ET responds. . .

I recently had to back a friend down off the wall.  He was addicted to reality.  I think I actually said something to the effect that one can find more "reality" in fiction--that fiction is more real than reality, and that it would be beneficial to stop watching news and start watching movies or reading literature.

Because of the dualistic nature of our "reality" and because some films are able to contain the entire macrocosm of life, our entire reality on film, i.e. Tron, Dark City, The Truman Show, The Matrix, Lost, I don't believe our world is all that "real".  It is a construct with one story that we see resonating in everything.  

The Big Bang?  That is what my wife and I did to create life.  The singularity was the ovum into which my "comet" collided brining it life. These things fused, became Isis, from one many.  The one cell became an entire universe. The first cell is is.  It is life, but inside my wife it was "the other".  It was a parasite feeding on her.  It was alien. To observe this new life was like traveling to "outer space".  The equipment used to hear this alien life-form tickled one in a sci-fi sort of way.  The images reminded one of shifting galaxies in space.  Hopefully this "other" will be wanted and loved.  One of the most insane things we do as a species is creating unwanted, unloved life.  We are lazy, selfish and insane. (maya/dukkha/sin)

Where else is the "other" manifested?  In the past "the other" was female, non-English (Irish, Jewish, etc.), black, Mexican, Middle Eastern(-they still very much are other), but who are these others who have recently shown their power in their choice in a new President resulting in what could be a whole new order? Something that still blows my mind, but is obviously true, is that normal America does not understand (thus condone) homosexuality. And we fear that which we don't understand. You are "the other" Michael!  You are the alien that is invading our world.

I've only been "the other" a few times, and it was a usually  situation I could control.  There was a few places in Seattle that I could go to and be the minority, but when I wanted to leave and come back to the majority culture, I could. At a class at Seattle Central Community College, I had to eat crow for an hour a day for a quarter.  The instructor held "me" (white, anglo-saxon, protestant-heritage, heterosexual) up and showed the class my privilege.  I didn't think I was privileged. I didn't have any money and was working two jobs, but I was, and received all kinds of cultural benefits that I didn't acknowledge.

What I'm saying here folks, is that the best model to understand our "reality" is Literature.  We are living in a construct, and "the writer" employs metaphor.  The "aliens" is a concept loaded with meaning.  I'm being "invaded" right now!  This is the theme in my life.  The things I'm reading though have to do with the brain, the mind, the self, and consciousness.  Yet, the fiction I'm choosing is filled with "aliens." (What would Freud say about the Richard Dreyfuss character in Close Encounters?  Is this film about literal aliens, or a man who has an affair and leaves his family?)

It really wasn't my intention to have quite so much introduction here, but oh well.  I wanted to share Eckhart Tolle's take on "space" as one more response to "the aliens."

The inspiration for the title of this book came from a Bible prophecy that seems more applicable now than at any other time in human history. It occurs in both the Old and the New Testament and speaks of the collapse of the existing world order and the arising of "a new heaven and a new earth." We need to understand here that heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm of consciousness. This is the esoteric meaning of the word, and this is also its meaning in the teachings of Jesus. Earth, on the other hand, is the outer manifestation in form, which is always a reflection of the inner. Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected. "A new heaven" is the emergence of a transformed state of human consciousness, and "a new earth" is its reflection in the physical realm. Since human life and human consciousness are intrinsically one with the life of the planet, as the old consciousness dissolves, there bound to be synchronistic geographic and climatic natural upheavals in many parts of the planet, some of which we are witnessing now (23).

from Eckhart Tolle's: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. Plume, NY: 2005