The Lego Movie...So Much More than Meets the Eye

What may seem to most moviegoers as an entertaining flick with an unexpected and heart-warming ending is so very much more than meets the eye.  Notwithstanding the father and son dynamic that many would consider the understory, what I saw was a third layer,  a deeper and more universal theme about consciousness, revolution and evolution here on earth.

Through clever use of humor, the beginning of the film, set in Lego City, turns out to be a commentary on how media and advertising controls our habits and behaviors. We learn, for example, that the main character, Emmet, is willing to pay over $30 for a cup of coffee.  The villain, named cleverly, “President Business,” is an amalgam of “the powers that be” that control the world behind the scenes and without the awareness of the pleasantly ignorant public.  That government and business are linked in the name of this one character is probably closer to the truth of the matter than we’d like to admit.  Is there really a separation between these two bastions of power in our world?  Unlikely.    

In one of the most astonishing scenes, we see that in plain site, city blocks are blown up in order to be reconstructed all over again exactly as they were, and all seemingly with no alarm from the public whatsoever. Such scenes cause one to take on a birds-eye view of our own society and the ways that behaviors, buying habits, fashions, entertainment and fads take up much of our conscious lives, robbing us of original thought and more importantly, of the ability to think critically and perceive honestly.  It could be said that the hero’s journey is his journey to regain the use of his creative and original mind, and to trust his intuition.   We, like those in Lego Land, seem oblivious to repetitive meta patterns such as war and the economic system which repeatedly cause the problems they then rush in to solve, all keeping humanity on a hamster wheel of problem, solution, problem, solution.  Meanwhile, we make no progress in really addressing root cause of our most dire and rampant problems – environmental devastation, starvation, violence and the like. Can we see that the powers that be are distracting us from concentrating on these real problems?  

But if the movie were to stop there, it would be quite depressing.  Thankfully, it instead presents a blueprint for getting out of the current malaise and brain drain imposed on the people.  There are some very simple, but essential elements I will break down.  But first, how is it I noticed the story behind the story and why am I so convinced that there is one?  Just a month ago I completed the a draft for a book about the topic of enough. What I saw unfolding on-screen gave me the chills.  It was practically a chapter by chapter demonstration of what I had laid out in the manuscript,  only mine is to be a serious book about the imminent shift of consciousness in our world. Those watching the movie will wonder how it could be about the rise of the feminine as the main character wasn’t a woman at all, but a man.  However, the qualities Emmett  drew upon to complete the hero’s journey were not the usual masculinized ones  of  cleverness, brawn or bravery.  Quite the opposite.  It was instead his humility, his willingness to listen to spiritual or intuitive messages, and his ability to see connections between vastly different things that propel him on his way.  So, not to get hung up on masculine and feminine, hopefully we can agree that this is no ordinary screen hero.

What we realize is that Emmet, if anything, is positive.  When he learns about President Business’s evil plot, he does not go negative, cower or run away.   For a very brief time, he considers the traditional hero’s path, believing the prophecy that he is special because he found the Special Piece.  But quite quickly, he is discouraged from taking the egoic path of the lone wolf, and admits his insecurities to an assembly hall of Master Builders (experts.)  It is this moment which actually propels him to a level of worthiness of a leader, on a path more like that of Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela. His authenticity and humility become  the powerful magnet for bringing together those who have until then operated as independent egos.  He gives an inspiring speech to these experts about what it is they are missing, essentially saying, “If we would bring together your creativity and genius with my ability to work as a team, we’ve got what we need to change the world.“ Only when we acknowledge and appreciate our unique enoughness can we give up the competitive game and trust that together we are stronger and wiser than we are apart.  We essentially find how our piece fits with that of others to create a bigger whole.  Humanity’s evolutionary step is to marry the heart and the brain, so we can remember how to share leadership that benefits the greater good. Before Emmett came along, the Master Builders were hanging out in a cloud land, being creative independently, but missing how relevant they could be as a united and more cohesive force.
  

Much like the main character in the Lego Movie, I was unprepared to stumble upon “the special piece” and had to figure it out after the fact.  For me “the special piece”  was a simple word, ENOUGH.  And the more I examined it, we realized that our society had only examined half of the enough story, the NEVER ENOUGH half.  Never Enough has been the underlying “instruction book”  which keeps recreating the same old problems over and over again for the past 5000 years. Daring to build beyond the instruction book is the daring step Emmet and his allies take.  For humanity, this means moving from the tight adherence to Never Enough thinking and perceiving to explore Enough thinking and perceiving.  Without giving away the ending of the Lego movie, I will at least say that another thing “the special piece” and Enough have in common is that they both invite heartfelt connectedness to replace ego-driven, fear-based rigidity. It is about feminine qualities such as nurturing and acknowledging another’s value.  It is about flexibility and creativity, collaboration and the thrill of transformative discoveries embarked upon as a community. It is what we are seeing blossoming all around us as “the sharing economy.”

I hope as many people as possible see the Lego Movie, and I hope that for every one it plants the seeds of what is truly and realistically possible.  And I hope that for more than just a few, it becomes much more than that, an invitation to become the bringer of the New Story here on earth right now.   

More at www.weareenough.com

Laurie McCammon is a planetary change agent, blogger, facilitator and author of Enough!How to Liberate Yourself and Remake the World with Just One Word, published  by Conari Press, out  April 1, 2016.  You can contact Laurie with comments at lauriemccammon@gmail.com, Like LaurieMcCammon on Facebook or follow her on Twitter at @EnoughMessage