts, we feel connected to the human experience.

Living Amidst Uncertainty and Suffering

Not only is consciousness beautiful in that we can use it to grow, it is also beautiful because of what we chose to do with it. What consciousness boils down to is the awareness of living our one and only life. Despite the massive uncertainty that comes with life, choosing what to do with it is quite beautiful.

In Dolly Alderton’s best selling memoir, Everything I know about love (2020) in a chapter called “Twemty-Eight Lessons Learned in Twenty-Eight Years” she says,

“Life is a wonderful, mesmerizing, magical, fun, silly thing. And humans are astounding. We all know we’re going to die, and yet we still live. We shout and curse and care when the full bin bag breaks, yet with every minute that passes we edge closer to the end. We marvel at a  nectarine sunset over the M25 or the smell of a baby’s head or the efficiency of flat-packed furniture, even though we know that everyone we love will cease to exist one day. I don’t know how we do it,” (pg. 307). 

Not only is choosing what to do with our life amidst massive uncertainty beautiful, declaring better for ourselves also is. Stories of resilience — of choosing to rise above suffering and working for a better life — are beautiful. Consider protests, self-help programs, and social justice movements.

Cultivating Inner Beauty Through Spirituality

If consciousness is the truest marker of beauty, then why are we so obsessed with the external world? What makes us miss this truth?

One reason is our attachment to our egos — that part of us that attaches to and listens to our thoughts. This is what creates our problems — not the external world. We can detach from our thoughts to free ourselves from our self-made problems. It is then that we can feel the beauty that has always been inside of us. The beauty of energy from pure consciousness.

As Michael A. Singer, in his book Living Untethered (2022), says, “Your entire life is composed of consciously experiencing the three objects of consciousness (the outer world, the thoughts, and the emotions)” (pg. 17). In order to feel our inner beauty, we need to be aware: “When you pull back that source of awareness, it is the most beautiful thing you will ever experience,” (pg. 18). I have experienced this sense of inner beauty (see my poem What are words, really?).

Takeaway

Let us embrace life as it is and cherish the beauty that comes with consciousness — simply being alive. Let us go after inner transformation and inner journeys to feel the depth of human experience.

Ask yourself: Are my life goals oriented towards things or are they oriented towards experiences? Am I aware of the gift of consciousness? Lastly, consider reading about spirituality to cultivate a sense of inner beauty.

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References

Alderton, D. (2020). Everything I know about love: A memoir. HarperCollins

Dostoyevsky, F. (n.d.). In Notes From Underground (pp. 26–26). essay, AmazonClassics. Retrieved 2026, from https://www.amazon.com/Notes-Underground-AmazonClassics-Fyodor-Dostoyevsky-ebook/dp/B0756XHTQ5.

My Fancy Story. (n.d.). Discover Kobe Bryant’s Powerful Definition of a Dream | ’You Work Hard, Tired? ’ | Black Mambas RIP [Film]. Retrieved April 7, 2026, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urp1nsmX4g0.

Singer, Michael A. Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament. New Harbinger Publications, 2022.