LEVELS OF REALITY

THE RHEOSTAT OF LIFE

As a teen, not knowing about rheostats, I once argued with a friend long ago that a light bulb is either on or off, and doesn’t vary in brightness. I was young and uneducated, and quite convinced of my logic. The bulb gets power or it doesn’t. I was wrong. I then quickly learned about the magic of the rheostat that reduced the amount of electricity to a bulb, and therefore lowered the brightness.

Because of this long ago learning, it has been a little easier for me to back off the extremes, on or off, day or night, right or wrong, real or not real, and recognize reality has a rheostat. Things are not as simple, as clearcut as I once naively thought. Perhaps this was basic training to become the mediator I am, always searching the ground between the extremes for points in common.

We must learn to look at the misty middle between extremes if we are to find the truth. Very rarely is truth found at an extreme.

At the basic level of reality itself, this is a challenging concept. Once I thought something was either real or unreal. I was jared to discover this is not so. Reality and less than reality coexist.

Example: the dream. It has its level of reality. During the dream it may seem real as life itself. Awakened from the dream we realize as real as it was, there is a greater reality found in consciousness. Dreams are simultaneously real and unreal.

Such as it is in everyday life. Our lives are real, but not as real as they seem. There…