On Beauty, Radiance, and the Transparency of Being
Introduction
We begin at the beginning.
Important people — or those who believe they are important — are born as regular babies. No crown. No hierarchy. No glow beyond the simple miracle of life.
Yet something shifts. Identity hardens. Status forms. Beauty gets ranked. Power accumulates. And somewhere along the way, we begin mistaking surface for substance.
This inquiry began with elitism. It moved through the soul’s consent to incarnation. It passed through the tension between outer beauty and inner radiance. And it has led us here — to a deeper question about what truly shines.
Let’s walk the path carefully.
The Dialogue
Important people, or those who believe they are important, are born as just regular babies. What changes to give these people such a sense of elitism?
Reinforcement. Insulation. Fear.
A child repeatedly praised as exceptional may fuse identity with admiration. If applause becomes oxygen, hierarchy becomes necessary. As power grows, honest feedback diminishes. Without friction, ego inflates quietly.
Often elitism is not superiority — it is defended fragility.
The pedestal protects vulnerability.
And when the role fuses with the person — CEO, guru, celebrity, leader — the function begins to masquerade as inherent worth.
The infant never disappeared.
It was simply layered over with narrative.
So from the soul’s point of view, does the soul accept the challenge even before it realizes what the challenges may be?
If we speak within spiritual language, the soul does not enter blindly. In texts like the Bhagavad Gita, the deeper Self is described as unborn, undying — taking on form as one changes garments.
From that vantage, incarnation is not punishment. It is participation.
The soul may not consent to specific events — but it consents to density. To polarity. To limitation. To forgetting.
The forgetting is the challenge.
Uncertainty belongs to the human layer. The broader arc may already be visible beyond time. But embodiment requires immersion — and immersion requires partial amnesia.
We awaken inside the story and call it fate.
Then there’s the idea of the most beautiful and the not beautiful. How we see beauty is so defined. In spite of poets proclaiming the beauty in deformity, beautiful people achieve beautiful outcomes… even if it ends in tragedy brought on by idiocy.
Surface beauty is rewarded quickly.
Biology primes us toward symmetry and health. Culture amplifies this into hierarchy. The attractive are often assumed to be more intelligent, more competent, more worthy. Doors open faster. Voices are heard sooner.
But surface reward is not depth.
Beauty without integration can distort. Affirmation without humility can stagnate development. Sometimes beauty accelerates access before character has matured.
The first is obvious.
The second is felt.
And poets were not naïve when they spoke of deformity as beautiful. They were sensing something subtler — coherence. Presence. The glow that emerges when inner and outer are aligned.
Now let’s return to spiritual insight. When the outer form is plain, unnoticeable — yet the soulness of one shines through so tremendously that the outer visage seemingly becomes glorious.
This is where hierarchy collapses.
When identity is less preoccupied with appearance, defense softens. Attention steadies. The nervous system relaxes. The face becomes less posed and more permeable.
Radiance increases as self-reference decreases.
The body becomes translucent to being.
You’ve likely encountered it — someone physically ordinary who becomes unforgettable within minutes. Their listening is whole. Their presence undivided. Their face, once neutral, now luminous.
The form didn’t change.
Perception deepened.
Beauty began to arise between you.
Because glow is relational. It is co-created in resonance.
Is this inner glow a gift of the soul, a gift of upbringing, or Consciousness’s experience with all paradoxes of life?
It is convergence.
The soul may provide the original light.
Upbringing may shape early openness.
Experience polishes the glass.
But paradox is decisive.
Those who allow grief to soften them, failure to humble them, contradiction to stretch them — without collapsing into bitterness — begin to carry integrated light.
Not loud charisma.
Not spiritual performance.
Not dissociated brightness.
But depth-glow.
True radiance has weight.
Counterfeit luminosity often appears in confusing times — certainty without humility, intensity without integration. It excites, then exhausts.
Integrated light steadies.
Aging reveals this most clearly. Surface beauty peaks early. Depth-beauty often peaks late. Lines become biography. Muscles remember emotional patterns. Forgiveness softens the jaw. Resentment tightens it.
The body records consciousness.
Over decades, this becomes visible.
The Larger Thread
Perhaps beauty is not a trait at all.
Perhaps it is permeability.
The degree to which life moves through a person without excessive distortion. The extent to which paradox is metabolized instead of defended against. The willingness to remain open.
In a time obsessed with surface optimization and curated identity, discernment becomes sacred.
Can we feel the difference between brightness and depth?
Between charisma and coherence?
Between aesthetic symmetry and embodied compassion?
The glow we seek may not belong to the extraordinary.
It may belong to the undefended.
Addendum
There is a subtle humility required in perceiving radiance.
If we cannot recognize depth in someone physically unremarkable, perhaps the contraction lies in us. Beauty is not only emitted — it is received.
To see luminosity, one must be willing to perceive beyond comparison.
And that willingness is its own quiet glow.
Epilogue
Every infant arrives equal in vulnerability.
Every face will age.
Every form will change.
What remains — what intensifies rather than fades — is the transparency we cultivate toward being.
Not superiority.
Not aesthetic advantage.
Not performance.
But the simple radiance of a human who has allowed life to work on them.
The story isn’t about beauty.
It’s about coherence.
Sources & References
- Dion, K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). What Is Beautiful Is Good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
- Langlois, J. H., et al. (2000). Maxims or Myths of Beauty? Psychological Bulletin.
- Keltner, D. (2016). The Power Paradox.
- Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2.
- Newton, M. (1994). Journey of Souls.
- Etcoff, N. (1999). Survival of the Prettiest.
- van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score.
- Jung, C. G. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology.
Numinous Waves 