One of the most enjoyable aspects of attending any conference, symposium, meeting, etc., is the networking that gets done in the halls and at the bar in the evening. The October 2012 Paradigm Symposium was no exception. This was the first of these conferences and based upon the popularity of this one, I imagine there will be many more. It was a gathering of like-minded people, minds open to the idea that we are being visited. Something from out there is visiting us, and has been here for a long time. I suspect that most of the people at the symposium had experienced their fair share of encounters with the unexplained, and at least half had likely had at least one UFO close encounter. Thus, it was no surprise that I heard quite a few stories of encounters.
I spent a chunk of time (and money) in the vendor room, looking at books, CDs, DVDs, etc. And in the process, I got to talking with quite a few people there. It turns out I had corresponded with a few of them by e-mail over the last few years. A few others remembered my name from this newsletter, a radio broadcast, a past symposium, etc. So more than once, I ended up talking with someone unexpectedly, and usually the person had a fascinating story to tell.
Later that evening, after Linda Moulton Howe's talk, I ended up conversing with a few of these same experiencers. Several had had classic abductions, yet most also described non-abduction contact experiences and information downloads. All of them had grown up with psychic abilities, several of them sensitive enough to do readings professionally. Most had family histories of strong psychic abilities - mother, grandmother, etc. Several had children who were psychic, empathic, etc., classic indigo children.
While meeting experiencers was a common occurrence over the weekend, I did note one unusual thing this time - something I had not seen before this. Most of the experiencers I talked with seemed more at home with the phenomenon in their lives. While still carrying the burden of mystery, and in some cases fear, the degree of acceptance I sensed was remarkable.
Perhaps it was the comfort level of the social setting. It was safe to talk in this group. There was no danger of ridicule here. Yet in some of the people I talked with, I sensed a stronger degree of resolution, extending beyond the safety of this group. Many of them had been aware of their unique life experiences for a long time. Many had already explored them and now had reached some degree of integration.
The overall result was that a growing core of experiencers appears to be increasingly comfortable with who they are. They are becoming a Cosmic Bridge between the normal work-a-day world and the world of the extraordinary. I suspect that as others become aware of their experiences, or as more people begin to have overt sightings and/or encounters, this aware core will continue to grow. And perhaps they can begin to provide a level of comfort to those who remain isolated, alone and afraid.
The conversations in the bar frequently make up the highlight of a conference and this one was no exception. And on this particular evening, it was neat to see so many people together with so many interesting stories to tell. This was a unique group of sympathetic, like minded people, a rare, delightful - and safe - gathering of experiencers.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Monday, October 22, 2012
Ancient aliens, quantum holograms, and another day on Earth
It's a warm fall day and after a weekend in the stratosphere, now I'm home raking leaves and taking care of business-related stuff (including this blog entry). It's another day on Earth.
As I write this article, it is the first day after the Paradigm conference. The last few days have been filled with talks, presentations, panel discussions and perhaps most important, conversations in the bar on the topic of the weekend - the unexplained, both ancient and modern. I met a lot of researchers and writers working in the areas of the paranormal, archaeology, UFO studies and ET contact. This was a weekend where I was among my own. There was little need to justify my interest in the extraordinary - does this stuff exist, is it real, etc. Instead the focus was on what does it mean, how long has it been with us, and what does it imply for our future.
To be fair, I did hear a lot of things I didn't believe. But the beauty of events like this is that you can try on ideas, see if they square with your own discernment, and then move on to another. In each case, the result is a lot of provocative questions - and perhaps new ideas.
The first talk was on Thursday evening, put on by Linda Moulton Howe. She always puts on a good talk, and this time was no exception. I had heard some of the material she presented at the MUFON conference in 2011. But there was a lot of new information within it, as well. The most interesting of this was on the ruins of Gobekli Tepe, in Turkey.
I'm not an archaeology expert, so I don't have a lot of ability to evaluate what I heard as would an expert in the field. Yet apparently, the ruins were from over 12,000 years ago. This flies in the face of the idea that civilization began only 5000 years (or so) ago. In addition, the ruins were apparently deliberately buried, for reasons unknown. Only a small amount of the area has been excavated, but apparently, it is a large ceremonial site.
At that time, Earth was still in the ice age. The Mediterranean seabed was dry and the area (now desert) was a temperate and fertile. It would have made a good location for a civilization. She build a good case for the idea that this was part of an earlier cycle of civilization, one that somehow came to a big crashing halt some time around 10 to 12 thousand years ago.
Linda does a great job of tying together a lot of rather disparate topics into one bundle of mystery. In this case, she related a number of previous topics (such as the self-activating technology she talked about in 2011) with paleoarchaeology sites. She talked more about the photos of dragonfly drones, observed extensively in about 2007, or so (several photo analysts have since declared the photos to be fakes using photoshop). She related this to the CARET documents, purportedly leaked documents describing eforts to replicate and commercialize alien technology.
The biggest piece of information, at least for me, was the idea, in which a set of symbols seemed to comprise some form "software" that would execute on its own, without the need of a computer to execute it. According to "Isaac" the pseudonym of the person who apparently leaked the documents to Linda, it executed when exposed to some type of field - perhaps a consciousness/quantum field, perhaps an EM field, etc. (use your imagination). At first, the thought ran square into my discernment filter - leaving me cold until a bit later when I got a chance to think about it a bit more. Then I began to wonder - could this be similar to the budding technology of 3D printing, where they can manufacture parts directly using 3D imaging? The idea was intriguing.
Usually, at conferences, the real science gets done at the bar, often after a few glasses of wine, and Thursday evening was no exception. I ended up talking with Linda and a couple of other people about this idea. What if, rather than being some kind of executable "software" as we would think of it, the symbols formed a kind of holographic encoding. Apparently, the symbols were mounted on a seemingly-inert substrate, something like glass or crystal. So what if the symbols, when exposed to some kind of field, would generate a 3D hologram within the material. Like a 3D printer, the projected image would contain information that would cause the material to change its properties in a way that would make it functional.
There are plenty of examples of material changing in response to fields, including lenses that darken when exposed to sunlight and LCDs, in which the material changes properties in response to an electric field. Also, integrated circuit technology such as the gate array, does a similar thing, taking on functional properties based upon information input. So the idea of a holographically encoded field that, when decoded using some type of reference beam or field, contains functional information causing an otherwise inert material to take on functional properties, might not be as far fetched as it seems. There is a lot of work to be done there. And I'm betting that in some R&D lab in some solid state electronics company, somewhere, this very thing is being done.
But how does this relate to paleo-archaeology and the ruins of Gobekli Tepe? To me, that was a bit of a stretch. She stated there were a number of symbols that loosely matched those shown in the CARET documents. Thus, she speculated that perhaps there was a similar function associated (in some way) with the ruins. Indeed, from a larger perspective such as a satellite view, the ruins appear to have a symbolic nature to them. So she speculates that perhaps the site, itself, has some type of functionality. While interesting, I found this a bit of a stretch - yet this was a weekend for stretches - and questions.
I thought Linda's was probably the best of the talks, but others were intensely fascinating. Most of the talks were on closely related topics along the ancient-aliens theme. This included presentations by Georgio Tsoukalos, Eric Von Daniken, and several more. There were a lot of references to Zachsaria Sitchin's writings and the idea that most religions were, at least in part, influenced by ET contact.
The upshot of the collected talks at the symposium was that we are not alone. We never have been alone. We have been visited all along. Visitation has left its mark on our history as well as on the present. Whether you believe any particular assertion, or even whether you accept any of the idea of paleo-archaeology, ancient ET contact, etc., each gives us food for thought. There are a number of fascinating archaeology anomalies coming to light, and they challenge our present models of human history.
As we got into the final day or two of the conference, I overheard a couple of people describing feelings of loss, primarily over the notion that after Sunday, they were going to have to return home to the same old thing. It's difficult to get into the daily routine after having spent the weekend on topics like human history, Armageddon prophecy, alien contact, etc. The quarterly sales report doesn't seem very fascinating. It's hard to get back into calculating store inventory, or whatever other work-a-day elements one's life might contain. Yet Sunday finally ended, and I drove home (only a few miles), as quite a few others caught airplanes (or began long drives) back to their respective homes.
It was time to return from a world of ET contact, ancient aliens and quantum holograms to another day on Earth.
As I write this article, it is the first day after the Paradigm conference. The last few days have been filled with talks, presentations, panel discussions and perhaps most important, conversations in the bar on the topic of the weekend - the unexplained, both ancient and modern. I met a lot of researchers and writers working in the areas of the paranormal, archaeology, UFO studies and ET contact. This was a weekend where I was among my own. There was little need to justify my interest in the extraordinary - does this stuff exist, is it real, etc. Instead the focus was on what does it mean, how long has it been with us, and what does it imply for our future.
To be fair, I did hear a lot of things I didn't believe. But the beauty of events like this is that you can try on ideas, see if they square with your own discernment, and then move on to another. In each case, the result is a lot of provocative questions - and perhaps new ideas.
The first talk was on Thursday evening, put on by Linda Moulton Howe. She always puts on a good talk, and this time was no exception. I had heard some of the material she presented at the MUFON conference in 2011. But there was a lot of new information within it, as well. The most interesting of this was on the ruins of Gobekli Tepe, in Turkey.
I'm not an archaeology expert, so I don't have a lot of ability to evaluate what I heard as would an expert in the field. Yet apparently, the ruins were from over 12,000 years ago. This flies in the face of the idea that civilization began only 5000 years (or so) ago. In addition, the ruins were apparently deliberately buried, for reasons unknown. Only a small amount of the area has been excavated, but apparently, it is a large ceremonial site.
At that time, Earth was still in the ice age. The Mediterranean seabed was dry and the area (now desert) was a temperate and fertile. It would have made a good location for a civilization. She build a good case for the idea that this was part of an earlier cycle of civilization, one that somehow came to a big crashing halt some time around 10 to 12 thousand years ago.
Linda does a great job of tying together a lot of rather disparate topics into one bundle of mystery. In this case, she related a number of previous topics (such as the self-activating technology she talked about in 2011) with paleoarchaeology sites. She talked more about the photos of dragonfly drones, observed extensively in about 2007, or so (several photo analysts have since declared the photos to be fakes using photoshop). She related this to the CARET documents, purportedly leaked documents describing eforts to replicate and commercialize alien technology.
The biggest piece of information, at least for me, was the idea, in which a set of symbols seemed to comprise some form "software" that would execute on its own, without the need of a computer to execute it. According to "Isaac" the pseudonym of the person who apparently leaked the documents to Linda, it executed when exposed to some type of field - perhaps a consciousness/quantum field, perhaps an EM field, etc. (use your imagination). At first, the thought ran square into my discernment filter - leaving me cold until a bit later when I got a chance to think about it a bit more. Then I began to wonder - could this be similar to the budding technology of 3D printing, where they can manufacture parts directly using 3D imaging? The idea was intriguing.
Usually, at conferences, the real science gets done at the bar, often after a few glasses of wine, and Thursday evening was no exception. I ended up talking with Linda and a couple of other people about this idea. What if, rather than being some kind of executable "software" as we would think of it, the symbols formed a kind of holographic encoding. Apparently, the symbols were mounted on a seemingly-inert substrate, something like glass or crystal. So what if the symbols, when exposed to some kind of field, would generate a 3D hologram within the material. Like a 3D printer, the projected image would contain information that would cause the material to change its properties in a way that would make it functional.
There are plenty of examples of material changing in response to fields, including lenses that darken when exposed to sunlight and LCDs, in which the material changes properties in response to an electric field. Also, integrated circuit technology such as the gate array, does a similar thing, taking on functional properties based upon information input. So the idea of a holographically encoded field that, when decoded using some type of reference beam or field, contains functional information causing an otherwise inert material to take on functional properties, might not be as far fetched as it seems. There is a lot of work to be done there. And I'm betting that in some R&D lab in some solid state electronics company, somewhere, this very thing is being done.
But how does this relate to paleo-archaeology and the ruins of Gobekli Tepe? To me, that was a bit of a stretch. She stated there were a number of symbols that loosely matched those shown in the CARET documents. Thus, she speculated that perhaps there was a similar function associated (in some way) with the ruins. Indeed, from a larger perspective such as a satellite view, the ruins appear to have a symbolic nature to them. So she speculates that perhaps the site, itself, has some type of functionality. While interesting, I found this a bit of a stretch - yet this was a weekend for stretches - and questions.
I thought Linda's was probably the best of the talks, but others were intensely fascinating. Most of the talks were on closely related topics along the ancient-aliens theme. This included presentations by Georgio Tsoukalos, Eric Von Daniken, and several more. There were a lot of references to Zachsaria Sitchin's writings and the idea that most religions were, at least in part, influenced by ET contact.
The upshot of the collected talks at the symposium was that we are not alone. We never have been alone. We have been visited all along. Visitation has left its mark on our history as well as on the present. Whether you believe any particular assertion, or even whether you accept any of the idea of paleo-archaeology, ancient ET contact, etc., each gives us food for thought. There are a number of fascinating archaeology anomalies coming to light, and they challenge our present models of human history.
As we got into the final day or two of the conference, I overheard a couple of people describing feelings of loss, primarily over the notion that after Sunday, they were going to have to return home to the same old thing. It's difficult to get into the daily routine after having spent the weekend on topics like human history, Armageddon prophecy, alien contact, etc. The quarterly sales report doesn't seem very fascinating. It's hard to get back into calculating store inventory, or whatever other work-a-day elements one's life might contain. Yet Sunday finally ended, and I drove home (only a few miles), as quite a few others caught airplanes (or began long drives) back to their respective homes.
It was time to return from a world of ET contact, ancient aliens and quantum holograms to another day on Earth.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Paths, doors and unexpected walls
In my last post, I wrote about how when one door closes, another door opens. For myself and for quite a few other people I know, this has been a week of possible new paths, of doors opening and closing, and of walking into unexpected brick walls. Sometimes, it seems, that open door leads nowhere.
In my own life, I have gotten discouraging news and responses as I've tried to find a new location. Since the Healing Loft closed, I have been looking for a group of complimentary healers with whom I could hook up, part time. A couple of the places I have looked at have indicated they were not interested in having a part time sublease or contracting practitioner. One person, another therapist said her life was already too chaotic to have another person associated with her studio. Another group said that things were too uncertain, etc.
The most recent disappointment was from a possibility I had really hoped would pan out. It was with a group located in the community center near my home. It was a very professional looking venue and it looked like it would really work - No Such Luck. I still have some more options to look at, none of them as ideal as the ones I had hoped would materialize. Beyond that, I'm not sure where the footpath is leading me. In short, the responses I have gotten have been rather discouraging. So, what's the lesson here? What is the take-away message from all of this?
One of them, I see as being the difference between hopes and intentions. Steven Covey describes in his Seven Habits book series, the difference between the circle of influence and the circle of concern. The circle of concern is the set of things you care about. These are the external factors in your life, in which you are, in some way, a stakeholder.
Meanwhile, the circle of influence is the set of those things you can control or at least influence. Ideally, it is best to have the two circles be as close together as possible. Or in Saint Francis's prayer, "to change the things I can, accept the things I can't."
The other lesson I see is to actually learn the right lesson from whatever is happening. As I felt totally disappointed by the response I got yesterday I was tempted to slam the door on everything. It was a very reactive response. I often see this response in people when they get disappointing news.
In actuality, when something like this happens, one needs to count to ten - to step back and take stock of what's going on. The best thing we can do is to let the reaction pass. Sleep on it and look at it again in the morning. What's the big picture? What are the implications of whatever decision you make? It's at times like this when we need to take some time to put on the thinking cap.
In the last few weeks (months, actually), many of the people I know have had significant challenges.
Several have had financial or health reverses, including the place where I had previously practiced, The Healing Loft. The suddenness of the closing took me by surprise, but in the context of the things I have seen since approximately mid August, abrupt changes like this make sense. More than one friend of mine has described sudden relationship problems, sudden financial problems, and unexpected health problems, many of these in combination to create a 'perfect storm' of challenge. And all seem to have the same major theme - the events were largely unexpected.
So where is this going? I'm still not sure. For myself and for many others, it looks like there are more paths and more doors. Some of the doors seem to be open. Do they actually lead to new paths? Or like so many around me in the past few weeks, do we find that the doors and paths lead smack into an unexpected wall?
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