Like me you have likely heard the buzz surrounding the Oscar winning movie Everything. Everywhere. All at once. I haven’t seen the movie, I don’t even know what it’s about, but something about the cadence of the title seems to have a transcendental note to it. The lure of the wording forces one to contemplate a little.
This titular homage to the the completeness and connectedness of all that is, also popped up in a recent vacation read; Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro. I rarely read fiction, but when I do I wonder why I don’t more. I get swept up in the beauty of the prose and the accuracy of the observation into the human psyche. Shapiros underdog character is a young boy who has a bent for Astronomy, throughout the book his character is the vessel for contemplating the vastness of the universe, our place within it, and more pertinently, that everything is existing all at the same time. i.e. time and space are an illusion.
The idea that creation is complete, is one that I have been mentally reckoning with over several months. One night I even became terrified at the idea that I was really alone and everything I perceived to be reality was a projection of my imagination. I am making this all up? Something felt very glitch in the Matrix like to the world suddenly.
Truthfully that’s not far off the mark. Our reality is a projection of what we consent to be true, but when we consider that creation is complete, everything is existing, everywhere, at the same time and all at once, surely we can approach life from a different angle? Surely we can both comprehend this idea and not implode because of the consequences of what this really means?
Life can be overwhelming to be sure, and a spiritual journey/breakdown can be a help and hindrance to dissolving the constant unease that we feel in the background of our lives. That nagging feeling that we’re somehow not doing it right. That anxiety that we would rather be anywhere else but where we are.
For me this greater understanding of the completeness of everything has helped me reconcile the fragmented parts within. To quieten down the unease. It has helped me treat the world with greater love and care because I recognise that literally I am everything, and everything is me. It has allowed me to feel more whole outside of the virtue signalling realms of “self love”.
How? Here’s what I understand;
If creation is complete, as human beings living in the physical plain, we are not really creating in the way that we think we are. We are merely teasing the physical (manifesting) out from the non-physical, and what we tease out is entirely dependent on what we believe to be true. We are merely vessels to make physically manifest all that already is, within the space and time that we perceive.
We need not worry about a thing. The matter that we impart upon ourselves is an illusion. The meaning we assign to everything is only a story. We are merely matter. The good, the bad, and everything in between are an illusion of our perceptions. The universe does not discriminate. We cannot right wrongs, or undo the truth with our actions.
Being present in the now, is the only way we can really experience the fullness of what creation has to offer. (Eckhart Tolle of course is the best teacher on this subject). By being here, and being now, we are privy to all of it. Nothing is in lack.
Suffering is an opportunity to awaken. Each pain is an opportunity to see things differently. Further, even if we don’t awaken, even if we did not know any of this, if given the choice, wouldn’t we opt into life anyway? In all of it’s pain and all of it’s glory? And wouldn’t we suffer less if we realise that we are all just actors on the stage?
The latter points are helping me to move through life with more ease and flow. To accept what is, and always I am working on being braver. On taking what I “know” and leaping into the unknown. It’s a process. And there is some fear in me that wonders if when my intellectual understanding moves to an understanding that my heart fully endorses, will I just cease to exist? Will the proverbial moment of “click” end it all? Or worse still, if I keep existing will life just be boring?
Other teachers tell me no. They say that lifting the veil will create harmony within my soul. One of my favourite teachers, Alan Watts, remarks that when we know, we can start to play the game; we can have a foot in the spiritual world and a foot in reality and bend reality as we please.
I choose that. To be the wonder and know that wonder at the same time.