One of my mother’s correction techniques was to tell me that beauty is as beauty does. And what teenager doesn’t want to have beauty? Of course, my mother didn’t believe it would make me beautiful, but she did think it would make me aware of what I was doing. And it did!

Unfortunately, the awareness of my doing became a judgment on myself as to whether I was good or bad—a beautiful or ugly person. I have since noticed that many people must have grown up with their mother giving them the same dual impression of themselves.

As an adult, I came to realize that we are neither good nor bad. We are all humans trying to remember that we are divine. Yes, some manifestations are beautiful because they are infused with an awareness of our divinity expressing. Other manifestations may turn out a bit ugly. This is because in that moment we forgot that we have a divine facet of love wanting to be expressed.

In my meditation this week I remembered an event that seemed to my human-self to be very ugly but my divine-self used it as a time to bring the love fact of generosity. I was staying in a hotel that didn’t have wall safes. And when I went to breakfast with my partner, I left behind my purse. The maid took all my money which was $300. When I found it missing, my first thought was that I had done a stupid, ugly thing. But close on the heels of that thought was a flood of generosity that believed the person who took the money must have needed it more than me.

That situation was a huge reminder that every event can be beautiful when it is embraced with love. Leaving my money unprotected did not make me an ugly person or a beautiful person but a divine person. I felt no need to chastise my human-self because I allowed my divine-self to manifest.

My husband was a physical being through and through. He had to be doing something at all times. And most of what he did was beautiful. But he was attached to it turning out beautiful rather than realizing his divinity was the owner of his beauty. It wasn’t until the end of his life that the ALS disease helped him to see it was his divine-self, not his human-self that manifested beauty. He died realizing he was the carrier of a divine gift.