DW's Blog

The Beauty of Dust: When Ordinary Becomes Sacred

by DW Green — August 6, 2025

“The practice… might simply be staying open to the possibility that the next
moment of beauty is always just one relaxed breath away.”

I was walking through our new office space today when something stopped me in my tracks. There, along the
edge of a piece of furniture, lay a delicate wave of dust. Not the kind that makes you reach for a cloth, but a gentle accumulation that caught the afternoon light just so. For a moment, it was genuinely beautiful.

This wasn’t a poetic stretch or an attempt to find meaning where none existed. In that instant of true seeing, the dust simply was beautiful – as real and undeniable as any sunset or flower that might typically earn that description.

WHEN THE ORDINARY REVEALS ITSELF

These moments of spontaneous beauty don’t announce themselves. They emerge when we’re not trying to find them, when our usual filters drop away for just an instant. One moment you’re moving through your day on autopilot, the next moment a wave of dust becomes a small miracle.

It’s the same phenomenon that makes us suddenly notice the way light moves across a wall, or how a stranger’s laugh carries a particular music, or how the pattern of raindrops on glass creates its own fleeting art. The world is constantly offering these gifts, but we’re usually too distracted by our mental to-do lists to receive them.

What strikes me about the dust incident is how it required no effort. I wasn’t practicing mindfulness or trying to be present. Awareness simply opened, and beauty was there waiting.

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE: LOOSENING CONTRACTION

During my daily meditation, I often hear the phrase: “The purpose of life is to loose and eliminate contraction.” While this resonates deeply, I find myself wrestling with it, sometimes in what feels like fighting mode.

Contraction – that tightening of body, mind, and spirit that happens when we resist what is. Simply put, it’s our whole system saying “NO” to reality, creating a gap between what is and what we think should be.

Picture this: you’re rushing to an important meeting and realize you’ve forgotten your keys. Instantly, your shoulders rise, your jaw clenches, your breathing becomes shallow. Mentally, you spiral: “I’m always doing this… now I’ll be late… they’ll think I’m unprofessional…” That whole-body response – physical tension, mental rigidity, emotional resistance – that’s contraction in action.

The forgotten keys are simply what is. The contraction is our refusal to accept that reality, even though the
resistance doesn’t help us find the keys faster or solve the problem. In fact, it usually makes things worse because we can’t think clearly when we’re all clenched up.

These contractions are so habitual we barely notice them, yet they create a barrier between us and the immediate beauty of existence.

But here’s the paradox: fighting against contraction is itself a form of contraction. The very effort to eliminate
resistance becomes another form of resistance. It’s like trying to relax by commanding yourself to relax – the harder you try, the more tense you become.

THE DUST DOESN’T TRY

The dust on that furniture wasn’t trying to be beautiful. It simply settled where it settled, accumulated as dust does, and reflected light according to the laws of physics. Its beauty emerged from a complete lack of effort, a total acceptance of its own dusty nature.

Maybe this is what “loosening contraction” actually looks like – not a militant campaign against our tight spots, but a gradual softening into what is already here. Not fighting the resistance, but gently noticing it and allowing it to be what it is, the way we might observe dust settling without immediately rushing to clean it.

THE PRACTICE OF NOT PRACTICING

There’s something to be learned from these spontaneous moments of beauty. They suggest that awareness isn’t something we create through effort, but something we uncover by getting out of our own way. Like clearing dust from a window – we’re not creating the light, just removing what blocks it.

Perhaps the real practice is learning to trust these natural openings when they occur. To recognize them as glimpses of our unconstricted state rather than accidents that need to be replicated through technique.

The dust taught me something my meditation cushion couldn’t: beauty is always present, always available, always waiting for the moment when our contraction loosens enough to let it in. It doesn’t require special circumstances or spiritual disciplines. It just requires the willingness to see what’s actually in front of us.

FROM FEARING REALITY TO HAVING A CRUSH ON IT

I’m still processing what it means to eliminate contraction without contracting against contraction. But maybe
that’s the point – the processing itself, the wrestling, the fighting mode – all of it can be held with the same gentle
awareness that noticed beauty in a layer of dust.

There’s something profound happening here that feels like befriending reality itself. For so long, I would fear reality,
tying myself in knots about what might happen or what was happening. But when awareness opens to what’s actually
here – not the story about it, just the raw “what is” – there’s pure joy.

It reminds me of having a crush on someone in grade school, spending weeks convinced they could never feel the
same way, only to discover the feeling was mutual all along. All that anxiety and nervous energy, all that bracing
against potential rejection, only to find out reality was never the enemy.

Maybe contraction doesn’t need to be eliminated so much as befriended. What if instead of seeing reality as
something to defend against, we could fall in love with what’s actually here? The shift from fearing reality to having
a crush on it changes everything.

The dust is still there on that piece of furniture. Tomorrow I might walk past it without noticing, or see it as something
that needs cleaning. But for one moment today, it was perfect exactly as it was. And maybe that’s all any of us need
– these scattered moments when the ordinary world reveals its sacred nature, when contraction naturally loosens,
when beauty appears in the most unexpected places.

The practice, if there is one, might simply be staying open to the possibility that the next moment of beauty is always
just one relaxed breath away.