Hologram Thoughts

A true story.

It was late afternoon, and clouds had been building from the northwest all day. The heat from the Oklahoma plains had pushed the clouds high earlier in the day, but what had once been a mass of white thunderheads had become a low-lying jumble of gray and black clouds. I could smell the rains as the winds picked up. The storms were coming.

Laying on a billowy green couch I read a book about spiritual transformation to myself, but when I found a passage about dragonflies, I had to read it aloud to my daughters. I called for them and they piled onto the couch with me. The scene was two men walking on a wooded hillside as dragonflies zoomed around them. The pages mentioned that dragonflies are actually wood spirits that want to come close to us, to be seen and played with.

My daughters loved this visual, especially the little ones. We talked about it for a couple of minutes, and they they went back to playing in their rooms. A bit later there was a furious lightning strike in the distance, and the thunder brought the girls back in to the living room. We decided to go outside and feel the energy before the rains came to wash the world clean.

Outside we looked around for a few minutes. You could see the different temperatures colliding in the air. A kaleidoscope of monochromatic colors was flowing and falling over itself in the air above our green lawn. My son joined us, and soon we were laying on the lawn, looking at the clouds as they neared. I laid back on the cool grass and watched the clouds swirling to the northwest.

My littlest daughter soon asked me a question.

“What are those?” she asked pointing into the skies.

I had to focus on something lower than the clouds, something I had missed until now. There, under the storm clouds, was a stream of tiny black dots. For a moment or two I could not understand what I was seeing, but then my son said, “Dragonflies!”

Suddenly I could see them in focus. Thousands of dragonflies were flying away from the coming rains. They were moving diagonally across our lawn, from the northwest to the southeast. It was amazing.

“They are faeiries aren’t they?” one of my daughters asked looking into the sky with amazement.

“They must be, right?” I said without looking down.

“I want them to come down here. I want them to play with us,” she said, clearly thinking about the story I had just read to her.

My son smiled and shook his head a little bit.

“How would you call them down to us?” I asked sitting up beside her.

She smiled, sat up and pulled her legs in Indian-style, and then began to chant as she has heard me do.

“Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung, Om Mani Peme Hung,” as she was doing this her little eyes closed and she called out to the river of dragonflies above us.

Soon, magically, the dragonflies did find their way to the ground. All around now were buzzing dragonflies flitting from here to there. In the trees, around the roses, between us and before us.

One large green and purple dragonfly flew up to my daughter and seemed to float in the air before her face for a moment. And then, just as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The dragonflies were back above the trees, continuing on their journey. But, my children and I will always know that we were visited by the faeiries.

We are all connected in surprising ways.  There are times when a simple smile can change someones day, perhaps their life.  We need to remember that somehow.  Just yesterday I was at the a hospital, visiting my grandfather, I was leaning in an elevator, eyes closed, barely breathing – my body tight with worry.  The elevator doors open on a floor before my destination and in walks a slight little woman.  She was close to her 70s if I had to guess, and she was holding a small bag.  She smiled at me, and I returned the smile without thinking.  (I do that a lot actually, someone smiles and I smile back, someone winks and I wink back, not rational – but true.)

In that smile she must have seen that I was worried and so she reached out and her tiny hand clasped my forearm.  I looked down at her hand on my arm and it was a study in contrast.  My arm is thick and strong, I am not a small man, my skin has a Mediterranean tint to it, my hair dark.  Her hand was whiter than normal, the kind of white skin that the elderly get – thin skin and liver spots; but her grasp was strong and true.

“Everything will be alright son,” she said without sounding condescending.  I somehow knew she wasn’t talking about what my grandfather is going through, or the trials I face in life; somehow I heard her tell me that all of this will make sense one day.  With that the elevator stopped on the 6th floor and she got off without looking back.

I have been thinking about that little woman this morning.  She had never seen me before, will likely never lay eyes on me again, but she reached out to me nonetheless, and she affected my life in a small way, but a meaningful way.

We are all related, we are all the same energy, we need the same exact things to live.  Food, water, shelter, and a chance to live outside of suffering.  I want you to take a few moments from your life, from your busy day and night, and watch this movie.  It is only about 20 minutes long, but it is worth it.

What Would It Look Like?

I was sitting in my office today and I wondered what it is that sets me apart from you or the rest of the planet.  My name is ‘Matthew Williamson’, but how many other Matthew Williamson’s are there out there?  Google found 3,560,000 references to my name on the Internet.  They are clearly not all me.

I’m six foot four inches tall, with broad shoulders, shaved head and a tattoo; but there are millions of people my height, some of those people are broad shouldered, some of that group shave their head and then some of those even have a tattoo; so that isn’t something that sets me apart and makes me special.

I consider myself a Buddhist Christian, but I know others who count themselves the same way, so that isn’t it.  What makes me different from you?  Is it all of the things in my life added together that makes me special?  Is it my job plus my family plus my personality plus my physical attributes plus my history?  Does the sum of those things make me unique?

OK, sure it does, no other person has lived my life.  But how does that make me any different from anyone else on the street?  I don’t think it does.  Not at all.  So I am unique, but not different.  I am special, but not better, perfect but flawed.

I do know that the people in my life, the ones I know well, I find them all wonderful and complete.  There is nothing about them that they cannot fix with meditation and attention to themselves, which is all most of us really need.  My family and friends, they know I love them and that I am thinking about them during the day.  They know that I place them in high esteem in my life, and other that showing them compassion, what more can one human really offer another?

I think we are all the same.  We all want happiness, which is really just the absence of suffering.  We all want that for our loved ones and friends, and the rest of humanity if we give it a moments thought.