I’ve decided I don’t like using the word “Aliens” to describe life beyond planet Earth. Think of it this way: Alienation and alienate aren’t words we associate with healthy interaction. Those words make us feel cold, unloved and outcast.

It’s more than just semantics. It’s about the way we identify as humans. Using language that negatively targets the unusual or the different has maybe helped false prophets, but it ends up breeding hate and ignorance.

There is not a doubt in my mind that other life forms exist ‘out there’. I’d like to call them what Indigenous and Aboriginal peoples refer to as “relations”. Our relations are our close knit communities, but why not consider everything in our galaxy and beyond our relations?

I watched a few episodes of the series “Ancient Aliens” last year and I’ll admit, it features some entertaining characters. It’s worth watching to learn a bit more about unusual historical phenomena, but it is still drenched in the drama and superstition that blinds us more than illuminates.

Why we struggle so much as humans has mostly to do with assuming we are not intimately connected with the Cosmos. Even human biology, if you can believe it, has been distorted by modern science. Science that is hell-bent on pharmaceutical inventions disconnects us from what we know to be true on a biological level. Our biology is nothing short of remarkable.

We don’t need need to ingest massive amounts of psychedelics to understand this either. While that can be tremendously helpful for some, our main objective should be to stop shrouding the Universe with our limited world views.

Another thing to consider is that consciousness is not an organic life form. Believing that only living entities determine consciousness is yet another solipsism.

All living and non-living, bodied and disembodied entities are part of the cosmic phenomenology. Like a giant database of information, consciousness is an expansive network that exists beyond organic life while at the same time is intimately engaged with it.

If consciousness is an entity in and of itself, continuously sorting through the most interesting bits of data and retaining what it needs for nourishment, then what it wants most is dialogue. The toxicity of the colonized world has rerouted this cooperative exchange and created the hubris known as: the search for intelligent life.

Just because we haven’t figured out how to prove with any certainty that extraterrestrial “Intelligence” exists does not mean it doesn’t. Of course it exists. That is where we came from. Whether you believe in God, Creator or Energy, you cannot deny that the seeds of our existence were conceived somewhere deeply complex and capable.

What does this mean for human beings? Should we care about evolving from Homo Sapiens to Homo Superior?

I don’t believe the Universe is waiting for humans to ascend via technology or by any other means of detachment, superiority or arrogance. It wants to engage us in conversation. More important than searching for answers as to how exactly we got here, what if we were to focus on fostering a healthier relationship with what we don’t understand?  An inspired curiosity about what we can learn when we seek connectedness, rather than a fear of what is foreign to us?

The galaxy isn’t as far away as it seems. It is our amniotic fluid. How often have you gazed at the night sky and felt something within you expand? I’m going to wager a guess that everyone has felt this at least once.

This life is confoundingly beautiful and strange. To feel the depth of this strangeness doesn’t need to be terrifying. Sometimes it will be. It will be most painful if you have wound yourself so tightly that no light can get out or in. I know from experience. I used to keep myself and my world view tragically small. It’s an exercise in fragility.

You don’t have to be into astrology or science fiction to feel this, obviously. Having faith and a connection with spirit or God will help too, as it has helped us for many millennia.

Lately, when I’ve been closing my eyes before sleep, I see nebulae moving and flickering as though they are right inside my eyelids. At first I thought it was just light seeping in from outside my window, but when I put my hands over my eyes, I can still see them. Totally sober too, I should add.  I know now that if I stop being able to see them, it’s because I’ve tightened myself up again.  It’s a good reminder.