I am beautiful.

That’s not a ‘guru’ style bogus affirmation, at 74, with a barrel rather than a 6 pack, riddled with arthritis, a missing leg, more wrinkles than a crumpled crisp packet and more scars than a Russian gangster my body is my best friend and a record of an exciting life.

I am beautiful.

Because despite its battering my body is suffused with chi (life energy), alchemised and educated into geng (warrior energy) and then shen (spiritual energy) by trained emotions and a mind that has trained and meditated twice a day for over 50 years.

I am beautiful.

I wouldn’t trade this body ravaged by life for the insecure, self obsessed, wildly emotional avatar that youth or an untrained, uneducated, self obsessed, apathetic and distracted older person has.

I am beautiful.

If you want true beauty, you have to understand what ugliness is. We have it it rammed down our throats by society in the media every day, it’s so called version of ‘beauty’ is a selfish turd wrapped in glitter, polished in a way to feed our insecurities and warp our basic survival needs to feed the coffers of the few. It’s a veil that an educated and alchemised mind connected to its source can penetrate to find that we are either subject to manipulation or can penetrate with objectivity and be free.

I am beautiful – and free as long as I follow the inner path of my wisdom mind and not be subject to the desires and addictions fed to me by others.