If you haven’t seen the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, don’t wait another moment. Grab your best ponder-the-universe partner and do so ASAP!
Perhaps I should be a bit more accurate and say grab your best “ponder-the-multiverse” partner. Because this beautiful, ridiculous, insightful, vulgar, adventurous and audacious movie is a ride - a ride that doesn’t go “to” any place it goes “through” every place.
I won’t risk disclosing spoilers by describing the crazy, brilliant plot involving a middle-age woman who finds herself questioning her life’s choices. I will, instead, point out that this movie boldly enters into the cultural moment that the idea of “Multiverse” is having, thanks to the innumerable movies, television shows, books, video games being cranked out by multi-media giants like the rival superhero houses of Marvel and DC, among others (Outlander, anyone?). It seems as if the world (universe, multiverse?) has awakened to the idea that every possibility to every moment is playing out simultaneously, each yielding an infinite number of even more possibilities that yield even more infinite possibilities…
You get the idea.
This long-explored philosophical and metaphysical concept seems to be supported by science more and more through quantum physics and quantum mechanics (which I would never presume to be able to explain in any way), so those who are exploring this “multiverse moment” through arts and entertainment offerings might be onto something.
The simplest (and likely most ubiquitous) expression of this in our current vernacular can be found in the phrase “as above, so below…as below, so above.” Did you know that this bumper-sticker-perfect concept is rooted Hermetic philosophy (based on the teachings of ancient philosopher Hermes Trismegistus)? This phrase, also known as the Second Principle of the Universe, or "The Principle of Correspondence" in Hermetic philosophy, is meant to demonstrate that from the sole, absolute Spiritual Energy comes the diverse, multitudes of Material Energy, which, once reaching the intentional limits of the physical existence, returns back into the non-physical, Spiritual Energy from whence it came. And because the sole, Spiritual Energy is infinite, therefore “time-less,” its creative manifestations of the Material Energy (like us, for instance) are not bound by our idea of time, which means all infinite possibilities created by the Spiritual Energy are happening at the same, moment-less moment. Everything. Everywhere. All at Once!
*My Spiritual Super-Friend Amanda Hoover and I dive into the Hermetic Principle of Correspondence on her YouTube and Podcast show "Net of Love." Check it out here!
Why our obsession with the Multiverse NOW?
I’m thinking it is because we seem to be in a bit of a chaotic, unpredictable existence right now in our world. War, disease, poverty, conflict, and fracture are confusing us, tempting us to believe that they are all that exist for us. That they are the only constants in our existence, therefore should be our only focus. They divert us from the Truth of our OnExploring the Multiverse, through our multi-media, offers another perspective. Other versions of this Life, each of them with their own infinite outcomes, can show us the way to get THROUGH, rather than getting TO, another way of Being. The Multiverse (sole, absolute Spiritual Energy) contains multiple Universes (Material Energy), like the one we find ourselves in now.
So if war exists here, then there is a corresponding Universe where war does not exist. If suffering exists in this Universe, then there is another corresponding Universe where it does not.
And if we can understand that other Universes can be free of war, and suffering, and any other undesirable condition, then we can embrace the idea that we, too, can be a Universe free of war, suffering and any other undesirable condition.
Moreover, we can be a Universe that can have an unlimited amount of desirable conditions as well!
And — here’s the kicker. If we are a Universe with undesirable conditions for existence, then, by this understanding of the Multiverse, we are also a Universe with desirable conditions for existence…at the same time!
Get it? Once we see that in our very own Universe, we have undesirable existences and desirable existences, and an infinite number of existences in between both, we discover that we get to choose how we experience any of the them. As a matter of fact that’s the one immutable constant in all Universes in the Multiverse…I am the only one who can choose what my experience will be in any existence, regardless of how “good” or “bad,” “desirable” or “undesirable” it looks or feels to me.
If EVERY possibility exists in this moment, then ANY possibility exists in this moment. So if ANY possibility exists in this moment, than I can choose the one (or more) that is best for Me!
Not only CAN we be the hero of our own movie, we ARE the hero of our own movie.
Everything is happening to me all at once -- in the movie about Me!
And it’s MY MOVIE! I’m on the edge of my own seat!
Which Everything...what Everywhere...will I choose in this moment, which is, of course, where it is all happening All at Once?
So?
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