“As you get older, the thing that happens is, I’ve noticed I appreciate people’s beauty by what you see in their eyes,” said Carrie Ann Inaba

 Natalie Stone April 24, 2019 08:35 PM

While many in Hollywood may be seeking a fountain of youth, Carrie Ann Inaba believes true beauty starts from within.

During Wednesday’s episode of The Talk, the Dancing with the Stars judge, who is featured in PEOPLE’s 2019 Beautiful Issue alongside her cat Mimi, opened up about gracefully aging — and why beauty transcends the exterior.

Sitting alongside her co-hosts and PEOPLE staff editor Melody Chiu, Inaba said that “it’s such an honor to be included in this magazine” as a photo of herself and her cat, which is showcased in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, displayed on the screen.

Carrie Ann Inaba MIKE ROSENTHAL

“The best part though is that’s Mimi. Mimi is the star. She’s my rescue cat. She was found on the streets. Her ears cut off because she was part of one of those feral — you know where they rescue them and put them back on the street and spay them and neuter them?” she shared about the photo with her black feline. “She’s just an amazing cat and it’s such a great honor to be there featuring Mimi. I’m just her background.”

Chiu explained during the table talk that the Beautiful Issue celebrates “inner beauty” and “women who are making an impact in the world,” noting cover star Jennifer Garner.

“What’s so great about this issue is it’s about celebrating the inside beauty as opposed to just the exterior beauty. And I really do believe that,” Inaba said later during the discussion.

• For more on Carrie Ann Inaba and her cat Mimi, pick up The Beautiful Issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

“As you get older, the thing that happens is, I’ve noticed I appreciate people’s beauty by what you see in their eyes — like the joy or the courage or the bravery, or when you’re sitting next to them and you feel their compassion or their warmth or their spirit of determination,” she continued.

Added Inaba: “To me that’s beauty, so I think people do get more beautiful as they get older.”

The Talk airs weekdays on CBS

Friday, April 5, 2019

Death—whether one of many deaths to the false self or our final physical dying—is simply returning to our spacious Ground of Being, to our foundation in Love. Life doesn’t truly end; it simply changes form and continues evolving into ever new shapes and beauty.

In addition to my own close encounters with death, I’ve been privileged to accompany others at the threshold of birth and death. These glimpses through the veil have helped me trust Love and let go of ego. Philip Simmons wrote that “living at the edge is not so extraordinary as it may sound”:

We all have within us this capacity for wonder, this ability to break the bonds of ordinary awareness and sense that though our lives are fleeting and transitory, we are part of something larger, eternal and unchanging. [1]

After her teenage daughter Jenny died in a car crash, Mirabai Starr described grief as being “suspended in the invisible arms of a Love I had only dreamed of,” “drowning” but discovering she could breathe under water. [2]

Shelley Chapin Drake, a beloved friend of the Center for Action and Contemplation, recently passed away after living with cancer for many decades. Shelley’s husband, Kirk, shared with us: “No matter what we do, we are held in wonder’s presence. I choose to surrender there, to the wonder of presence now, where Shelley is alive and well.” A few weeks before she died, Shelley wrote:

Kirk and I decided, early on, that what we long to surrender to is not an ideal or a safety net, but Wonder itself. . . .

[We] have held on to the concept of Wonder as a guiding concept . . . a way to focus our attention in these days when life is so uncertain. We have absolutely no idea what the author of Love is asking of us . . . except we are fairly certain the Beloved One is not asking us to lay claim to any certainties at all. We are fairly sure that the Beloved is simply holding us tight . . . holding us close . . . holding us in Pure Love in the palm of Love’s hand. . . . And what else could we possibly ask for?

Living in the Wonder teaches us to “show up” . . . and “showing up” teaches us to “be with” the Beloved. . . .

The Beloved is not in a far-off land, waiting for us to catch up with him (or her). . . . The Beloved is Love and there is no other place for Love to be than in the act of holding tightly to you and to me. Deep within the recesses of our very being, we are held . . . known . . . treasured . . . not “out there” somewhere, but in the very Wonder of Love . . . in the very seat of the Heart . . . in the very core of the Soul.

The more we live in the Wonder and welcome our placement in this very heart of Love, the easier it is to trust . . . to “release our fears” . . . to live without proclaiming certainties . . . to settle into this very core we can only call Love.

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action and Contemplation

Week Fourteen

Dying Before You Die

Stumble and Fall
Sunday, March 31, 2019

Something in you dies when you bear the unbearable. And it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees and to love as God loves. —Ram Das [1]

Sooner or later, if you are on any classic “spiritual schedule,” some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter your life with which you simply cannot cope using your present skill set, acquired knowledge, or willpower. Spiritually speaking, you will be led to the edge of your own private resources. At that point, you will stumble over a necessary “stumbling stone” (see Isaiah 8:14). You must “lose” at something, and then you begin to develop the art of losing. This is the only way that Life/Fate/God/Grace/Mystery can get you to change, let go of your egocentric preoccupations, and go on the further and larger journey.

We must stumble and fall, I am sorry to say. We must be out of the driver’s seat for a while, or we will never learn how to give up control to the Real Guide. It is the necessary pattern. Until we are led to the limits of our present game plan and find it to be insufficient, we will not search out or find our real Source. Alcoholics Anonymous calls it the Higher Power. Jesus calls this Ultimate Source the “living water” at the bottom of the well (see John 4:10-14).

The Gospels teach us that life is tragic but then graciously added that we can survive and will even grow from this tragedy. This is the great turnaround! It all depends on whether we are willing to see down as up or, as Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) put it, “where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” [2] Lady Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) said it even more poetically, and I paraphrase: “First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall—and both are the mercy of God!” [3]

The Prayer of Abandonment by Brother Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916) expresses openness and intention to give up control to God in the middle of life, even before our physical death:

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me
and in all your creatures—
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father. [4]

Gateway to Presence:
If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.

[1] Ram Das, in Stephen and Ondrea Levine, Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying (Anchor Books: 1982, 1989), 89.

[2] Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion, ed. Diane K. Osbon (Harper Perennial: 1995), 24.

[3] Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, chap. 61.

[4] Charles De Foucauld, from a retreat meditation he shared in Nazareth (November, 1897). See Charles de Foucauld: Writings, ed. Robert Ellsberg (Orbis Books: 1999), 104. Brother Charles assigned these words to Jesus in Gethsemane, calling them “the last prayer of our Master, our Beloved.” This became a favorite prayer of Fr. Thomas Keating (1923–2018) toward the end of his life and was read at his memorial service last year.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, A Spring Within Us: A Book of Daily Meditations (CAC Publishing: 2016), 114-115.

Image credit: The Gulf Stream (detail), Winslow Homer, 1899, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York.