The whole package

The other day I was watching the movie Robin Hood with Russell Crowe and I was once again amazed by the fact of how much I fall for him in his movies. He is not quite the looker though (unless he takes off his shirt, which he eventually does in all his movies) but there is something irresistible for me anyway in the characters he plays: It´s something to do with sporting a firm outer shell but at the same time emanating the fragrance of tenderness out of each pore of the skin. It reminds me that beauty is not so much what we look like on the outside but what we are inside as well, it´s the whole package. And what is the whole package?

I very much like the analogy of the ocean and the waves to understand this better. All waves that form on the surface of the ocean are made of the same water; they rise out of water, play around for a while, have their individual experiences so to say and finally dissolve back into the vastness of the ocean. Note that each wave that arises has the complete ocean beneath it. You could say; a wave is the ocean but you can´t say the ocean is a wave, that would be too narrow.

In this example, we are the individual waves that arise on the surface of consciousness (ocean) and all of us have different experiences, but one thing we have in common: we arose from the very same complete consciousness. Rather than only being a lonely, little wave on the surface, we can also know that we have the whole ocean beneath us. It is not something we need to work on, it is already so. This is the most beautiful recognition and once it has flowered it is the most attractive perfume in a human being.