The Kaleidoscope of Life

Watching bursts of brightly coloured glass beads create dazzling patterns at the far end of my kaleidoscope was one of my favourite thing to do as a child. Peering into the peep hole and turning the little cell at the far end to watch ever-changing constellations of colours and shapes did something very beautiful to me. It filled my soul before I even knew that I had a soul. And that same sense of wonder at how the parts make up the beauty of the whole still lives in me now. How the whole is ever-changing and ever-new and cannot exist without the little bits of coloured glass that individually seem like nothing, but that together create the kaleidoscopic patterns of life. 

I see that same pattern expressed in spiritual awakening. I see the spiritual path as a kaleidoscope made up of individuals awakening to our inner divinity, and that each one of us is a different shape and colour that contributes something beautiful to the overall pattern, design, and beauty of Life. We each are given a name, a life, a colour, a shape, as seemingly separate pieces, yet, together we are One. The parts make up the whole. The whole cannot exist without the parts. The whole is living through the parts. The parts are living in the whole. 

Each of us has a unique path through the living process of inner transformation. When we become aware of our awakening beginning to happen and we consciously participate in it, we come alive to ourselves as living beads of glass meaningfully contributing to the beauty of Life. If we neglect the prompting of our soul to awaken, if we block it from happening, our part of the design dies, and the pattern will re-configure into a new kaleidoscopic shape without us. The pattern wants us, loves us, but will continue without us if we don't engage. Once we become aware of the transcendent pattern of Life as an ever-changing and ever-new design we recognise that our continued belonging to the design hinges on our freely willed choice to commit to the process of our awakening. When we do participate in our awakening, in our deification, we come alive in a whole new way and then become aware that the kaleidoscope itself is alive, that we are a living breathing part of it and that we are meaningfully contributing to its beauty. And when we do, we take our place in the dance of Life, of Love, of Creation. The parts are no longer being moved by the ‘divine hand’ that turns the kaleidoscope, but we come alive to our own living contribution to the ongoing and ever-changing beauty of Life. We take our place in the pattern and we take responsibility for it. 

The awe that I felt as a child peering into my toy kaleidoscope is multiplied and magnified today by realising that I am one of the glass beads come to life; that I belong to the pattern of Life and Creation in an integral way, and that we all do. The price we pay for the beauty of this awakening is that we must allow ourselves to be transformed in love, and endure the inevitable suffering that it entails. When I read Schelling say that ‘Nature is God giving birth to Itself.’ it evokes for me the image of Nature as a diaphanous theophany, of all beings shimmering with their divinity, and with us humans as shining fairy lights twinkling across the vast horizon of the earth.  

By endless grace, patience and love, I am coming to understand that the light lives in me, and that I am the light. That the light lives in you, and that you are the light. That we are all One. As soon as we release our grip on our finite human identity, on our name, our body, my small life, we dissolve into the light itself. We take our place in the kaleidoscope. We join the circles of holy beings and know our belonging there for the first time. We have been here all along. We entered flesh and forgetting with the single task of remembering. And by grace, we remember now.