Having written about life as a kaleidoscope before, I had merely seen it as a great metaphor, not the actuality. Last night, as I settled into meditation after reading a great novel, I noticed the depth and breadth of it.

A kaleidoscope holds all the pieces within. The chamber is turned, shifting the pieces, determining this round’s order, and an ever-changing image appears, fractals of light and color, appearing as the texture and shape of the form being perceived.

It could be any image, but it isn’t. The turning shifts, determines the display, how the tumble of contents appears. The turning is experiencing, just like a human life and the experiencing cannot actually add anything new to the informational field, it just reprioritizes what floats to the surface to be experienced.

There is nothing new to add for there is nothing new. Every possibility is already present. This is already full to the brim and overflowing with infinite, eternal options. The moving variable is the display in each moment, the experience before you.  

Do you choose your experience? At times it seems like you do. When it’s what you wouldn’t choose, not so much. Life is certainly the appearance of choice. That is undeniable, but is the appearance the reality?

I’ve been having some amazingly intense and detailed dreams of late. The dreams feel unquestionably real. The detail is astounding. The fact that in the dream I notice the detail, how detailed the dream is, is new to me. It’s a grand pointer.

Life, or what we call real, is pretty damn detailed too. Honestly, I can’t tell the difference anymore.  I’m not sure I ever did. The exquisite detail I have been noticing has hammered home the fallacy of reality, of thinking anything is real or not real.

Maybe this is a kaleidoscope and I, or what I call I, is a bit of glass tumbling with all the other bits of glass, each new experience twisting the chamber and letting it spin., a roulette wheel of light, a kaleidoscope in perpetual motion.  

How would I know? It’s truly impossible to know anything for certain. That used to scare me — the uncertainty — not anymore. It’s freeing and great fun to not know, to let life be as it is, to remain present to whatever image the kaleidoscope creates.

I rather like the image of being a bit of glass tumbling in the sea of experience … and even that’s too solid, to defined. To say I am reflecting light might be a bit closer … alas, words.