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Cultivating Authenticity and Reducing Suffering: How Beauty Restores Balance to the Human Condition

Writer: Emily McClure
Emily McClure
1 day ago
4 min read

“Man is never so authentically himself than when at play.”― Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man


Have you ever found yourself staring at a particularly captivating piece of art, landscape, or even a simple flower, and losing yourself in it? The world falls away, your problems fade into the background, and you are enveloped in a sense of peace that brings you outside of time and space. This moment, however small, is easing your mind into a state of play; the reasonable part of you and the emotional part of you, so often at war with one another, are given the freedom to exist in harmony.


Beauty has a way of transcending language. The unsimplifiable nature of beauty prevents the logical side of us, which is usually so quick to reduce our emotions to an understandable experience, from fully taking over. Language, reason, or logic, cannot quite capture the enormity of what we are experiencing. We can try to use words to describe what is in front of us, but we often get so swept into the moment that our instinctual need to assign language is forced to loosen its grasp. Our emotions and our reason can interact without suppressing the other, no longer fighting for control. We must surrender to the moment, yet rather than feeling helpless, we feel whole.


According to the 18th century philosopher Friedrich Schiller, beauty and art are the key to uniting our two states of being. Humans possess a formal drive, which relies solely on logic, facts, rules, and morals. It ignores and invalidates our emotions. On the other hand, the material or sense drive is completely driven by intense emotions, desires, and physical sensations. It ignores logic and does not think about consequences. Between these two states lies a third way of being: the play drive, in which both logic and emotion unite.


This is a state of balance which allows a human to be fully authentic and in control of themself rather than allowing either logic or emotion to take the reins. There is a profound sense of freedom here.

A modern therapeutic concept expands on this philosophy. Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT), created by Dr. Marsha Linehan, strongly emphasizes the concept of Wise Mind. Like Schiller’s philosophy, Wise Mind includes three states of being: reasonable mind, which parallels the formal drive, emotion mind, which parallels the sense drive, and wise mind, which parallels the play drive. Being in wise mind allows a human to hold two opposing forces in the same space. What we feel and what we know are both validated and considered when searching for truth or making a decision, leading to more positive outcomes and mental clarity. A common way to refer to wise mind is “walking the middle path” between reason and emotion, and another word for this state is “intuition.”


Linehan proposes several different ways to induce the state of wise mind. The primary method, which I use as a foundation for the following practice, is mindfulness. This is one of the four elements of DBT. I will integrate mindfulness with Schiller’s philosophy of beauty as a mechanism for entering this intuitive state. Of course, I encourage every reader to explore this concept in their own therapy or life to find which method works best for them!


The practice:


Arrange yourself to be as comfortable as possible.


If you would like, find a piece of art, a scene, or a landscape that you find beautiful. You may also attempt to find beauty in anything around you, which strengthens your ability to see beauty in everyday life. If you practice finding beauty in a paint-chipped wall, a worn-out carpet, or a sprawling tree, you can eventually find beauty in almost anything.


Set a timer for 5 minutes.


Take a few deep, slow breaths. Let the air reach every part of you.


Allow yourself to get lost in the object of your attention. Let every thought, word, emotion, and sense wash over you or move through you. In this moment, everything is allowed, but nothing can stay.


Allow your current experience to be as enormous as it is; there is no suppression, only acceptance.


Realize that this soft, strong, steady, intuitive part of you that is emerging is you. You are not your thoughts, you are not your feelings, you are simply the energy observing them.


When the timer goes off, reflect: what was this experience like? Was it difficult? What sort of thoughts and feelings came up?


Every single human is born with intuition, wise mind, or the play drive. However, the quick-paced, often stressful society we live in buries this. When we are constantly in a state of fight-or-flight, or stuck in the sympathetic nervous system, it makes it extremely difficult to slow down and appreciate beauty because we are so focused on survival.


Intentionally slowing down to experience beauty helps us be more present in our lives.

The more you let yourself play, the more you become yourself.


 






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