Imagine a fully blossomed rose of your favorite color blooming on a bush at the entry to your door. You walk past this rose several times each day and have since it was a bud. It has been on the bush for a very long time. In fact, it has been there so long that you hardly see it anymore. It has become a part of the background. One day you are walking past this rose when a colorful and unique insect descends upon it. It catches your attention. Suddenly, the rose the insect is resting upon becomes a part of your focus of vision. You notice the color, texture, and intricate details of this rose like never before. Change has brought you back to a place of presence, appreciation, and beauty.

Beauty… is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty flows through us. It isn’t something that is separate from us. Seeing beauty is appreciating life. It is being present. What we see is our reflection.

We lose sight of the beauty when we believe we know something. When we know that the rose that was there yesterday is going to be the same as today, we stop looking at it. We no longer see it.

Appreciation is an art. Once it is mastered, it becomes the lens of life. Appreciation is practiced through awareness. If one cannot sense something, they cannot appreciate it. Awareness of change opens our eyes to all that is around us. We step outside of our thoughts and connect with life.

As appreciation flows through us, we become more beautiful. Other vessels of energy are attracted to us and begin to wake up.

One who is practicing awareness of change is practicing the art of sensing and reflecting beauty.