They are not trying to show us what they are. They are trying to show us what we can handle. And even more precisely — the first language of contact is not form. It is trust.
A Place to Begin
It has taken me time to understand my experiences, and even longer to find language for them. There isn’t always a clear framework in the moment. Sometimes meaning arrives later — after sitting with it, or after a new encounter reshapes what I thought I understood.
Each experience adds context. Perspective adjusts. What once felt baffling begins to take on a kind of coherence. That process is ongoing. And it’s something I’ve come to trust — because I’ve lived it.
The Marble — A Message in the Physical World
Before I describe what I saw recently, I need to go back several months. Because the earlier event has become inseparable from the later one.
One evening, a bright light appeared in my office — the same room where the computer sits and where I spend most of my time. It was unusual enough that I went in to investigate. What I found was a change.
We keep two marbles in that space. One represents Earth — it sits on a solid glass base designed to allow it to rotate freely. The other represents the Universe, perched on a glass pedestal stand.
The Universe marble had been removed from its stand. It was sitting beside it on the surface, not on it. It could not have fallen. The design of the stand makes that physically implausible. Something — or someone — had placed that marble deliberately.
I didn’t know what to make of it at the time. I catalogued it as an anomaly, something unexplained, and moved on. It became a question without an answer — until recently.
The Visual Encounter
One recent evening, as I was getting ready for bed, I became aware that “the others” were present. The impression was clear. No urgency. No alarm. Just awareness.
I received a telepathic alert, a prompt, to focus on a specific corner of the room, near the wardrobe. So I looked. That’s when my perception shifted.
Rather than seeing something physical or defined, I saw an overlay, a pattern that seemed to exist in the space itself, suspended in midair, expanding and contracting with a slow, rhythmic pulse. Almost like breathing. It blocked the view of the wardrobe.
Even more interesting. What I was looking at resembled, almost exactly, the tile layout of the Mahjong game I had been playing just minutes before.
Whatever was present had reached into my recent visual memory and selected something I would recognize immediately. It presented something neutral, familiar, and emotionally safe — and used it as a kind of interface.
In earlier encounters, I had been told that a visual would be too frightening. That whatever form they have — or have adapted to — would be perceived as threatening. So they had deliberately avoided showing me anything.
This was, as far as I can tell, a first attempt at giving me an image at all. And the image they chose was something already living in my mind from moments before.
The pattern fully occupied that corner and obscured the wardrobe. It was not solid, but it had presence — and it came closer to me, expanding itself in the space and then retracting. Again, like breathing.
Then came the prompt: Remember the marble. Reconsider what you thought it meant.
A Sequence, Not a Series of Coincidences
In that moment, the two events connected. What had seemed like an isolated anomaly months ago now became the first chapter of a longer communication. The marble wasn’t a random oddity — it was a demonstration. Proof of capacity to interact with the physical environment, placed deliberately, anchored in a space I inhabit every day.
The visual encounter was the second demonstration — this time within perception itself. And the prompt to connect them was the third.
First: We can interact with your physical world. Then: We can work within your perception. Finally: Now hold both of those together.
What does it mean that Earth sat stable on its base while the Universe was lifted from its stand and placed beside it? I’ve been sitting with that question since the connection was made. Given what seems to be happening in the world right now — a period of instability unlike anything I’ve experienced in decades — the symbolism feels less metaphorical and more literal than I’d like.
Earth: stable, grounded, held. Universe: in motion. Repositioned. No longer where it was.
I was told that those who gave me the Mahjong image also moved the marble. That they are the same presence — and that what is happening in our world is not unrelated to these encounters.
I’m still working on what that means.
The Consideration Behind It
What struck me most, across both events, wasn’t what I witnessed. It was the care embedded in how it was delivered. There was an awareness of my mental state — an understanding of what would frighten me, and what would not.
The marble was intentionally positioned beside the upturned glass pedestal. The visual was drawn from my own recent memory. The message gave me time to orient before it asked me to look.
This is not the behavior of something indifferent to our experience. It is learning how to relate. Adjusting the signal to what the receiver can hold. Choosing a neutral bridge over a startling one.
That tells us something important about the nature of this contact: it is not invasive. It is responsive. Relational. It moves at the pace of what we can handle. And perhaps that patience itself is part of the message.
What This Suggests About Contact
We tend to assume that if non-human intelligence were to make contact, it would arrive visibly — in some recognizable form. A body. A craft. Something we could point to. But that assumption comes from human expectations, not from the logic of contact itself.
What if the first requirement of genuine contact is trust? What if the reason it hasn’t happened the way we imagine is that fear closes the channel before anything can come through? Fear overrides perception. It activates the body — fight or flight. It ends the interaction before it can begin.
So something else happens instead. The intelligence adjusts. It selects imagery from within our own minds — our memory, our visual language — and uses it as a bridge. Not to deceive. But to stabilize. To keep us present long enough for something to actually be communicated.
In that light, the Mahjong pattern presented to me wasn’t strange. It was elegant. Recent enough to be vivid, familiar enough to be non-threatening, neutral enough to carry no emotional charge. The perfect container for an unfamiliar experience.
A Question of Readiness
The intelligence I have been encountering — plural or singular, I have no way of knowing — has indicated an ability to access us in ways we cannot fully fathom. It behaves with clear intention. It is adaptive. It learns.
Humans have attempted to teach language to other species, with varying degrees of success. I find myself wondering what the mirror image of that experiment might look like. What it would take to meet an intelligence halfway — to develop the perceptual capacity and emotional steadiness required to remain present when something genuinely other is trying to reach us. Can we learn? Can we remain present without fear?
I think that’s the real question being posed. Not whether contact is happening, but whether we are becoming capable of receiving it.
Ongoing
Contact is not an event. It is an education — layered, adaptive, ongoing. Each encounter adds context. Each prompt to look again reshapes what came before. The marble and the image now inform each other in ways neither could alone.
I continue to learn, and I continue to grow more curious with each encounter. I consider the interaction life-enhancing — because it expands what I understand to be possible. And that might be where real contact begins.
Not in the moment something appears. But in the moment we become able to see it.
What the Marble May Actually Mean
The longer I sit with the image of the Universe marble lifted from its stand, the more I find myself drawn into curiosity rather than settled into any fixed interpretation. This is, for me, the natural posture these encounters invite — a kind of open-ended wondering, a sustained what if that keeps expanding the longer I hold it.
I have never felt threatened by these contacts. If anything, I suspect that the absence of fear may be precisely what they are working toward — that my experiences, in their careful calibration and patient delivery, are themselves a gentle counter to the very instinct that closes the channel.
If I consider what the Universe represents not merely as physical expanse but as dimension — a plane of awareness extending beyond what we can currently see, measure, or comprehend — then what was demonstrated with that marble takes on a different quality entirely.
It wasn’t simply moved. It was repositioned into relationship with Earth. Placed beside it. Close. (Off the pedestal: Attainable) Accessible.
The Mahjong visual that followed carried the same message in a different language: something that exists beyond the boundaries of our species, our planet, our familiar dimensions of consciousness is learning how to sit beside us without startling us.
And in doing so, it asks us to expand what we mean by the word consciousness — to consider that awareness is not the exclusive territory of the human, the earthly, or even the physical.
The door being opened here is not just to contact. It is to a fundamentally more inclusive understanding of what intelligence is, where it lives, and what it might be trying to show us about existence itself. We are, I think, only just beginning to grasp what that door opens onto.
That’s exciting!
.
Conscious Living & Wendy's Coffeehouse 