Over the course of the last few Point of Convergence episodes, we’ve been exploring how the complexity, nuance—and sometimes downright inconvenient nature—of the UFO Phenomenon data, ultimately serves to invite us into a series of questions that not only inform our inquiry into our place in the cosmos—in other words, are we alone or not—but also—and more importantly—even deeper questions, about who we ultimately are, and what the nature of this—our shared experience of what we call “reality”—is actually all about.

In today’s episode we’re going to delve into the experiences of one particular abductee/contactee, in order to observe her process of trying to understand and ultimately integrate a lifetime of anomalous encounters with apparent NHI—non-human intelligences. We’re also going to see that deep soul searching unfolding in ongoing dialogue with a therapist particularly well-equipped for this kind of work—a therapist employing a therapeutic approach involving an overlap with the role of a traditional shaman, further shaping those perspectives through the lens of depth psychology.

One reason—among many reasons—why the shamanically-informed perspective can be particularly helpful here, is that it offers a richly nuanced understanding of the potentially transformative role of trauma in—not just these particular anomalous encounters—but in all aspects of human life; ultimately seeing it as a potent gateway to deeper aspects of the self. By now we’re all very familiar with the discombobulating nature of these experiences. It’s a staple of the anomalous encounter, and that’s true whether the event is ultimately understood as being positive, negative or neutral by the experiencer themselves. All that is to say, trauma, to one extent or another, is pretty much a given here.

Considering our ongoing inquiry on Point of Convergence into the intersection between the UFO Phenomenon and what one might call spiritual transformation, a key question emerges: does trauma end up being incidentally used as a portal for non-dual awakening, or is it deliberately brought about to facilitate that process? In other words, is the trauma incidental, or intentional, in service of the desired outcome? What does the body of data suggest is actually going on here? These are precisely the prickly yet particularly pertinent matters that we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 116th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

For those who’ve been working doggedly to see the matter of the UFO Phenomenon grounded in the awareness of the general public, the focus has long been on political engagement. That is to say, the aim has been to have the government disclose what it knows about these mysterious flying objects and the occupants who pilot them. Beyond the exposing of the details of the secrets themselves, the sense has been that only an official announcement from a podium will be sufficient to move this topic solidly into civilization-wide acceptance.

That said, what has—paradoxically—worked in opposition to that goal, has been the nature of the data themselves. Said more plainly, the issue often comes down to the high strangeness that comes part and parcel with people’s interactions with the anomalous phenomena. Simply put, these “inconvenient details” stretch credulity, and thus work against the hope of seeing official acknowledgement followed by societal engagement.

Here though, we should offer a clarifying qualifier. These elements of high strangeness—often bordering on apparent absurdity— only stretch credulity in Western circles. In other contemporaneous societies, as well as in Shamanic and indigenous societies of the past, these elements aren’t at all objectionable. They are, in fact, welcomed within a much more multidimensional model of relational reality.

Even as some disclosure advocates work to sanitize some of the data—so that the overarching Phenomena has a better chance of seeing official acknowledgment and engagement—people within Western society continue to experience the phenomena themselves; in all their inconvenient, paradigm-shattering, discombobulating glory. And this is resulting in what one might call a revolution of sorts, but one bubbling up from below, rather than descending from on high.

This of course includes—not just highly strange UFOs—but every experiential element that refuses to play by the rules of reductionistic materialism. Here I’m also speaking of elements such as synchronicities, altered states, psi phenomena, etc.. Because these elements are being both experienced and documented, they are playing a transformative, grassroots role in steering Western perspectives along more shamanic lines, even without acknowledgment from the ivory towers of our civilization.

What some particularly astute observers have asked is: is this perhaps by design? Is this an end-goal of the enterprise itself, to drop bread crumbs along the way so that a wayward civilization is able to find its way back into a more balanced understanding of its place within the interactive whole? This is a compelling argument; one deserving of a closer examination of just what’s involved. And that’s precisely what we’ll endeavor to do in this the 116th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

Since the dawn of what has come to be colloquially referred to as the modern UFO Phenomenon, two very divergent aspects have emerged to create a situation that appears—on the face of it—utterly irreconcilable. On the one hand, this phenomenon is supported by evidence gathered in what we call “the real world”, that is to say “physical reality”. This evidence includes radar returns, electromagnetic effects, soil traces, multiple, independent witness accounts, biological effects on witnesses, photographic and video evidence, and more.

On the other hand, the testimony of those who have apparently interacted with this Phenomenon suggests an experience that defies our very understanding of what can be “real”. These elements include: precognition of future events, memories from lifetimes beyond this one—including as forms not exclusively human—the encountering of spaces that seem much larger from within than without, movement through the environment sometimes with the body, and sometimes without, etc.

Another key component that arises not just in the Contact phenomenon, but also in near-death experiences, is the uncanny sense that what we call “the real world” is somehow less “real” than the modes of existence or states of being in which these so-called “non-ordinary” experiences occur. And let us be clear: if we are to take these accounts at face-value, it would appear that what we have long referred to as “the real world” is actually subsidiary to one or more subsuming realms, and that even what we refer to as “the self” is actually a truncated and fractional expression of a much more dynamic, multifaceted identity that exists outside of spacetime altogether.

Speaking of space and time, also particularly pertinent here is the paradoxical and perplexing way that certain notions expressed in what are referred to as the archetypes, and in astrology, seem to comport—with a confounding degree of precision—with the unfolding of our actual experience of reality, giving rise to prickly questions about determinism and free will. Indeed, these apparently pre-existing patterns of manifestation—that point to an underlying symbolic geometry—call into question the very naturalistic assumptions that are at the core of physicalism, the present dominant paradigm widely ascribed to within Western civilization.

All of this so-called “high strangeness” converges to point to a deeper truth that is truly astonishing: namely that the experiences of our lives are not arising either as real or symbolic (as in our long-standing distinction between the reality of waking vs. dream states), but rather as—simultaneously—both. And yes, not surprisingly, this has profound implications regarding the nature of the self, and the nature of existence. These are precisely the paradigm-shattering, mind-expanding matters that we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 115th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

Many a UFO enthusiast, researcher, and activist has experienced frustration at the slow pace of ufological uptake in mainstream society. Truth be told, however, while this topic has indeed struggled to gain traction in the mainstream, this is not just because of the success of the dedicated 80-year-long cover-up and disinformation campaign run by elite elements of the U.S. government. It’s also because the activity of the UFO Phenomenon itself stretches the bounds of expectation, and is sometimes even self-negating in nature.

Let’s stop and consider an important point here. To be clear, human beings don’t simply accept things as they arise, prima facie. These data—that is to say, all phenomenological experiences—are first passed through a filter of interpretation. And if the phenomena being considered don’t match some aspect of a pre-existing map, they’re often blocked altogether, or at the very least, placed in some black box of “things to consider later when there’s more evidence.”

In the instance of this last case, however, the irony is that what counts as “more evidence” is data that fits within the original interpretation framework—which is exactly why the data was put in a black box to begin with—because it didn’t! And so we end up in a paradoxical logic trap. No matter how much data of this sort accumulates, it will never meet this arbitrary threshold. This is precisely why too much wooden adherence to our model of reality gets in the way of us actually correctly tracking and understanding reality.

Astute observers have recognized that this may actually point to a scheme being employed by the intelligences behind these phenomena, effectively allowing them to continue to operate with impunity at the fringes of human awareness, without their activity ever being reckoned with on some official, collective level. Many have argued that this is a sign of deception on the part of these non-human intelligences. These people often go a step further, stating that this deception points squarely towards a nefarious and malevolent NHI agenda.

It’s important to stop and ask, though, is this true? Should we be so quick to make these logical leaps? And, furthermore—and perhaps even more to the point—is it possible that the very questions we’re asking—framed within binary thinking—might be leading us further astray? Indeed, what if the unquestioned axioms of the dominant Western paradigm make it the least likely to apprehend the overarching reality here? These are the very complex but consequential questions we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 114th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

As our society begins to host dinner-table conversations around the reality of non-human intelligences co-occupying our space here on and around planet Earth, certain assumptions are inevitably being applied before even a single word is spoken. On previous episodes of this podcast we’ve discussed how the notion that these beings are extraterrestrials, that is to say – “space aliens” – has been one of the most frequent assumptions applied.

Even today, that continues to be the case, because the other origin hypotheses that had been floated; namely interdimensional, extradimensional/celestial, cryptoterrestrial, ultraterrestrial, extratempestrial, etc, are really only being bandied about within the dedicated ufological community. We (those who are part of that community, that is) know, of course, that it is the data themselves that lead people to these other possibilities; but Joe and Jane Public just are not there yet. They’re still parsing along the lines of the headline grabbing: “we’re not alone, and they’re here!”

As it turns out, though, that pre-assigned notion as to origins is just one of a whole host of assumptions regularly being applied to this matter of the UFO Phenomenon. And again, for those of us intimately familiar with this topic, we know full well that the many of the other assumptions being applied are equally as either questionable, or fully outdated, in light of the decades–and many would argue, even centuries or even millennia-long–data at our disposal.

While those who’ve been in this field the longest–the true “lifers”–if you will, are no doubt cheering the entrance of mainstream academia into the mix in recent years, I would caution that this segment of our society is bringing its own set of pre-existing assumptions to the table as well.

And, again, some of those assumptions just don’t play well with this data. And in our race for conventional recognition, we should be careful to not sell the process short, because academia, too, will have its understanding stretched (to say the very least) by the nature of this data.

This same is true for religious adherents of one form or another. The fact that this data does seem to include what we might call “spiritual overtones” often leads this religiously-affiliated segment of our civilization to the conclusion that this puts the UFO Phenomenon data firmly in their worldview camp, leading them to gleefully proclaim that this shows that they’ve been “right all along”. In both these cases (for those academically and/or religiously inclined), the problem arises in their assumption that the interpretive grid they have at their disposal is generally sufficient to make sense of this anomalous data, and that all they need to do now is slot various data points into various categories of pre-agreed meaning.

Simply put, that will not work. I tend to agree with Peter Levenda’s contention here, suggesting that what this data really asks us to do is consider our reality models from the perspective of the Phenomenon, and not the other way around. The question then becomes: as we do this, just how far afield will this take us? And what elements of our various pre-existing conceptual models will be left standing when we’re done?

And what alternatives might we tentatively put in their place? And these are precisely the issues we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 108th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

While modern ufology has been a component of our cultural zeitgeist for decades and decades now, during much of that time it has generally been seen as a matter for astrophysicists and aviation experts. While ground-breaking researchers such as Jacques Vallee, John Keel and J. Allen Hynek, as early as the 1970s, suggested the anomalous and highly strange nature of the data takes us well beyond that kind of conventional inquiry, even today, the mainstream still tends to think of UFOs (now monikered as UAP) and NHI – the fancy new name for what we use to call “aliens”, as involving interstellar travelers arriving at Earth in sophisticated spacecraft.

For many, especially in still physicalist-centric Western civilization, this kind of enterprise represents, at least in potentia, a new kind of contact, and a new possibility for communication that takes us beyond what we’ve been limited to amongst our own species over the milenia. But, here again, the data – when one actually looks squarely into them – take us well beyond that notion. And that’s because – contact – and specifically contact with apparently non-human and non-conventionally human intelligences – has supposedly already been happening. The varieties of contact technologies or modalities that have meditated this non-ordinary kind of communication include mediumship/channeling, shamanic journeying, CE-5/HICE, dreams, psychedelics, and even fever states.

In other words, the issue seems to be not one of needing to wait for interstellar travelers to arrive to finally give us this opportunity, for it’s been available to us all along, with some cultures and people groups being more privy to this fact than others. Interestingly, these various modalities of contact and communication also seem to be possible regardless of what would seem to be the expected language and even species-specific differences. And that’s because mind-to-mind communication, known in parapsychological circles as telepathy, seems to be the general rule rather than the exception in these endeavors, thus bypassing the need for translation of written and spoken languages altogether.

But of course, these startling revelations raise further questions: if the issue is not one of needing to wait for interstellar travelers to arrive via superliminal (that is, faster than light) travel, then how exactly is this contact and communication happening? Have they been here – in our so-called “physical” space – all along? Or does the nature of this contact suggest space, and for that matter, time, is simply not what we’ve long assumed? How is it that these various contact technologies are able to connect us with alternative forms of sophisticated sentience, and what do they have in common that makes them effective? These are the captivating and consequential matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 105th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.