Elegantize Your Life

Catherine reflects on Trungpa Rinpoche’s quote to “elegantize your life” and the importance of living within an aesthetic of sacred space.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Catherine Ingram.

Having just returned from Italy,

Where I have for seven out of the last nine years had an annual retreat,

I feel inspired to speak about the importance of beauty and aesthetics in one's life.

Trungpa Rinpoche once said,

Elegantize your life,

Elegantize your life.

I think he made up that word,

But we all understand it intuitively.

How would that look?

Every part of life has attention to detail.

Anywhere that there's chaos or a mess or things that are shoved away or piling up are actually draining energy.

There's a way in which there's a something to be done story that runs in the midst of chaos,

Especially if you're sensitive.

If you're not sensitive,

Then maybe you don't notice so much.

But as one becomes more awake and attuned to oneself,

There's an automatic sensitivity to one's environment.

And it's very useful and delightful to live in a beautiful and I would say simple way.

Being in Italy,

Of course,

This is everywhere.

It's just everywhere.

Every shop window and every shop inside is like a beautiful offering,

A work of art.

And of course,

The food for which they're world famous is done with such care,

Such,

So close to the earth and as simple as possible to make it so delicious.

And just a hundred other things that I could speak about at the retreat.

One of the things we very much love about going to this particular villa on a hillside in Umbria is the staff who take care of us in this most impeccable way,

Such that they're really kind of invisible and everything is done just to perfection.

The food is literally looks like art displays when we walk into the dining room.

Every tablecloth is folded to just to perfection,

Just as though it's almost military precision.

It gives a sense of graciousness and it has the effect of inclining one's awareness to these kinds of simpler noticeings,

Such that then you're walking down the lane and you smell lavender and you stop and you really smell the lavender or the jasmine or you look at a particular way that light is playing on the hillside.

All of these things as one is in an aesthetic environment,

A highly high aesthetic environment,

These kinds of details start to pop.

Whereas when one is living in chaos,

In a mess and maybe not clean,

I would dare say that the kind of subtle beauties that are available as a richness in our life are not observed.

And people then become addicted to being on the internet and watching screens in various ways.

That was another thing I was struck by yet again being there,

How often you're in situations where if you were in America,

Everyone would be looking on their screen,

Like walking around or sitting on a public transport or any number of things.

People are just staring at screens.

It wasn't that way there this time and it hasn't been for some time.

So I notice each time I go there that I feel immediately at home.

And strangely,

When I come back to the land of my birth,

And I've had this experience for all my years of traveling,

Which are very many,

I have the culture shock coming back to America.

That's where it's jarring.

That's where the adaptation is a bit of a strain.

That there's a cultural trance,

An addictive trance that is in constant distraction.

And it's kind of toxic.

It's very,

Very unhealthy.

And it requires just like any addiction,

More and more and faster and faster and more information and more ways to do it and more apps and more Twitter and Snapchat and God knows,

Instagram and all of the Facebook and on and on.

Not to mention just old fashioned email to keep up with every day.

There's all this onslaught of just bits of information,

So many bits of information and a big so what at the end of the day about it.

It gives a false sense that one is having an actual life and instead one is actually missing life,

Missing the beauty,

Missing the simplicity that gives rise to deep appreciation.

So my suggestion and my own intention is to really slow it down,

Challenge one's feelings sometimes that you're not fully participating in the mad dash of information gulping.

Really challenge that,

That ethos,

Challenge it because it's not healthy.

And it makes for a lot of really sad feelings in fact.

I've spoken about this on these podcasts before but apparently there is a correlation between how much time people are spending on social media and depression because there's a way in which people compare.

They think all these other people are having these fantastic lives.

Most people aren't putting up their sad days and their hard days and their struggles at work and their feelings of depression and loneliness.

That's not what they're usually talking about sometimes but not often.

And instead there's a presentation,

You know,

An avatar that goes out with your name and the avatar is having kind of a fabulous life and so all the other people watching that avatar compare and feel like my life is not like that.

So these are the ways,

This is just one example of so many,

Of how happiness does not lie in that direction.

It lies in the opposite direction.

People at the retreat we just had were so happy.

They were so happy.

Just a couple of days into the retreat suddenly everyone there was this lightness,

There was this joy,

There was this bubbling,

There was this mirth in the conversation of twice a day we have Dharma dialogues,

Otherwise silence.

There is this delight that ripples through along with people touching very vulnerable places and deep observations and very,

Very specific noticings.

So how can one in a culture that is racing and roaring along and is giving out the message that if you're not keeping up,

If you're not keeping up then you're kind of out of it,

You're a retro,

You're sort of maybe even not that interesting to people.

How does one negotiate this when there's a cultural trance that agrees that faster and more is better?

And my recommendation is to find your own times of quiet,

Your own ways of being simple and elegantize your life.

Take pleasure,

Take pleasure in making it beautiful and buttoning down all the things that are kind of loose ends and just one by one maybe chip away at that and notice that as things get simpler there's more space inside,

There's more feelings of that you can breathe.

And then allow your awareness to just gently notice as I say so many times simple joys,

Simple beauties because they are many,

They are many.

You don't have to go for some big,

Glamorous,

Fabuloso exalted life that you imagine other people are having despite the fact that those people that we think are having those lives routinely we discover,

You know,

They're getting a horrible divorce and their kids are on drugs,

All kinds of,

They have problems,

Right?

They have real problems.

But there are lots of people whose names we don't know who are having perfectly beautiful and usually kind of closer to their earth lives.

These are the reflections,

The counter reflections that challenge the madness.

This has been In The Deep.

To support these podcasts,

You can subscribe to this channel on iTunes or post a review there.

If you'd like to know more about my work,

Book a private session or make a tax deductible donation for the ongoing production of the podcasts,

Please visit KatherineIngram.

Com.

Till next time.

Reviews

Elegantize, what a cool word 🥰

So true! Thank you Catherine for an enlightening talk. ✨🙏✨💛🌻💐🌺💛

Thought provoking and interesting look at current societal trends and how we can become distracted with technology. I like the simple solutions suggested toward beauty and simplicity. Thank you.

Beautiful and thank you

Loved your message. I am a believer in "simple elegance." You just helped reinforce it.

I’ve spent the last couple of days soaking up your talks. Thank you so much! Such a gift.

This impacted my soul. A great way to start the day. Find the beauty and keep it simple.

Simply beautiful💕

I love the message and the simplicity of this podcast.

Food for thought! Good stuff thanks 🙏🏽

This resounded with me today. It feels a bit out of reach with small children, but inspired me to "elegantize" some little bits of chaos I would normally ignore.

Thank you so much! Such a great reminder to slow down & notice life's simple joys

I can really see my life in these words. What better incentive to pare down?

Beautiful articulation of what I have been feeling in our culture for sometime now.

Inspiring!🙏🏻🌸

Elegant and poignant 🙏🏼

You have articulated elegantly exactly the conclusions I have come to during the past ten years of my life. Thank you for sharing your thoughts it's a relief to know my instincts are still in tack.