Sliding Doors, Parallel Worlds

We've all seen the films. One choice, two timelines, two lives running side by side.

On the eve of another journey with my Taita, masters and teachers, I'm sitting with this idea in a far more practical way.

In 1957, physicist Hugh Everett suggested that every possibility might branch into its own world. Today at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, scientists smash particles together close to the speed of light. They watch for energy that seems to vanish, which could be a sign of dimensions we cannot see. So far, nothing has slipped away. The search continues.

Science hasn't proven other worlds. But it keeps asking the same question the soul asks: what else is here that I'm not seeing?

The tree and the leader

Each of us aligns with our soul to live the lessons we came here to learn. Picture a tree. A choice can carry us out along a side branch, away from the core path of growth. We may stay on that branch until its life force begins to wither.

Pruning does two things. It cuts away what drains us, and it sends the vital force back into the main tree.

So how do we know whether we're pruning a side branch or cutting off the leader, the main stem that carries the tree upward?

The leader always follows the light.

Entanglement

In physics, particles that were once connected stay correlated, however far apart they travel. Experiments confirming this earned the 2022 Nobel Prize.

Relationships work something like that. They are the entanglements that can hold us on a branch long after it has stopped growing. Loyalty, faith, the sanctity of marriage, family, friendship and money can all bind us. Some choices are genuinely hard.

People talk about "the matrix" and NPCs, non-player characters. Perhaps it's simpler than that. Perhaps some souls just aren't aligned with us in this chapter of our reality. A soulmate is a soul aligned with ours here and now. That alignment isn't a guarantee of permanence. Choices can draw two once-aligned people apart.

That could paint a lonely picture. It doesn't have to.

The door you keep looking back at

What if you're not fully present in your partner's journey because part of you is still standing at an old sliding door? It might be a past love or a road not taken, quietly asking what if?

That yearning may be the root of a fragmented soul. It leaks life force into a world we aren't living in.

Contrast

Here's something I find beautiful. Even the Large Hadron Collider can't see a particle directly. It can only see the trail a particle leaves when it collides with something else. Without that contrast, there's nothing to see.

We're the same. Joy is only known against sorrow, and ease is only known against struggle. The bumpy ride and the blissful one aren't opposites. Both are how the soul comes to know itself.

So how?

What I've been taught, and am still learning, is this: the only way is through.

Let go of fear. Surrender into the flow that has always been there, guiding your path and lighting up your choices.

There is no wasted choice. Every branch teaches you something. Every pruning returns life to the tree. All paths lead back to the source.

What leaps of faith have you taken into the void?

Here I go…

Scott Woolford