Will the Real Phenomenon please stand up?
Sheryl Gottschall ©

Over the years I have watched many people come and go in the UFO community. Some drop in to the UFO arena staying for just a short time and others remain and become part of the furniture. I watch as these “stayers” devour the subject by going on their merry jaunts to nightwatches, meetings, book stores, support groups, conferences, in search of their answers to this great mystery. I often find myself wondering about the UFO folk and indeed the UFO’s and what really brought us all together.

Many unanswered questions remain in my mind and whilst the unasked questions loom in the distance still to come. But the biggest question for me at this stage has become “What is this all about, really?” What makes people become interested in UFO’s in the first place? Why do some people who have no interest in the subject of UFOs see them, whilst others who yearn to see them never do? Why do people go on nightwatches staying awake through the night in the hope of seeing a UFO, and then see one! What’s that all about? Why are people in UFO groups so willing to give up so much of their valuable life energy running meetings, preparing topics for discussion, taking the phone calls, writing articles, creating publications, pulling out their hair? For what I ask you? What is it that drives us to consider, to know, to understand the UFO phenomenon? What is that spark that drives us on relentlessly searching through bookstore after bookstore for that UFO book that has just been recommended to us or have seen reviewed in -where else - that UFO magazine we just purchased. And don’t forget the videos!

What is it that speaks to us, at that point in our consciousness when we hand over the money for that oh too expensive UFO book , knowing full well that we really should be paying that overdue phone bill flapping on our fridge now in tatters, urging us to buy that book because we really need to know what is in it right now. That voice calls to all of us telling us that the next, book, video, magazine, meeting, conference or whatever becomes a must for us to have or attend because a piece of information will be presented to us which will be the next step in our growth and we must have it to take the step after that.

What is really going on here? I think the sociologists would have a field day with this one. After studying the dynamics around the UFO community at large they might possibly come back to us and say, “ well, we find the people in the UFO community far more fascinating than the UFOs themselves”. And I would have to agree. Could it be that we have been studying the wrong phenomenon all along? Could it be that we are the real phenomenon and UFOs are just the instruments we use for our discoveries? Could the greatest discoveries we make in the UFO field really be the discoveries we make about ourselves and the one’s we make about the UFOs only secondary in our quest?

And where do our discoveries take us? At this stage I would have to answer that by saying they take us away from the unquestioned answers presented to us by others and head us further into the unanswered questions in our minds pointing us in the direction of the many questions still to be unearthed.

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