The Universal Kaleidoscope: How To See Life In Clarity

Are thoughts reality? Can we control our thoughts? Can we ever be unbiased? How does fear impact our seeing? Can thought ever be present? Are my thoughts conditioned by the culture in which I live? Is it possible to be free? Can the mind quiet?

All these questions led me into writing this post. So come flow with me and let's discover together where this goes. Respond after you finish, keep the dialogue going, and bring any insights you have. Here we go………..

From my perspective…….The Universe is a grand kaleidoscope, constantly in flux, yet whole and unchanging, which is presence, a place beyond measurement—a paradox. When open, present, and quiet, one is, and conditioned knowledge is not. Here I see, and the universe is me, and I the Universe. Forms rise and fall in the kaleidoscopic wonder, yet, completely present, truth is, and time like mist burns away in the fire of awareness. All is timeless, immeasurable, beyond conception or verbal description. Presence.

Yet, stuck in our cultural conditioning, the Universe's structure is distorted and unclear. Our culture teaches us since we are born that we are separate individuals. Within that framework, two main belief systems arise. Either we live in a cold and hostile Universe, or there is an authoritative God up there who we have to believe in through the game of reward and punishment to see if we can get through the gates of heaven. These beliefs, though, don’t fulfill oneself, for they are illusions. Also, from separation comes fear. And from fear comes reactivity to life. Our culture tries to control and manipulate what it doesn’t understand or feels separated from. Hence why we as a culture are in the process of destroying the only home we have, the Earth and its myriad of interwoven ecosystems and species. We are taught by a cultural system that sees that it needs to train the child to fit into the system by destroying the child’s sense of wonder and curiosity and making that child lose their authentic voice.

As we get older, we see through the distorted vision of our thoughts. Rather than seeing what is, we are putting our own cultural past experiences and conditioning onto the present vision. The irony is that we think we are seeing clearly without realizing we are actually stuck in our conditioned thoughts. This is ignorance. Ignorance means to ignore. We are ignoring what is right before us by bringing our past knowledge into the vision. We don’t know how to really listen. To listen without thinking.

We can hold onto beliefs and opinions about the flow of energy and completely misunderstand what it is we are experiencing. We can become stuck in thinking that something has permanence or more value based on how we have come to structure ourselves through how we have been taught. Instead of listening with our senses, and even beyond our senses, we become stuck in seeing out of the conditioned knowledge of our past accumulation. In this place, we become stuck in the whirlpool of conditioned thought. We don’t even realize that those thoughts are not our own but our culture’s.

Instead of seeing the wonder of all aspects of the Universe in which we are included, participating in the grand kaleidoscopic flow of all that is, we focus myopically and separate out one from another and create an artificial division where none existed. In being stuck in my cultural identification, violence can now bloom whether it's of family, religion, state, or against nature. We have seen this pattern since our culture's conception over 9,000 years ago.

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it”

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

How often do we truly see someone? How often do we see another creature that appears very different from ourselves, such as an insect, tree, or fungi? What does it mean to see someone? Can we relate to other species? Can we be free of our biases?

If we try and react with our thoughts, we are not free. We are enslaved by the conditioning that has programmed us. If we never question our very structure of thinking, then all the issues we see, racism, sexism, war, domestic violence, poverty, class hierarchy, and environmental degradation, shall continue — for these stem from the way we think and thereby see the world. All these issues are connected. We don’t see the world as it is.

We see the world through the collective lens of our cultural mythology. This mythos teaches us that we are separate, that the wild is meant to be controlled and manipulated, that power structures are normal, that we can buy and own anything, and that authority reigns. All of these beliefs teach us that in order to be successful, we must destroy the world. This is seeing the world in distortion. This is when the kaleidoscopic Universe is lost from us, and we see in a stuck, fixed way rather than in wonder.

“A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness inner energies wake up and work miracles without effort on your part……The mind covers up reality, without knowing it. To know the nature of the mind, you need intelligence, the capacity to look at the mind in silent and dispassionate awareness…..Awareness is ever there. It need not be realized. Open the shutter of the mind, and it will be flooded with light.”

— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

But what would happen if we could stop and listen without the distortion of thought? What if we began to stop rushing, let our thoughts die down, and really listen in? Awareness is here, ready to rush outward, waiting in the quiet mind. To see one another, another creature, an eco-system, the oneness of what is, then just be, stop rushing, and stop trying to be somebody. It is not about pushing down thoughts or fighting against them. It is simply in listening and seeing that they are not you. I am not this, I am not that. You are only present. You can’t arrive there, nor is it about time. Time is measurement. It is in stopping and listening in without trying. It is accepting what is. That acceptance is seeing what is right here. In that is a listening that is beyond thought. Here, trust, let go and let your light of awareness flood into all that is and discover in that wonder — true seeing…

This is how we can fundamentally change the world and culture, for the world and culture is in us. If we come back to see that we are interconnected and whole, we would interact from that place. That is where right action flows.

Thank you for taking time to read.

What do you think?