We are all attempting to make ourselves more attractive, to improve on nature.

Why?

Why do we do this?

The main reason is that we want to be accepted. We feel accepted if we are admired. Admiration and acceptance validate us.

It is important that we are admired. It is because young boys, lacking initiation rituals, remain unaffirmed in their burgeoning manhood, that Robert Bly challenged older men to concern themselves with the souls of the boys. When this happens, the young lads feel affirmed. He further argued that these mentors could help initiate the young boys into aspects of manhood appropriate to their stage of development. Young women, as well as young men, need to be affirmed, and treated with respect.

When we are admired we are able to accept ourselves. When we accept ourselves we are able to relax. The affirmation reduces our emotional dependence on others. We discover a new freedom. [205]

Because affirmation, and the love from which it derives, is in such short supply, many spend their lives attempting to elicit admiration from others. They do this by dressing up their self-image. However, their desperation often blinds them to the emotional manipulation of others that masquerades as genuine interest. They are vulnerable to the seductive blandishments of those who use them.

Nowhere is our tendency to enhance our image so evident as in courtship rituals, which are fuelled by evolutionary energies. However, while men and women spend time and effort making themselves attractive to the opposite sex, they also dress to compete with members of their own sex, making fashion statements that give them the edge.

Community attitudes exaggerate our desire to make ourselves more attractive. Communities have their ideal images of what constitutes attractiveness. Where cultural images collide, those of the dominant culture usually win out. Some Asian women have had their eyelids remodeled so that they look more Western.

Lucrative industries have grown up devoted to changing our appearance. Those companies that have a vested interest in marketing particular images, frequently do so at the expense of consumers. Enormous sums of money are spent by people who can't afford it because they have been led to believe that they will be unacceptable unless they alter their appearance. Sometime the influence is more pernicious than this. The cultivation of the notion that female beauty is represented by slimness has contributed to the prevalence of anorexia.

Those most susceptible to this propaganda are those who were not affirmed as children. The real tragedy is that the most gullible are those least likely to be transformed by the makeovers. [206]

The enhancement of our natural endowments, in the interests of attracting the admiration of others, involves, not only our physical appearance, but also our performance, whether on the sports field, in business, in academia, in the arts, or in a host of other areas.

The Consequences

It is important for us to realise that, if we decide to titivate ourselves to approximate the ideal represented by the popular image of beauty or attractiveness, we will face certain consequences.

The first of these is that the image to which we have subscribed, and which we seek to cultivate, will be our jailer, controlling our view of ourselves, our schedule, and our finances.

The second, though less obvious consequence, is that people will be drawn, not to the real us, but to the image we project. We will be aware that we are being false, and will be scared to death that we may drop the mask in a moment of inattention.

Furthermore, if we are seeking to live the popular image, and are successful, we will attract certain types of people. These can be divided into several categories. The first are those who envy us, who detest us because we are what they would like to be. The others are those who want to live their lives through us, and who will be reluctant to allow us to be ourselves. When we disappoint them, they will be angry with us, because we carry their aspirations. It is also likely that we will attract others, like ourselves, who are living a charade. Those who are authentic, who are true to themselves, will not be drawn to us, except, perhaps, out of [207] compassion. On the other hand, we will be surrounded by those who confirm us in our deceptions. We will alienate those who could release us from them.

Because of the attention we are giving to cultivating what we consider an acceptable image, we will find ourselves locked into competitive struggles with others like ourselves. This competitiveness will exaggerate our self-centredness. It will also prove exhausting.

Facing the Truth

Circumstances frequently conspire to force us to confront the truth about ourselves, to admit that we have bartered our souls for an illusion. When this occurs, we are tempted to conclude that we have wasted our lives.

There is an element of truth in this, but it is not the whole story. Unmasking a commonly held illusion takes time. There is a sense in which we need to live the illusion, to become familiar with it, before we are able to recognize its hollowness. Furthermore, because the illusion is so ingrained in the culture, whose values we absorb with our mother's milk, discovering that we are captive to this cultural pathology is a lifelong task. We should therefore not be too hard on ourselves. We are not born wise. Wisdom is acquired, and rarely matures until our later years. Living the illusion, and then deconstructing it, is one of the ways in which we gain wisdom.

Once we have begun to challenge the illusion, to question its assumptions, and to penetrate to the reality behind it, we can begin re-orienting our thinking and our lives. Our new understanding, arising from bitter experience, represents our gift to others who are still struggling with the illusion that image is all-important. [208]

Our lives have not been wasted. What we regard as wastage has been a necessary and unavoidable preparation for the insight that could come only through our first following this false lead.

A Redefinition

Perhaps we should redefine personal attractiveness?

The beauty that lasts, and is irresistibly appealing, has little to do with appearances. It is an inner beauty, a beauty of soul. People regarded as physically ugly, on the basis of accepted canons of attractiveness, can glow with beauty.

Some people appear to be born with generous souls. This could be attributed to genetic endowment, to being desired and loved as children, or, as some argue, who believe in reincarnation, to the fact that these choice individuals are really old souls. For most of us, however, the development of inner beauty is a life-long process.

Beauty has been equated with holiness. The Psalmist speaks of the beauty, or splendour of holiness.¹¹⁹ Talk of holiness is off-putting for some. It is associated with an unattractive, aesthetic ideal. Holiness, however, can be equated with integrity. To be holy involves our being true to ourselves, without artifice, deceit or exaggeration. Those who know themselves, and are able to be themselves, in spite of the pressure to conform to others' expectations, have an integrity, a strength that is almost irresistible. Holiness should not be equated with perfection, a self-centred ideal, but with a capacity for love, for caring. Those who impress us with their attractiveness, their inner beauty, are often fallible and rough-hewn. But they are generous, guileless and devoid of pretence. They live their truth. [209]

We do not talk much these days about character. We usually refer to people's personalities. Character is a word that needs to be resurrected, because it speaks, not so much of the structure of the psyche, but of the quality of a person's life.

People are refreshed by coming into contact with people who are genuine and unpretentious. The encounter encourages them to be themselves. It gives them permission; it presents them with a different model and helps to kick-start their transformation.

Getting There

To live authentically, and to develop an inner beauty, requires more than a quick cosmetic change. We must be committed to long-term transformation.

We will also have to be willing to face the pain involved in deconstructing the false image that we have been working with for years. It will also entail the reconstruction of our behaviour, and our patterns of relating.

For many of us, it will take some sort of crisis to activate the process. Nothing short of a traumatic upheaval will have the impetus to jump us out of our comforting illusions. Nevertheless, if we find ourselves in the midst of a major crisis, it will be important for us to keep in mind the fact that this traumatic event has the potential to provoke the satori-like experience that can make the difference.

Once we are launched into the process, we will increasingly encounter the presence of a grace that will carry us forward. As we are more open to this grace, we will find that we are living a paradox. We will be aware that we are more centred in the reality that we are, while at the same time discovering [210] that we transcend this reality. It is transformed and we find a new centre in the Spirit Presence that effects the transformation.

At this juncture we are accosted by a further paradox, for we discover that the less concerned we are with our attractiveness, the more attractive others find us. [211]

[ROI 205-211]