Still, I completely understand the writers’ objections.  I felt the same way.  About myself. While bemoaning apparent harassment by the FBI for my association with Earth First!, I suddenly found myself awakened from the beginning of sleep to find myself vibrating intensely, with things in my room vibrating too, followed by the strange sensation of deep contentment that took me over, so that I thought I knew where I was going and thought it was good.  Then, with a sense of anticipation and self-direction, I “went in” to the thing like a portal before me.  The next morning, I woke and thought, “Oh, no, not again.  [It reminded me of strange sensations I thought were government harassment, which occurred while I did media work for a federal trial against the FBI.]  What was that?”

    My life was already weird enough.  I’d experienced the isolation of being thought an extremist for writing media releases for Earth First! and finding their dancing-around-the-campfire company the most fun I’d ever had in my adult life, and then the terror of having Judi Bari bombed right after I’d made her my secret role model for PR work.  Then I’d realized, at age 41, that those things that felt like flashbacks I’d had four and eight years earlier, that I didn’t want to think about, were actual memories surfacing, and that by accepting their truth, I’d experience the wonderfulness of soul parts return and my world become clearer, but then I’d also have to believe their reality, which would change for the worse all my relationships to my family.

    On the positive side, I’d felt initiated into the shamanic worldview, by animals, stars and multi-dimensional beings who suddenly appeared.  Those were wonderful, but also disconcerting - stuff  you can’t tell many people about.  It forced a whole worldview change.  That was all just plenty enough for one life, thank you.

    I’d gone out to the desert, having decided I had as good a reason as any to become a hermit.  Earth First!ers had provided me plenty of permission to be an eccentric.  And my childhood memories were making it difficult to see people on the street and not cry spontaneously when they asked me how I was.  I was exactly the type of person who had permission to drop out of society.  I wasn’t much good for anything.

    I hadn’t counted on anyone wanting to come live with me.  But when I was going through the hardest year ever, I re-met Asante Riverwind, a flamboyant Earth First!er, who’d also experienced shamanic events and government harassment.  The attractive thing was, he wasn’t afraid, and I felt he could help me re-calibrate my being so that I also wouldn’t be afraid.  He came to live with me.

    And now this.  This alien abduction thing.  My mouth hung open and I looked up at the ceiling and asked, “What kind of cosmic joke is this?”  No one should have to live through all these things.  Maybe in about ten lifetimes it would be reasonable.  But this is just crazy.  I will never be able to tell anyone who I am.  I will be totally alone.  (Ironic complaint for someone who thought she was content to be a hermit.)

    I was more than willing to be alone as a hermit, when it felt like my choice.  With this alien stuff happening, I had no choice.  No one could ever hear my story, and I would be forced to be alone. This was just too much.

    As I kept reading, I found other people’s experiences of trauma and healing were inspiring.  And they confirmed some of my suspicions.  Many contradicted my suspicions too.  But as I read the words others had used to articulate their experiences, I discovered a network of authors with whom I related.  Their courage, their willingness to take the risk of being thought crazy, made me want to offer my story too, hoping others would be inspired, or might help me fill in some gaps of understanding, or point me toward some other author whose story would help me understand mine – maybe even find others with similar accounts.  And all of this happened.

    I didn’t finish writing my book until years after Asante and I parted and I’d moved back to “society” – in a small town.  I’ve since heard from people in Europe, around the nation, and in my own little town, who tell me they’ve had experiences similar to mine.  Many have told me my book inspires them.  Or that they now understand things they’d only suspected before.  So I accomplished my goal – or some of it.

    One goal I haven’t accomplished was to open the minds of people who don’t know what to think about this phenomenon. I’d wanted to write so lucidly and honestly that they’d just have to believe me.  And I guess I might have come close to that, because I’ve had only one reader who told me that he didn’t think it was a compelling book, and those two who wrote “too much!” - though others might have thought so too and never wrote to tell me, of course.

    The criticism I mentioned above was, after all, given by two listeners to an Internet broadcast interview of me by Jeremy Vaeni.  Speaking extemporaneously (not my forte), I could not craft my language carefully, as one does in a book, to deliver any response as fully and convincingly as I might.  And the listeners’ natural skepticism wasn’t impressed.  I understand.  As I said, I had the same initial objection:  It was just all too much.

    So it is with life in space.  It’s like the ocean, only multi-dimensional – and maybe the ocean is also – and we’ve just begun exploring those dimensions.  And when you get pushed in, you might see an awful lot of stuff you never suspected.

    Once you’re pushed through that veil, into the next world, you know it’s there, forever after.  Your consciousness may deny it, but deep in your bones, you know it’s there.  But if you’re ignorant of this truth, with no one to tell you about it (few shamans helping us along in this culture), you might be like a child who once played in the road and didn’t get hurt, so think you always can.  Then you have a close call with something you didn’t expect.  Next time you move into the next dimension, it might be a different close call, and next time you experience something entirely different again.  Too much?  Well, it’s the ocean.

    I assume it’s not difficult to experience all these realms, since I have.  It seems reasonable that once a person had a habit of moving into the next realm, by intention or accident, they could, over the years, accumulate a variety of experiences – just like we’d experience if we went into the ocean often.  We might see bass, dolphins, sharks, jelly fish, sea urchins, children playing, women in bikinis, wrecked ships, scuba divers, beach patrol, speedboats, jet skis, octopi, sting rays, and on and on.  And someone from Kansas might say, “Get off it! That’s just too much!”

    Yes, I’ve seen or experienced angels, a demon, a gremlin, spirit animals of many sorts, a woman super hero, a tall Grey, a reptile type, a man in black, oddly acting star-like things, orbs, a beam, immobilization, levitation, a dolphin healing, and much, much more.  (But I’ve never seen a “grey,” at least that I recall.)

    I no longer think the mix is extraordinary.  Rather, it feels like the experience of one who’s widely traveled.