How much effort would people actually be willing to put into developing their consciousness to make them better attuned to connect to Non Human Intelligence?
How much effort would people actually be willing to put in to develop their consciousness to make them better attuned to connect to NHI?
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Edit: for those curious about which books to read.
Book 1) Contact Modalities: The Keys to the Universe by Grant Cameron and Desta Barnabe
Book 2) Preparing for Contact: A Metamorphosis of Consciousness by Lyssa Royal and Keith Priest
Book 3) The Three Waves of Volunteers & the New Earth By Dolores Cannon
After having read those 3 books, feel free to pick book 4 and 5 with your own intuition.
-) Follow your curiosity with integrity and without insisting on a particular outcome
Ok so I got into the gateway tapes from the Monroe Institute and read the - US Army Intelligence and Security Command - report about it that can be read here: Analysis and Assessment of the Gateway Process from 9th of June 1983 (The line mentioned here can be found on page 27 in the report, or page 29 of the pdf)
The report has this sentence in it that I want to share here because I think it is quite a remarkable thing to say.
>J. Be intellectually prepared to react to possible encounters with intelligent, non-corporeal energy forms when time-space boundaries are exceeded...
In the Gateway Tapes from the Monroe Institute they have a tape on this subject in Wave VI called Odyssey, the 4th tape there is called Nonphysical Friends. It teaches people actively to connect to NHI. And it apparently seems to be working?...
Now I don't know if I missed something but doesn't this seem to be a pretty big deal?
People within the US Government giving these warnings in their official report to their superiors?
Am I reading to much into this or do I misunderstand something or do we have reports openly saying 43 years ago that people that dive into this material systematically bump into non human intelligences?... And if so how come this never hit our culture in a broader way?...
Love to hear what people here are thinking about the Gateway Experience from the Monroe Institute and if they have any experiences with it and what they think about this report about it.
More info here: Connect to Non Human Intelligences with the Gateway Experience
And here is a good start post on the Gateway Tapes from r/gatewaytapes
We’re about to dive into a ‘transmission’ or ‘channeled’ message that allegedly came into a man by the name of Jean Ederman aka Eric Julien. Jean had been practicing projecting his mind when he came in contact with what he called benevolent ET beings, this is when he received the message.
As with any information it is important to use your own critical thinking and discernment. We offer this information here as an interesting thought experiment, nothing more, nothing less.
Alien Message To Mankind: “Do You Wish That We Show Up?”
Each one of you wishes to exercise your free will and experience happiness. Your free will depends upon the knowledge you have of your own power. Your happiness depends upon the love that you give and receive.
Like all conscious races at this stage of progress, you may feel isolated on your planet. This impression gives you a certain view of your destiny. Yet you are at the brink of big upheavals that only a minority is aware of.
It is not our responsibility to modify your future without your choosing it. So consider this message as a worldwide referendum, and your answer as a ballot.
Neither your scientists nor your religious representatives speak knowledgeably about certain unexplained aerial and celestial events that mankind has witnessed for thousands of years.
To know the truth, one must face it without the filter of one’s beliefs or dogmas, however respectable they may be.
A growing number of anonymous researchers of yours are exploring new paths of knowledge and are getting very close to reality. Today, your civilization is flooded with an ocean of information of which only a tiny part, the less upsetting one, is notably distributed.
Bear in mind that what in your history seemed ridiculous or improbable has often become possible, then realized — in particular in the last fifty years.
Be aware that the future will be even more surprising. You will discover the worst as well as the best.
Many of those who study our appearances point to lights in the night, but without lighting the way. Often they think in terms of objects when it is all about conscious beings.
Who are we?
Like billions of others in this galaxy, we are conscious creatures that some call “extraterrestrials,” even though the reality is subtler. There is no fundamental difference between you and us, save for having experienced certain stages of evolution.
As with any other organized society, a hierarchy exists in our internal relationships. Ours, however, is based upon the wisdom of several races. It is with the approval of this hierarchy that we turn to you.
Like most of you, we are in quest of the Supreme “Being” or “State of Being.”
Therefore we are not gods or lesser gods but virtually your equals in the Cosmic Brotherhood. Physically we are somewhat different from you but most of us are humanoid-shaped.
We are not mere observations; we are consciousnesses just like you. Our existence is a reality, but the majority of you do not perceive it yet because we remain invisible to your senses and instruments most of the time.
We wish to fill this void at this moment in your history. We made this collective decision on our side, but this is not enough — we need yours as well.
Through this message you can become the decision-makers. You, personally. We have no human representative on Earth who could guide your decision.
These are just the first two parts of the whole article, the original article is a lot longer and can be found here:
Alien Message To Mankind: “Do You Wish That We Show Up?”
It's a long read of 15 to 20 minutes but worth the effort for those interested in these matters.
The House passed the UAPDA. The Senate returned Sept 14 with weeks to act.
The UAP Disclosure Act was first introduced in 2023 by Senators Schumer and Rounds. It passed the Senate as an NDAA amendment, but during conference with the House, the strongest provisions were gutted: the independent review board, subpoena power, eminent domain authority. All gone. Only a National Archives record collection survived.
It was reintroduced in 2024 and 2025. Neither year resulted in enactment.
This year, Rep. Eric Burlison got his UAPDA amendment into the House version of the FY 2027 NDAA, and the House passed it. On the Senate side, Schumer and Rounds have introduced it again for the fourth consecutive year, but it hasn't been added to the Senate bill yet.
The Senate returns September 14 and has a very narrow window before leaving for the midterm elections. If the UAPDA is in both the House and Senate versions when they go to conference, it becomes substantially harder for negotiators to strip it out. If it's only in the House version, we're back to 2023: one chamber's language getting gutted behind closed doors.
Contact your Senators. Tell them to Pass the UAPDA. The time is now!
Use the link below to take less than 1 minute to message your senators to pass the UAP Disclosure Act.
https://newparadigminstitute.org/take-action/pass-the-uapda-2027/
I was doing for research into NDE's and found this great website of the Near Death Experience Research Foundation. Her you can read 5956 NDEs that have gotten collected there so far. 25 of them report seeing/connecting to Aliens on the other side.
There appears to be a pretty solid pattern from these NDEs with 4 different stages.
The first stage is where people realize they are outside of their physical body and come to some realization that apparently their body is not functioning anymore and that they are not their physical body. They often find themselves stuck at the ceiling or standing next to their own body and then they often can travel around a bit or go places either spontaneously or more intentionally further away.
The second stage is often where they start seeing a tunnel of some sort, or a bright light shows up, sometimes they see a guide appear and helps people go to another place, a different realm. Often this place feels very warm, loving, light, serene, harmonious etc. The guide can be a family member, a friend, a religious figure, etc.
In the third stage people in this other realm are often shown what is referred to as a life review. They experience what impact their life has had so far on other people but from the viewpoint of the other people. This can be either pleasant when that impact was generally positive and harmonious or it can be rather difficult if that impact has mostly been negative and adding suffering to the lives of others. There is never a judgement or condemnation though, it is purely to gain an understanding of what the consequences are of our behaviors.
At the fourth stage people are often offered a choice to stay there or go back or they are simply told they need to go back. People seem accepting of this but often notice how strange and uncomfortable it is to be pushed back into the human body. Often they make references of having to put something very fast and specious in a very small uncomfortable place.
Also I found three different YouTube channels and there probably are many more with each a lot of people talking about their NDEs. YouTube channels NDE Journeys, The Other Side NDE and Coming Home
All in all it seems that NDE's are so common and so well documented that I kind of wonder how this in a way isn't bigger news. And what to think of these reports of people seeing aliens on the other side?
Curious to hear what people here think about NDE's. If they ever had one, what they think about it after watching these personal shared stories. All viewpoints welcome.
John Mack was professor of psychiatry at Harvard University's Cambridge Hospital. He was a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of T. E. Lawrence, A Prince of Our Disorder. He was also author of Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens and Passport to the cosmos: human transformation and alien encounters.
Here he discusses clinical case histories of individuals who have memories of various encounters with non-human beings, generally associated with unidentified flying objects. He states that these cases, when viewed with an open mind, challenge our traditional western world view.
Also have a look at part II that can be found here:
Human Encounters with Aliens Part II with John Mack (1929 - 2004)
I can't be the only one right. How are other people dealing with it.
Has Dolores Cannon written a book on how to deal with this?
-) StarSeeds and Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique by Dolores Cannon
But yeah how are people balancing this wanting to help and getting frustrated with my own inability to deal with humans...
I have a person in my sphere of influence that I care about that has some addictions.
The worst ones are smoking and doing crystal meth at certain times when things get very bad for him. What is interesting is that he feels that there are negative entities involved with both of these addictions. He has had visions of a kind of demonic/djinn like type being that is involved with his smoking addiction.
Also when it comes to crystal meth there seem certain entities involved as well. I have been doing a deep dive here and there seem multiple meth addicts that talk about so called meth demons.
A couple of days ago I learned about this book called The Others Within Us from Robert Falconer and since then I have watched some of the YouTubes linked there as well. And I have been listening to several of his podcasts.
There seems to be a very strong correlation between Trauma, Addiction and (negative) Entities and Robert Falconer uses Internal Family System therapy as a way to help people heal their parts to alleviate the underlying trauma and also to help these attached entities to move on to other places where they can find healing. In this way 2 of the 3 parts of this cluster can be dealt with and hopefully the addiction can fall away also then.
The difficulty I have met so far is to get my friend interested enough to look into the IFS model or other models to heal his underlying trauma that I suspect is the reason for his addictions. He often seems to be in a very survival based paradigm where there isn't the stability and safety needed to actually go feel and heal the trauma. Another problem is that he has a very hard time trusting other people and based on his trauma I fully understand that. But it does make things very difficult if one wants to help and people just isolate.
I guess that my questions are if there are other people here that have either personally or close by dealt with similar problems and if they can share their tips what they feel did and didn't help the person they cared about with helping them deal with their addictions and the negative entities that were involved here.
All tips, insights, experiences, etc. are very welcome.
Ross Coulthart is an Australian journalist that started reporting on ETs starting a couple of years ago in a serious journalistic way in which he was classically trained. He was pretty well known for Australia's 60 minutes program.
I found it interesting how he opens up about how skeptical he was in the beginning, then getting curious, then learning how important consciousness is in this field and more recently he has opened up about how a lot of people have started talking to him about their contact with Blue Beings/ETs and he isn't sure exactly yet how to deal with it.
These blue beings seem to assist people in downloading information and are apparently telling them to contact Ross... Those are his words.
Here some examples of videos where he talks in more depth about this.
Ross Coulthart | 'Blue Beings' & Information Downloads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDBtQUEr_Hs
Ross Coulthart Reveals The Shocking Truth About Blue Aliens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8s_KllyxiY
Ross Coulthart and Dr. Masters ask: Are aliens future humans? | Reality Check
https://youtu.be/75MEePSaAbs?si=yRdo3VzLqa8tvIIN&t=1553
I found it pretty interesting how both the ideas of downloads that help humanity ahead are getting more mainstreamed. But also how Ross Coulthart talks quite openly about these blue beings that seem to be helping humanity with downloading useful ideas that can help humanity in their evolution.
As you see from the pictures I have had some connections with blue beings. To me they identify as Arcturians but I also heard others talk about Pleiadeans and Sirians as blue beings also. And maybe there are more species of ETs out there also that for some reason are seen as blue?
I am open to share more about my experiences with these blue beings if people are curious but I am also curious to hear other people their stories and experiences around both the download and the blue being phenomena.
Ross Coulthart is an Australian journalist that started reporting on ETs starting a couple of years ago in a serious journalistic way in which he was classically trained. He was pretty well known for Australia's 60 minutes program.
I found it interesting how he opens up about how skeptical he was in the beginning, then getting curious, then learning how important consciousness is in this field and more recently he has opened up about how a lot of people have started talking to him about their contact with Blue Beings/ETs and he isn't sure exactly yet how to deal with it.
These blue beings seem to assist people in downloading information and are apparently telling them to contact Ross... Those are his words.
Here some examples of videos where he talks in more depth about this.
Ross Coulthart | 'Blue Beings' & Information Downloads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDBtQUEr_Hs
Ross Coulthart Reveals The Shocking Truth About Blue Aliens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8s_KllyxiY
I found it pretty interesting how both the ideas of downloads that help humanity ahead are getting more mainstreamed. But also how Ross Coulthart talks quite openly about these blue beings that seem to be helping humanity with downloading useful ideas that can help humanity in their evolution.
As you see from the pictures I have had some connections with blue beings. To me they identify as Arcturians but I also heard others talk about Pleiadeans and Sirians as blue beings also. And maybe there are more species of ETs out there also that for some reason are seen as blue?
I am open to share more about my experiences with these blue beings if people are curious but I am also curious to hear other people their stories and experiences around both the download and the blue being phenomena.
Ross Coulthart is an Australian journalist that started reporting on ETs starting a couple of years ago in a serious journalistic way in which he was classically trained. He was pretty well known for Australia's 60 minutes program.
I found it interesting how he opens up about how skeptical he was in the beginning, then getting curious, then learning how important consciousness is in this field and more recently he has opened up about how a lot of people have started talking to him about their contact with Blue Beings/ETs and he isn't sure exactly yet how to deal with it.
These blue beings seem to assist people in downloading information and are apparently telling them to contact Ross... Those are his words.
Here some examples of videos where he talks in more depth about this.
Ross Coulthart | 'Blue Beings' & Information Downloads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDBtQUEr_Hs
Ross Coulthart Reveals The Shocking Truth About Blue Aliens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8s_KllyxiY
I found it pretty interesting how both the ideas of downloads that help humanity ahead are getting more mainstreamed. But also how Ross Coulthart talks quite openly about these blue beings that seem to be helping humanity with downloading useful ideas that can help humanity in their evolution.
As you see from the pictures I have had some connections with blue beings. To me they identify as Arcturians but I also heard others talk about Pleiadeans and Sirians as blue beings also. And maybe there are more species of ETs out there also that for some reason are seen as blue?
I am open to share more about my experiences with these blue beings if people are curious but I am also curious to hear other people their stories and experiences around both the download and the blue being phenomena.
Ross Coulthart is an Australian investigative journalist that started reporting on ETs a couple of years ago in a serious journalistic way in which he was classically trained. He was/is pretty well known for Australia's 60 minutes program.
I found it interesting how he opens up about how skeptical he was in the beginning, then getting curious, then learning how important consciousness is in this field and more recently he has opened up about how a lot of people have started talking to him about their contact with Blue Beings/ETs and he isn't sure exactly yet how to deal with it.
These blue beings seem to assist people in downloading information and are apparently telling them to contact Ross... Those are his words.
Here some examples of videos where he talks in more depth about this.
Ross Coulthart | 'Blue Beings' & Information Downloads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDBtQUEr_Hs
Ross Coulthart Reveals The Shocking Truth About Blue Aliens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8s_KllyxiY
I found it pretty interesting how both the ideas of downloads that help humanity ahead are getting more mainstreamed. But also how Ross Coulthart talks quite openly about these blue beings that seem to be helping humanity with downloading useful ideas that can help humanity in their evolution.
As you see from the pictures I have had some connections with blue beings. To me they identify as Arcturians but I also heard others talk about Pleiadeans and Sirians as blue beings also. And maybe there are more species of ETs out there also that for some reason are seen as blue?
I am open to share more about my experiences with these blue beings if people are curious but I am also curious to hear other people their stories and experiences around both the download and the blue being phenomena.
Ross Coulthart is an Australian journalist that started reporting on ETs starting a couple of years ago in a serious journalistic way in which he was classically trained. He was pretty well known for Australia's 60 minutes program.
I found it interesting how he opens up about how skeptical he was in the beginning, then getting curious, then learning how important consciousness is in this field and more recently he has opened up about how a lot of people have started talking to him about their contact with Blue Beings/ETs and he isn't sure exactly yet how to deal with it.
These blue beings seem to assist people in downloading information and are apparently telling them to contact Ross... Those are his words.
Here some examples of videos where he talks in more depth about this.
Ross Coulthart | 'Blue Beings' & Information Downloads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDBtQUEr_Hs
Ross Coulthart Reveals The Shocking Truth About Blue Aliens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8s_KllyxiY
I found it pretty interesting how both the ideas of downloads that help humanity ahead are getting more mainstreamed. But also how Ross Coulthart talks quite openly about these blue beings that seem to be helping humanity with downloading useful ideas that can help humanity in their evolution.
As you see from the pictures I have had some connections with blue beings. To me they identify as Arcturians but I also heard others talk about Pleiadeans and Sirians as blue beings also. And maybe there are more species of ETs out there also that for some reason are seen as blue?
I am open to share more about my experiences with these blue beings if people are curious but I am also curious to hear other people their stories and experiences around both the download and the blue being phenomena.
Ross Coulthart is an Australian journalist that started reporting on ETs starting a couple of years ago in a serious journalistic way in which he was classically trained. He was pretty well known for Australia's 60 minutes program.
I found it interesting how he opens up about how skeptical he was in the beginning, then getting curious, then learning how important consciousness is in this field and more recently he has opened up about how a lot of people have started talking to him about their contact with Blue Beings/ETs and he isn't sure exactly yet how to deal with it.
These blue beings seem to assist people in downloading information and are apparently telling them to contact Ross... Those are his words.
Here some examples of videos where he talks in more depth about this.
Ross Coulthart | 'Blue Beings' & Information Downloads
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDBtQUEr_Hs
Ross Coulthart Reveals The Shocking Truth About Blue Aliens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8s_KllyxiY
I found it pretty interesting how both the ideas of downloads that help humanity ahead are getting more mainstreamed. But also how Ross Coulthart talks quite openly about these blue beings that seem to be helping humanity with downloading useful ideas that can help humanity in their evolution.
As you see from the pictures I have had some connections with blue beings. To me they identify as Arcturians but I also heard others talk about Pleiadeans and Sirians as blue beings also. And maybe there are more species of ETs out there also that for some reason are seen as blue?
I am open to share more about my experiences with these blue beings if people are curious but I am also curious to hear other people their stories and experiences around both the download and the blue being phenomena.
What does it really mean to raise your vibration? Darryl Anka shares Bashar’s five-step formula for following your passion, becoming your authentic self, and opening to deeper levels of consciousness and connection.
In this conversation with Gaia Senior Producer Jason Liggett, Darryl explains how acting on your highest excitement can increase synchronicity, intuition, awareness, and your ability to receive higher-frequency guidance. He also explores channeling as a natural flow state, the power of service, humanity’s spiritual evolution, and how raising our collective frequency may help prepare us for conscious contact.
Discover:
-Bashar’s five-step formula for living your best life
-Why passion and excitement are messages from your soul
-How to raise your vibrational frequency
-Why attachment to an outcome can limit possibility
-How anyone can enter a natural channeling state
-The connection between authenticity, service, and spiritual growth
-How humanity may become more prepared for conscious contact
-What ascension and higher-frequency reality really mean
-Why live channeling can create a powerful collective experience
Experience Darryl Anka channeling Bashar live at Gaia’s Channeling Conference: Messages for Conscious Contact on September 26, 2026, at GaiaSphere near Boulder, Colorado.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:38 How can we prepare for conscious contact?
01:24 Bashar’s five-step formula
03:34 How passion raises your vibration
04:28 Authenticity and service to others
06:20 Contact begins with the heart
08:01 Humanity’s expanding consciousness
10:00 Joining a larger galactic family
11:43 Everyone enters channeling states
13:29 What a channeling state feels like
14:52 The energy of live channeling
19:37 Higher-frequency reality
21:14 What ascension really means
22:34 Experience Bashar live
I am curious what people here think of this idea of certain higher, more integrated, more advanced consciousnesses choosing to incarnate in the earth collective to help with the progression of it's evolution.
In Buddhism there is this idea of Bodhisattvas who choose to incarnate again and again to help all beings attain enlightenment.
>A Bodhisattva is someone who has generated bodhicitta, the profound aspiration to attain full Buddhahood not for themselves alone, but specifically for the sake of liberating all sentient beings from suffering. They postpone their own final entry into nirvana to remain in the cycle of birth and death, working tirelessly across countless lifetimes to help others achieve awakening. This path is defined by the practice of six perfections—generosity, morality, patience, diligence, meditation, and wisdom—and represents the ideal of compassionate action.
In Dolores Cannon her books the idea of Starseeds is a very important concept. These are often quite highly evolved beings from other planets or other higher frequency realms that incarnate on planet earth to help humanity progress.
>In Dolores Cannon's framework, a Starseed is a highly advanced soul who volunteered to incarnate on Earth specifically to help humanity through a critical period of transition and planetary "ascension". According to her research, this volunteer program began in earnest after the atomic bombings of 1945, when Earth's "protectors" saw the planet in danger and called for help from souls unburdened by Earth's heavy karmic cycles . These volunteers often come from "the Source" or other dimensions and, despite having their memories erased upon birth, feel a deep but often confusing sense of mission, frequently struggling to adapt to the chaos and negativity of the world.
In the Law of One there is this concept of a Wanderer, a being that has evolved beyond 3rd density themselves already that chooses to incarnate within the human collective to help with The Harvest of humanity as they somewhat ominously call it.
>A Wanderer is a being of positive social memory complex (from higher densities, 4th, 5th or 6th density) who has voluntarily chosen to incarnate into 3rd-density Earth to aid in its spiritual harvest, accepting the profound amnesia and danger of becoming "karmically involved" in this dense plane. Their primary purpose is to serve as a beacon of light and love, subtly awakening others through their very presence, and to increase the planetary vibration by choosing service-to-others in every moment despite the veil of forgetting. Though they often experience deep alienation, health issues, and a persistent feeling of "not belonging," their core task is not to "save" others, but simply to be themselves and rediscover their true nature while incarnate, thus gently tipping the balance toward planetary positivity.
I find it interesting that there seems to be a significant overlap between these concepts and wonder what to think about it. .
What do people here think about this concept that more advanced beings choose to consciously incarnate within the human collective to help it's evolution progress in a positive direction?
And does this explain things like old souls, some people seeming to naturally be kinder, wiser or having specific skillsets that they seem to be born with?
Are aliens real? For as long as there have been sightings of strange objects in the sky, there have been reports from those who say they’ve encountered unexplained entities. In this full episode of UFOs: Investigating the Unknown from National Geographic, ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary phenomena speak out despite social stigma and skepticism. These experiencers include the Ariel School witnesses in Zimbabwe, alien abductee Whitley Strieber, and more. Giving detailed, shocking accounts of their personal interactions with aliens, abductions, UFOs, and UAPs, these eyewitnesses make incredible claims. But are their stories real? Experts examine and investigate their experiences to discover the truth.
UFOs: Investigating the Unknown | S2 E4 "The Experiencers Part 1"
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Kind of interesting that National Geographic is doing a multiple part series on Experiencers. This one came out 3 days ago online. I hope it is okay that I share it here.
I find this an interesting story and really enjoyed watching this documentary where Darryl Anka shares his story of his connection with Bashar which he has been channeling since 1983 so almost 42/43 years now.
He talks about how he had two UFO encounters both with friends/witnesses. He talks about investigating what channeling is, not thinking he would become a channeler himself connecting to Bashar when he was there.
He, Darryl Anka, talks about having various dream encounters with Bashar in the Jeff Mara podcast.
And even now he is still going strong, doing lots of interview with all kinds of people. You can find many online if people are curious.
One of the most remarkable things is that he shares that 2026 is the year of disclosure and 2027 is the year of disclosure. If people are curious about this I can really recommend his podcast with Acid for Squares #10.
Darryl Anka is very clear over that he can't prove that Bashar is real. But that he keeps on channeling because he feels and sees that the information that is coming through is helping people.
A strange thing is though that Andrew Bayuk shortly channeled Elan from the same species as Bashar and the energy coming through there is strangely similar. There is a YouTube Channel called Elan interactions.
Personally I don't feel like I need to believe Darryl Anka, or that I need to believe Bashar. But I can simply listen to the information coming through, use my own critical thinking and my own discernment and just take the info as it is without necessarily reaching a conclusion about it.
I must admit I am pretty excited though for this prediction of 2027 as the year of contact.
But also there I am like okay, interesting we will see if something happens or if it doesn't.
I am curious to hear if there are other people that like to listen to Darryl Anka and Bashar.
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From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us.
On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.