ETs And Our Changing Global Consciousness

A couple of months ago I flew to Adelaide where I kicked back with family, caught up on a few films and mulled over some UFO issues. One of these was a thought set in motion by listening to a presentation by Dr Michael Grosso speaking at an Near Death Eexperience conference in 1990. (in my opinion, NDE research has a lot to offer UFO research)

Anyway, Grosso spoke to the topic of how an NDE experience (but you could insert ET contact here) might change global consciousness and one that stirred my own thoughts. It's a very relevant question since contact experiences have the profound potential to alter human lives, values and consciousness, and as Grosso said "set people on a path where they cannot help but change".

Individuals can see, hear, experience "something" that makes them unable to adapt to ordinary reality which then drives them in the pursuit of a new reality. This is a process set in motion via the experiences, whatever they are, and has a fairly predictable pattern and structure to it.
(see Exceptional Human Experiences http://ehe.org/aboutehe/index.cfm)

Grosso spoke about how this process might change global consciousness. Without scientific study we can only specualte how and if this happens but one of Grossos' speculations was that when an experience occurs it affects us by touching or interacting with a latent archetypal layer of
human consciousness that links all of us. An interesting thought and explored by people like Cleve Backster in the past.

Grosso speculates that change in our society could be created by spread of a "telepathic contagion", not unlike the Hindu shaktiput and similar to the hundredth monkey effect, which immerses us in telepathic impressions such as mood and feelings, driving our society in an otherwise different direction. If true, we have no means for measuring it or to know how far it might reach.

Another point he raised was that a form of change can come about through descriptive knowledge as in the case of ET contact accounts, where we can learn of something and be affected by it without having to experience it ourselves. This is an important but weaker form of influence or change but has the potential for change nevertheless. This sort of change can never be accurately measured, if at all, since it's difficult to know how people might have been changed by the information.

It's obvious a more dramatic change can be brought about through direct experience and perhaps those who report ET experiences become the anchors for change, and through who the telepathic contagion is initially emitted.

Experience has the potential to change us and I am always fascinated how that happens. What is even more fascinating for me is how people flourish from a disturbing experience such as some accounts reported by abductees. I guess our consciousness could be described as having a homeopathic response to the situation. Maybe that's too simple but I think it's an apt analagy.

Even the anticipation of something can bring about changes within us. A person who has just been diagnosed with a fatal disease can find that suddenly things in life take on a fresh new perspective where every little object glows with beauty and importance.

Maybe for me the most significant thought raised by Grosso was the effect of anticipation and how it changes us. There seems to be a new image of reality emerging driven by reports of ET contact and it's highly likely that the anticipation of ET contact will be having it's own yet subtle effect on all of us. Just look at the change in statements from scientists about ET life over the last 15 years. The thought that we are alone in the universe is slowly but consistently being replaced in the public mind with the notion that we are far from alone in the universe. I'm not sure what effect this new image is having on us but I feel sure it will be having one. Where it will take us will be interesting to discover.

What Ufology Has Come To Mean To Me

Like many people, when I was first snagged by Ufology I mulled over the usual questions like, “who are the ETs and where did they come from?” Then those questions progressed to, “what can I learn about ET civilizations by reading close encounter reports”. Finally my questions evolved toward wanting to know how ET societies survived themselves and progressed towards a more advanced way of existence than where we are in our current progress here on Earth.

I became a scrounger, looking for crumbs of insight that would shine the light on the steps between the crevices of failure and extinction, and success and evolution, thereby taking humanity on it’s greatest quest to overcome itself. For me Ufology is no longer about ETs but about human progress. What we can glean from contact accounts provides us with a model for our future and success as a cosmic society. However it’s a challenge to bring this idea to UFO researchers who seem to be hell bent on stalling Ufology’s progress, calling for “evidence”, scientific input and government acknowledgement before they will do what they know is right. If there were no ETs, no spaceships, no sightings etc, we still know that at some stage “we”, both individually and collectively, are going to have to make some major decisions about our current direction, values, and beliefs, particularly those that have expired past their use by date. The need for change which is the antidote for our sick society, is highlighted by contactee accounts and this might well be the subconscious reason for their fierce derision and dismissal.

If we study close encounter reports we learn that some ET societies are far more advanced than we could ever imagine. ET lifestyles have progressed past war, disease, the need for religion and monetary systems, areas of Earth society that are heavily invested in emotionally and financially. The ET message is simple, change your ways or perish and the inference is that ETs have witnessed many other societies on our current path that have ended in destruction.

There are many areas of our current lifestyle that are highlighted by ETs in order to cause us to question the validity of our choices. For example, we have created religious organizations whose teachings we have never lived up to and have in general, failed to save us from our destructive creations. In fact, Earth religions have been responsible for some of the worst wars and greatest crimes in history. ET concepts point us towards notions of Man as creator on every plane of consciousness and therefore responsible for all actions and subsequent effects. This challenges our sense of choice and responsibility in all spheres of existence.

ETs also present a way to run societies without the need for political parties and governments guiding our hearts to value choices that only have constructive input to the running of our planet. Extend this concept and you have a self-regulating movement of people who work towards making the best choices always. This may be foreign to our way of thinking but on a smaller scale you can liken it to a group of friends who want to push a vehicle out of a boggy patch of road. They work together to achieve a common goal through cooperation because in the end they will all win when they succeed in getting the vehicle out of the bog, and no one will have to walk home. Self-interest and cooperation is the incentive here, not government.

ETs also offer words of advice about personal health and ways to extend our lifespan. Although not as specific as we might hope, their concept of longevity is more closely linked to consciousness than what we eat. That is not to say that food choices don’t play a part in physical health, and in some cases the choice is to be vegetarian. However, this seems to be a choice about conscience and reverence for all life rather than detrimental impacts on the physical body.

Education is an important factor in ET society too, but not as we understand it. The focus is on developing natural gifts and interests that pertain to the individual rather than teaching the same knowledge to every person. The former style of education diffuses and suppresses personal talents while the latter enhances them. The focus is also on exploration of other worlds and systems, whether they be ecological, social, psychological, geological importance etc, and again depend on personal interest and natural talent.

These are just a sample of areas within our lifestyle that might be challenged by ET concepts and possibly reflect areas of Earth societies that need to be reevaluated. It has become crystal clear, at least to me, that placing contactee accounts under a magnifying glass reveals our own shortcomings and brings us face to face with the need to make better choices. ETs aren’t going to save us from ourselves, they just ask us to consider what future we really want.

Starry Starry Night

If you’ve ever listened to Don Maclean’s song Starry Starry Night you could be forgiven for thinking that it was dedicated to the UFO subject.

“Now I understand what you tried to say to me, and how you suffered for your sanity…..”
I have a particular interest in the contactee era of the 50s and 60s and I felt the words to the song were so relevant for the contactees personal mission to educate the world that we are not alone in the universe, in fact, we are far from it.

The contactees probably did suffer deeply for their sanity and felt very alone in their plight. The ostracism, ridicule, sense of abandonment, the huge sense of personal responsibility to pass on a message of such profound importance, the frustration of having experienced something that words could not truly describe, the daunting challenge to bridge the gap to people from where they themselves had been in their previous understanding to where they were now in an expanded state of knowing, the loss of personal standing among friends and family, and the downright heartache from feeling they had sacrificed their lives only to be shunned by those who should have truly wanted to understand what they had to offer, the UFO community.

“They did not listen they did not know how, perhaps they’re listening now.”
It’s true, the UFO community did not listen to the contactees with the necessary willingness to make an accurate assessment of their contacts. If our mindset is closed against a body of information we miss the nuances, the writing between the lines and misunderstand what is left. That’s what is consistently demonstrated by people who deride the contactees. They become the skeptics that they themselves vilify and in turn close an important avenue of research.

“Now I think I know what you tried to say to me”
In researchers defence, it took me years to understand what the contactees spoke back to me from the many books I’ve devoured and studied, and they’re still talking. Opening my mind to their experiences long enough for me to give them a fair hearing was not an easy task. There were times when I threw their books back on the shelf too, purely because I couldn’t be bothered with the whole frustrating, hair pulling, confusing subject. It was time consuming and hard work and I had a life to live. But after a while the same frustration, confusion and ostracism reached out at me through the hundreds of people I interviewed who reported close encounter experiences over the years, and eventually I gained an insight and appreciation of what the contactees went through. That helped me to help others who live similar lives on the rim of society.

“And how you tried to set them free”
The contactees tried very hard to set us free from our closed mindsets and subconscious fears about ET contact. It seemed they were quite successful with the general public who bought their books endlessly, but not so with UFO researchers. The idea that anything or anyone who vaguely resembled a human being coming from outer space seemed utterly absurd to them. They typically followed the “scientific” line that each living organism is a product of their environment so they expected great divergence in anything from other planets. There seemed to be no room in their thinking that we might be descendents of human space-dwelling societies that had left earth millennia ago. This was just a bit over the fence. Yet this type of fixed mindset was what contactees had to face every day from UFO researchers wherever they went.

“They would not listen, they’re not listening still”
Recently I’ve come to appreciate the huge chasm that exists in the UFO community and the taboo area of contactees. Many modern day researchers are as stubborn as they ever were and their minds seem to have rusted shut. I don’t understand it. The contactees are a group of people who offer us information about ET civilizations yet researchers want to close that door good and tight. I can only think that there might just be something in the whole professional debunking scenario after all or else there is a collective mindset that is hell bent on shooting itself in the foot and they have come to call the UFO community home.

“Perhaps they never will……”
Maybe most UFO researchers will never listen to the contactees voices echoing from the past, but maybe not all of them have to. The contactees are dead and gone but the next generation who have the ears to listen, the eyes to see and the heart that answers their call are here now. Perhaps it’s time we did so.

UFO Researchers As Social Artists

Like others, I've been in the privileged position over the years of hearing thousands of first hand reports of UFO sightings and close encounters. Official sources have heard them too but for whatever reason have turned their backs on these witnesses leaving them to cope alone.

That leaves a handful of UFO researchers to struggle with lending support to thousands of people every year who can have difficulties with such life changing events. It adds another dimension to the researchers role that many were probably not aware of when they first ventured through the “UFO gate”. Nevertheless, here we are redefining what it means to be a researcher.

Sometimes we have to cope with being drawn into the drama of soul evolution for people who begin their UFO journey, for some “a dark night of the soul” experience for sure, coloured with a touch of the absurd. Many researchers have had no formal training in handling people who undergo this process let alone cope with the buttons it pushes in our own psyche?

Yes, we can be caught uncertain, unprepared and perhaps not fully realising what’s happening right in front of the collective nose on our face. Many of us are trying to figure out what’s really happening and understand the momentous process of societal evolution that is occurring from the peppering of close encounter experiences throughout our civilization.

Whether we like it or not, for many the role of UFO researcher has changed into that of a social artist. This means we can be required to provide guidance for individuals undergoing changing paradigms, values, belief systems and myths as they move into a new version of their lives.

Regardless of our state of preparedness we don’t seem to have the luxury of avoiding the part we are to play, not if we listen to our hearts anyway. The call has gone out and each of us has to answer it in our own way.

Creating The Vision

“Like most genuine social movements, it defies easy definition. The borders are fuzzy, and the participants are all too diverse and changing to be pinned down by a set of words. This movement compounds these problems by the unusually broad scope of topics it addresses, as well as its deep resistance to being limited by labels and boundaries.” – A description of the Sustainability movement.

Recently on the UFO Updates list the question of how ufology might make a collective move forward has been raised. I guess people will have their own theories and I have mine. From my perspective, I believe the biggest reason there is a lack of unification in ufology, therefore no seeming move towards collective change, is because the UFO community holds no collective vision of what it is about. For some it’s about exploring the idea that ET life might exist in the universe, while for others that life already exists and they want to understand what that may mean.

For a cause to become a force for change it must hold a clear vision, a set of values and a strategy for people to focus on. If these don’t exist then logically there is no point of focus, no avenue for commonality to emerge and no growing power to move in any direction on a large scale. It's a bit like firing arrows wildly into the air with no target. Since Ufology is defined very differently by individuals I'm asking myself if it is even realistic to request or expect a shared vision?

I know some will rebut this idea with suggestions of egos being too big and getting in the way therefore the UFO community will never pull together, it's just too much of an ask etc. etc. Upsets due to the varying degrees of individual personal development is a challenge in any community whether it be the scientific community, religious groups, in education, sports etc. Human dynamics are exactly the same whatever living space you pass time in, so in that respect the UFO community is no different. But to say this is the reason why the UFO community does not make any movement forward misses the mark and fails to approach the crux of the challenge – lack of vision, values and strategy.

When a vision of the heart, mind or soul is shared and focused on by a group a lot can be achieved but this needs to be consistently supported via a process. This process involves social dialogue where community members engage in respectful discussions where they are open to learning from one another. This dialogue starts where we are at about our current stories and issues, and the concerns or perspectives that they raise. Then we move on to envisioning a new society/civilization that has incorporated those stories thereby creating a new perspective and consciousness born from the UFO subject. We then end with our personal contributions to transforming the subject, and inevitably ourselves and society.

What seems to be currently happening in the UFO community is that it is stuck in the first stage of this social dialogue, discussing current issues and stories over and over. It’s time to move to the second step of envisioning a society where these have been incorporated. This is a great challenge and tends to divide the UFO community because some are not ready to move to step 2, still deciding if ET life is a fact or a figment of people’s imagination. What we need to remember is there are forces that don’t want step 2 to be taken, and whether their source is from various institutions, of a metaphysical nature or the fear in mankinds psyche makes little difference.

But for those who are willing to take step 2 its time to learn about society and how change happens, question myths and assumptions both mainstream and our own, and seek to understand this from a planetary perspective as well as locally. We need to look at the world systematically and break it down to understand cause and effect and take an historical and future oriented view on change and development towards the emergence of a cosmic society complete with ETs.

In the middle of all this we need to understand that our current society is breaking down and a new civilization is evolving that will require strategies we haven’t even thought of yet. Running parallel to this process we need to use approaches that help those in the UFO community generate creative ideas and possibilities, mining it for the richness of it’s diverse ideas and perspectives rather than letting them become a dividing factor.

It is imperative that the UFO community creates a shared vision because any society that lacks this will stagnate and die out while those with a positive vision prove to be quite successful and retain a healthy longevity. If the UFO community can create a shared vision it will no longer matter if we have different perspectives because the vision will help us rise above our differences while even possibly learning to appreciate them.

In the end, the UFO movement must embody the values of the new culture that is being born from it. This new culture is one that has accepted that we are not alone in the universe and the flow on effect this awareness will bring. We are at the point where we need to change our focus and approach to this subject and move on to integrating it within our psyche and our lifestyle. We need to embody its vision, live its values and employ strategies that will bring about the change we would like to see. Only then will we see a real movement in the true sense of the word.

Is Enough Enough?

For a long time now I, like many others, have sensed that Ufology is falling short of it’s potential. Researchers have meticulously gathered UFO sighting reports, close encounter reports, official UFO records and whistleblower evidence. We have it all and a mountain of it too, but despite that we feel like the mountain isn’t moving the UFO subject forward in a way that gets us past the confirmation that we are not alone in the universe. Is that it we ask? We seem to have run into a brick wall not knowing where to go with that knowledge next. We can have small insights from this knowledge but in general we feel stuck. Yet uncannily we sense that we’re standing in a pool of water looking for somewhere else to drink knowing that we already have many answers buried in the mountain we’re sitting on. It’s a very common intuition.

We moan – how much information gathering do we need before we get somewhere with this subject?

What we don’t realise is that the repetition of gathering all this evidence does actually serve a purpose. by allowing us to go deep with it. Just like the art student who draws a hand, a face, a tree or a bird over and over, gradually her consciousness changes while doing so. Similarly long term meditators repeat their daily meditation practice always coming back to the basics of breath and stillness, again and again realizing they haven’t yet experienced it completely.

Likewise, the practice of gathering UFO evidence allows our perception and recognition of something profound deepen within us via steady, attentive repetition.
This repetition has a certain cunning forcing us to bide a while allowing the passage of time so gained to alter us. It affords us the time to develop our resilience that will stand us fast to face the change our subconscious is about to reveal. It helps us to move through change so our world will not crumble on the other side of it. Preparing for a new world model where humanity will truly regard itself as no longer being alone in the universe requires immense internal preparation, the amount we can only guess. If we are to move beyond our current world view into another where our view may no longer cohere, a certain robustness of the psyche will be necessary to accept the experience and only when we are utterly ready for it will it come.

Pass The Zen Please

When I was a young girl I would look at the many beautiful stars in the sky and wonder if there was someone in outer space on another world looking back towards Earth wondering the same thing. I guess that was my first introduction to the world of Ufology. Little did I know then that those early musings would take me on a journey into a rather strange, if not curious and interesting life.

It took me 30 years to return to my original destination, after being sidetracked by the ambitions of western society. Although I will never regret having those ambitions it has only been since I began my UFO trek that I have come to realise how unusual and complex humans truly are and what cosmic potentials still await us.

Although the world of Ufology has taken me on many mental trips to the stars and along Earthly avenues where I have made connections with thousands of people that I would not otherwise had the privilege of knowing, it has also taken me on an inner voyage that has plunged me into a shamanic-like initiation where I’ve been challenged to let go of preconceived ideas, transcend my own ego and expand my consciousness. I haven’t been too successful in any of these areas so for me the journey still continues, but I have come to appreciate the marvellous tool for personal development that UFO research can be.

There have been some pay offs on this UFO journey and at times I have been able to look at life through extraterrestrial eyes giving me a greater understanding of how humanity can exist in a more profound and wholistic way. This ET perspective has also helped me raise my tolerance level, even if only a fraction, and I can now feel compassion for those in the world that fail to pay attention to the UFO subject and our cosmic birthright rather than be angry and frustrated by their inattention. It’s not humanity’s fault after all that we have evolved a psyche that serves to protect us through denial and conditioning.

I’ve also been able to gain glimpses into more developed ET societies and how they lay down a model for our own world, a “fast track for dummies” to human evolution if you like, if only we’d learn to read the instructions. Extraterrestrial perspectives of Earth as a kindergarten ruled by bullies, and conquests made through fear and lack of reaching for the stuff we’re truly made of, are far closer to the truth than I’d like. ET perspectives cause us to look into our darkness as well as our light and this is truly the Zen way, for it’s in our darkness and at our weakest that humanity often finds it’s spirit, it’s light. It’s obvious after all that where spirit and light seem most absent and most needed is where they should be expected to show up, isn’t it?

While my unseen UFO life runs beneath the surface like an underground water course I am always very aware of it. Every day it becomes a more dominant aspect of myself where I feel far more comfortable and enthusiastic about walking it’s path. It pops up daily like the seedlings that somehow manage to find anchor in my concrete garden path, surprising me with it’s will to emerge.

Yes, I have a secret UFO life that only my peers know about while the rest of the world remains oblivious to it’s existence and I grapple with my own alien within too. Zen helps me explore that part of me by bringing my outer exploration of the UFO subject inwards, as only Zen can. Once the inner journey is begun the world we know fast disappears and we can’t go back, but in this new world we can explore the interior realm of our consciousness and map out how the acceptance of a universe abundant with ET life can create new territories in our thinking.

However, the UFO path does have it’s down side too and can ostracise us from our human tribe so we can come to feel like the alien. We go about our daily business seeming to be like everybody else but inside we are quite aware of the yawning gap between ourselves and others who have never given the UFO subject a second thought. We’re the same, yet different, but funnily enough I wouldn’t have it any other way. If I were to say it in Zen fashion it would be like a descent into night while loving the dark, and the courage with which we bear the darkness frees others from having to carry it for us.