06/30/2026
There’s a touching awareness that happens in the movie “Contact,” in which Jodi Foster’s character is searching for some confirmation that her amazing and unbelievable journey into deep space actually occurred, that is wasn’t just some figment of her imagination. As she’s looking up to the sky, sitting on a cliff’s edge, she grabs a handful of soil and then brushes the dirt from her hands, leaving just a few specks of dirt glistening like a constellation of stars. The shape of the constellation that appears on the palm of her hand is the same as the one she was shown by the alien life forms who briefly met with her during her deep space experience. It wasn’t proof that her odyssey really happened, but that was the point being made in that scene. Somewhere between faith and science lies the truth—like the whispering wind that dances and speaks through the leaves of a tree.
Similarly, the false solidity of our ego-constructed psyche, when we finally awaken to the universal expanse of our Being, must look like a speck of dust, or a grain of sand, or a blinking distant star among trillions, infinite darkened in the vastness of the universe. Small doesn’t mean insignificant. Love the dust speck as it glints and floats. Love the grainy bit of sand, like a giant rock to an atom. And the star too.