Beauty and Reflection

By AndreaPhilosophy

Reflection is enjoyable because it allows us to look back on our past life, as we ground into the present and plan for the future. For centuries people have traveled to beautiful places to reflect, plan, and imagine possibilities. Sedona is one of the most beautiful, spiritual, and special places on Earth, and it is the perfect spot to relax, reflect, and recenter.

Time and a lifetime

Walking through Sedona is like walking through time itself.

  • Earth’s geological time, and
  • The time you’ve spent on Earth.

In Western traditions, time is the continuum that we move along and it goes in one direction. There is a beginning, and then it moves forward, punctuated by certain events along the way. In a lifetime significant markers are often things like birth, a graduation, a marriage, a child, retirement. But there can be other things such as war, recession, loss of a loved one, that also punctuate our lives. These inflection points are often opportunities to shift our lives and our worldviews.

However, like everything there is more than one way to look at time. Many Indigenous traditions have a circular conception of time. For example, the Navajo tradition sees time as circular, and is represented as such with four points of emphasis on the Seal of the Navajo Nation.

Four points to demarcate the temporal cycle, and other important aspects of the world seen in fours – four directions, four colors, four sacred mountains, and four points of time that are:

Thinking

Reflecting

Planning

Doing

Whether time is a circular return or a linear progression, it always allows for a looking back and looking ahead. Reflection has a role in our lives across cultures and worldviews. But using different models of reflection, perhaps thinking of it as return or a loop, might offer new insight, and deepen our practice.

Being in nature is the perfect place to reflect. It opens us up to new possibilities, interpretations and ways of understanding. We leave the constraints of built spaces and cultural narratives, to reconnect with the Earth and make new sense of our lives by looking back, and looking forward, and discovering new ways of looking back and forward.

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Reflection also helps us achieve one of the most important goals of philosophy–developing self knowledge. Knowing ourselves comes up again and again in philosophy–and in life. As you think about your experiences, your choices, and your current priorities, reflection can help you identify new areas for growth and development.

Andrea
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