email from Mac Tonnies

I searched thru my old email files and I found hundreds of messages from Mac Tonnies. He was a master of the quick note and the insightful reply.

Below is an edited email reply from Mac, from just a little over two years ago. We’d had a long phone conversation the night before. I had been to New York and met with Budd Hopkins and Dave Jaccobs, with the documentary crew, this was the “whirlwind trip” mentioned in the text.

Mac was an amazing guy, and he kept me balanced as I struggled to make sense of my own story. He helped me enormously and the world is a lesser place without him.
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- - - From: Mac Tonnies / Date: November 6, 2007 12:51:36 AM MST - - -

Mike: Good chat session last night, I needed that. Thanks.

Mac: It's always uniquely therapeutic to talk UFOs with someone who knows what he's talking about. Sounds like a whirlwind trip!

There seems to be a desire (from the film crew folks) for me to stand up and declare: "Hello, my name is Mike, and I am a UFO abductee."

But, I can't quite get there.

I kind of sensed that. Great drama, but not your bag -- and rightfully not. You certainly appear to share experiences with some "abductees," but the label is so stifling that it's undeserving of your balanced skepticism, in my opinion.

Is that like an alcoholic saying that he doesn't have a drinking problem? Am I in denial?

I don't think so. You're simply suspending judgment (and in so doing transcending what, ultimately, is a fairly limiting label).

Mac

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Wanna see a nice little video of Mac being charismatic in a coffee shop? Click HERE!

head vs heart

A small painting of myself on brown cardboard. This wide-eyed expression of intensity is typical of all my self-portraits. During the process of drawing myself, I get weirdly focused on my reflection in the mirror.

I had a conversation with a friend from college. He knew I was writing a blog on the topics of UFOs, and he read thru a handful of posts, and he found the content different than he expected.

He said, “It reads like you are on a spiritual journey.”

I replied, “I know, because I am!”
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I feel like I’ve been exploring my oppressive self-doubt throughout the short history of this blog. I’ve been earnestly looking into myself, and it’s been VERY interesting, even if only to me. This on-line format, to me, needs to remain deeply personal. Am I wallowing in the self-reflection of my own inflated ego? Maybe. Probably.

When I started this blog, the first bunch of postings were just nice stories with pleasant synchronicities. I was afraid to share the really weird stuff. The first really hard post was an experience in 1974 that involved a two hour missing time event with an odd orange flash in the sky.

At first I wasn’t brave enough to post it on line, the implications of that story just screamed UFO abduction. It was all written up, just waiting until I could muster up some courage. It took an unbelievable event to get me to take the big dive, and it happened when I received an email from an elementary school friend from named Cindy, and her reappearance in my life was absolutely magical. The timing and the relevance to the events of 1974 were too intense to be just a coincidence.

The logical side of my brain was telling at me NOT to post that story. It screamed at me: What about the implications? You have no proof, and anyway - it’s impossible!

But, my heart was telling me that something miraculous had happened. My heart won out, and I posted that story, and a whole bunch of equally impossible stories unfolded in the following months.

I’ve been able to talk about some of my memories for a long time, maybe ten years or so. But I didn’t truly believe my own story and it’s implications. I could discuss each event in a logical framework of other experiences reported in literature, and I could remain cool and level headed. But after some point, it felt like my personal disclaimer was wearing thin. This denial has created some very real tensions, and something had to snap.

The best advice I've ever gotten as I've descended into this nutty realm of paranormal weirdness was to KEEP AN OPEN MIND. And lemme tell you, my mind has been stretched in the last three years.

I am skeptical and cautious about the the core paranormal subjects that make up the content of this blog. I’m grappling with UFOs, vivid dreams, synchronicities, channeled information, psychic readings and foggy memories. I’ll also add that all these topics have an element of fun to them, and the mystery is so interesting that I get seduced. I know that.

Here's where I get lost. Is it literal truth? Or is it a metaphorical truth? I have no idea. I can’t define what “it” actually is, but I can say, from my gut, that I know that “it” is real.

Personally, literal truth is like trying to look at a locomotive train under a microscope. Metaphorical truth is like the rainwater in a forest. I am an artist. I am NOT a scientist. I'm learning to trust my gut, even if the pragmatic side of my brain is in revolt.

I am dealing with paranormal experiences, and if I try and scrutinize them with the pragmatic side of my brain, I get stuck and distressed. It hampers me, and it makes me miserable.

It has been much more useful to deal with this stuff from my heart. Whenever I do, I benefit enormously. I've learned to trust my heart (or gut).

I can't define or defend my gut feelings on this. All I can say is that the feeling is real, and I can’t ignore it. To dismiss these paranormal experiences makes perfect sense logically. But logic is a tool that can only take you so far, and then you stall out in a place of confusion.

I find my heart simply won't let me dismiss the really strange stuff just because it's really strange. Something is VERY real is happening, and it’s entirely beyond logic.

That said, my logical side is still absolutely perplexed.

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Addendum added Sept 1st 2012: This post was written after the heady month of October 2009. This 31-day stretch was absolutely life altering for me.

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reoccurring dream

a funny cartoon to represent my dream memory

Over the last week I’ve had a reoccurring dream. The imagery is decidedly foggy, so I can’t really share much. I seem to have the same dream every night, and I think it started after the six-hour phone call with Anya a week ago Saturday.

Here’s as much as I remember, I’m lying down on my side, and my brain is being filled with information. I see it visually as little items falling down and entering my head. The image I get is like breakfast cereal being pored from a box with my head being the bowl. The falling items seem like little rectangles.

On the very first night, I even saw a kitchen funnel in my ear as I lie sideways on the pillow so it was easier to pour the items. I recognize that this metaphor is downright silly, and that seems to match my temperament.

What am I being downloaded with? I’m not sure, I woke up last night and I could visualize a tidy list of everything that went into my head. Sadly, as I type this, I can’t remember anything.

During this dream, I am always lying down, and for some reason, I sense that Anya Briggs is there, and she might even be pouring the box of cereal, albeit metaphorically. And we are both wearing tight fitting dark suits, like a scuba diver might wear.

Anya Briggs emailed me this comment (slightly edited):

Ha! ... Ok, that's funny that you thought they looked like cereal or something, because to me, if they were looking like cereal, they look like LIFE cereal ... You know: "Hey Mikey! He likes it!" That cereal? Sure there's no "coincidence" here?

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funny dream

Double click on the illustration for a hi-rez view.

During the summer of 2008 I was at the receiving end of a series of oddly vivid dreams. I call them “reassuring” dreams because in each one I confront certain frightening UFO issues. In these dreams the scary things are presented to me as something simple and non-threatening. I’m not sure what to make of these dreams.

One of these curious “reassuring” dreams had the distinct air of comedy. It happened last summer while I was sleeping in a tent in the mountains of central Wyoming.

Please note, this NEVER happened, it was a dream!

In this dream, I was visiting my older brother in Michigan. We were together in his kitchen and he off-handedly told me that he had something that he thought I would find interesting. Then, he took me to the garage and showed me what he had, it was a flying saucer! It was about the size of a van, up on saw-horses and partially covered with a tarp. It looked like someone had started disassembling the thing because two big sections had been removed from the sides.

I was completely mystified.

My brother calmly explained he done some sort of government work, and knew some guy who ended up with this thing, and he didn’t want it anymore so my brother took it off his hands as a sort of favor. Anyway, it was funny how casual he was about it.

Here’s the weird part. He explained that if I got too close it would distort my perceptions, and - well - alter reality. I didn’t quite get what he meant. So, I approached it and as I got closer there was a distinct warping of my psyche. This eerie feeling would be hard to explain, but it was very defined. The feeling was unmistakably vivid.

And here’s the bizarre part, that warped sensation was familiar, it seemed to exactly match my memory of the events from Maine in 1993, and the dream like fog I experienced.

As I backed away, the feeling subsided, when I got closer it happened again.

My brother was totally cavalier about the whole thing. He said he was used to that weird feeling, no big deal. But he can’t figure out how to get inside the thing, that sensation holds him back. Then he showed me how he attached a camera on the end of a long stick and puts that in the door to see what was inside.

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The way I saw the craft was as a disassembled disc, with the sides removed. This drawing shows how I perceived the assembled craft.


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my cat acts scared

My cat Spazzy, in a typically calm pose.

Last night I was alone in my little cabin sitting on the couch watching a DVD, my cat was sitting next to me, as always. Suddenly I was aware that she was acting really scared. She got into this really scrunched-up defensive pose and her tail poofed up huge. The hair along her back was sticking straight up. I tried to pet her to calm her down, but she didn’t respond at all. I could feel her back was rigid with tension. I leaned over and looked at her face and her eyes were entirely dilated and black.

She wasn’t moving, and she was entirely focused at an empty spot the center of the room just a few yards in front of the couch.

I saw nothing, and I sensed nothing. But my cat's overt display meant something.

I got up and walked around the house, and when I stood in the living room in front of the couch I could see right where she was focused. She stayed frozen in that anxious pose with her dilated eyes fixed on an empty spot right in the center of the room.

Am I paranoid? Should I worry? It went on for like 10 minutes. Eventually, she changed her posture, and she jumped down from the couch and sat under the coffee table, still focusing on that empty spot. At this point I was up and walking around, but she wasn’t following me at my ankles, and that is unusual. I watched as she eased her way closer to the spot in the center of the room and she cautiously sniffed around that spot.

There is a skittish side to my cat, and I’ve never seen her act like this. I've seen her deal with big dogs and loud noises, I know how she reacts to those kinds of stimulus, she’ll run upstairs and hide. After about 20 minutes she was her regular self again, zipping around the house and begging for attention.

I wrote this up because the event seemed decidedly unusual. It came on the heels of a very intense few weeks of heavy self examination culminating in a very real acceptance of my memories and their implications. Maybe this means nothing, and I'm articulating an underlying paranoia that comes with my journey.
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Text added Nov. 5th, 2009

Okay, I didn’t add this to the post above because it was so weird. My cat’s intensity was so acute that I absolutely KNEW something was in the room.

I got up from the couch and stood in the middle of the main room, and sort of stared into the spot that my cat was all focused on and I said (out loud) that I felt strong and confident. I said (firmly) if you have anything to say to me, I respond well when I receive messages in my sleep, so please communicate that way. (that said, nothing happened in my dreams that night)

This speaks to where I'm at these days. It felt absolutely normal to speak firmly and confidently at an empty spot on my living room rug.

I'll add that earlier in the day I had a 90-minute session with Anya, where she played the role of channel for me and my curious needs. She wrote me an email when she heard about my cat and her intense reaction.

Here's what she said:

"I don't want to freak you out, but sometimes, beings open portals to check things out. That is all they come to do. I think that's what happened - actually, hold on - the beings are saying that's exactly what happened. I think I should explain because I am not surprised this happened at all and cats are naturally psychic...

I think there was some high strangeness going on by proxy of some kind of connection to me. Other people I know have reported this sort of thing .... Idaho to NY to them is nothing in terms of distance ... it isn't the first time my 'boys' were checking up on people I associate with to feed the flame of 'knowledge' further along as it were ... No big deal."

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Also: The movie on the DVD was THE HUSTLER (1961). This is an amazing movie, and maybe there is relevance. It's a story about deception, and 1961 is a relevant year in this blog.

And - Jackie Gleason, has an interesting place in UFO history. He was well-known as quite and aficionado on the UFO subject, and late one night (as the story goes) he went with his golfing pal Richard Nixon to an air-force base to view little alien bodies, supposedly from Roswell.

(Mucho thanks to the comments below for inspiring this extra text)

researching myself

This short essay is full of speculations and deep personal examinations. I’m leaving myself wide open for anyone to question my sanity. I'm stating this up front so I don't need to dance around what I wanna say, I'm just gunna say it.
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At a recent UFO conference in California I told fellow attendee that I was doing research. They said, "Oh really? What are you researching?"



I replied, "Well, I guess I'm researching myself."



That was a perfectly honest answer.

How’s this research comin’ along? I’m not sure if I can answer that because I have absolutely no idea what I am interacting with.

I feel like I'm grappling with the big questions right now because the last few weeks have been over-the-top in the power of the synchronicities and intensity of the experiences. I look back over the last few years and it feels like I've been dealing with some sort of an incremental induction. I'm moving, little by little, into a place of utter weirdness. At first I was tickled, and then poked, then slapped in the face - and now I feel like my head has been rung like a gong.

Something has been working hard to get my attention, and at the same time it is being careful not to totally freak me out. Whatever it is, there is something about it that is intensely personal. It is playing out in a way that feels like it's tailored to fit some deep part of my psyche. As I attempt examine it, I am amazed at how precisely the events are unfolding, one after another. Each experience is opening me up, just a little bit more.

The heart-warming story about the grocery store check out girl was like being tickled.

The funny story about the bottle of Neutrogena 45 was like being poked.

The beautiful story of Cindy Gail arriving in my life was like being slapped in the face (it was a nice slap, really).

And all the forceful events of the last few weeks have rung my head like a gong.

I can’t help but be impressed with the steady and systematic escalation of these experiences. Along the way I’ve changed and evolved. I am not the same person I was just a few years ago.

Just so you know, there in no subject that I find more challenging than the trappings of the new age movement. But I have been escorted (or dragged?) to a place where I now consult psychics and channelers (and I am wearing a crystal around my neck, right now). This is something I would have dismissed with contempt just a short while ago. But now I’m here, and quite willingly.

Who knows what the future will bring? I like to think that I’m self-aware enough to drop any of these things if they just feel like they don’t work for me anymore. If this blogging format seems unnecessary, I’ll drop it.

My initial reason for going thru this focused self-examination was because of my foggy UFO memories. In the winter of 2006 I made a very real declaration, I said YES to looking at my experiences. I had an idea of how all this might unfold, but it hasn’t happened that way. It has been much stranger and much more personal that I would have ever imagined. This process, the act of saying YES, has been extremely challenging and the last three years have been really hard.

Why does that little image of a face in my vision seem so important? Nobody can see it except me. If I wasn’t a skilled illustrator, it would be impossible for me to share. But I can draw, so I did draw it, and I shared it with the whole world. And, believe me, I know how strange that is.

I saw a lot of owls from this summer. I really felt that my logical side of my head could dismiss these sightings as just chance. But after the incredibly intense on-line interactions with Stacey and her owl story, that logical thing doesn’t fit anymore. I never would have met Stacey if it hadn’t have been for all those owls, they played an important role. The owls got all intertwined with UFO’s and all culminated in a mind-blowing phone call with a gifted psychic.

These bizarre events can wig me out, true enough, but they also leave me fascinated and intrigued. Something is happening, and I’ll probably never be able to define it.

My head has been cracked open, I am receptive and ready for whatever the universe is gunna offer up next. I might fail, or wig-out. But, I might just gain a new insight that will surprise and impress me.

And maybe I can share what I find.

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Anya is a Channel

Anya in the zone, articulating some universal truths.

Late on Friday night I noticed a new addition to my short list of followers. There was a little avatar that I hadn’t seen before, and the moment I saw her tiny image there was the very real sense that this was somehow deeply important. I’m serious, this was a unmistakable feeling.

So I clicked on it, and got to her blog, titled: Anya is a Channel. It's loaded with a buncha of you-tube videos, most of them just a close up of her face as she speaks to her computer, and then she smiles, and begins channeling. She has a really funny way of speaking for Them (whoever They are) and she'll furrow her brow, and question things and then laugh. It's obvious there is a lotta banter going on in her head, and it's all intertwined with some amusing word-play.

I stayed up late and watched them all, and some of them twice.

Here I’ll add that I went thru a chapter of my life in the 90’s where I immersed myself in channeled information. I have a book shelf loaded with these books. I feel like I have a pretty good foundation into this fringe material.

The next morning I send Anya an email thru her blog, and within minutes she replies with her phone number - and I immediately dial my phone.

We talk for the next SIX HOURS!

Both of us burn thru multiple phone batteries, and then we’d frantically call each other back on another line.

We’ve each adopted New Your as our home town (even though I now live in Idaho) so it felt normal to talk in rapid fire fervor, jumping from subject to subject. We would unashamedly confront the other about the deepest stuff. Niceties weren’t held back, we really went for it!

She would drift in and out of her own voice, lapsing into channeling. The overlapping got confusing at times, and it evolved into a sort of three way conversation between myself, Anya and Them. I tried to stay totally open, like a sponge (or a vacuum?).

When I would share my strange life experiences, Anya would interrupt and interject from her sources. She (or more accurately, They) explained what was going on beyond my perceptions, and a lot of exacting details were imparted that Anya simply couldn’t have known.

As I write this out, I fully recognize that I just got hit with a big "whammy" and my head is still vibrating like a gong. (like a cartoon character that gets hit over the head with a frying pan, and then vibrates for a few extra beats) I know that I'll need to let the tone settle down a little before I can attempt to calmly organize my thoughts and emotions.

And yes, I know full well not to “believe” all this information without some critical thinking. Channeled is suspect, true enough. But, I was completely open. And how can critical thinking and channeling find a happy meeting place? The logical side of my brain screams that it’s impossible. My heart says the opposite.

Okay, it goes on and on and on. I laughed and cried. She egged me on and chided me. Lot's went down, more than I can write here.

Anya channels Them on my present state: “You are doing great. Good student, A plus, well done, they are patting you on the head, good work, they are happy.”

It ends with a sort of summation, from Them about our intense phone call.

Anya explains: “There is a reason this session was so long, we are awakening you. Your DNA is growing, it’s changing, because of this call. You are being transformed, awakened and stimulated to your real purpose. You are a Star Seed, and this is your time to wake up.”

Now, for her version of events, y'gotta visit Anya's Blog, and read this!
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More?

Okay, this morning email Marla Frees about yesterdays wildly intense phone call, and here is an excerpt from her reply:

“Mike ... make a journal of these amazing things, do not JUDGE this process, do not limit yourself to the unfolding of the greatest parts of yourself, you are becoming the Mike you were supposed to be ... God does not give you what you can't handle ... if it is too much for you then you ask, for them to slow down, but I think you have been getting ready for this, and you must surrender to this, RIDE THE WAVE, SURF IT LIKE THE SKIER YOU ARE ... BE BRILLIANT ON THE ICE CRYSTAL OF THE NEW FREQUENCIES YOU NOW DANCE WITH ... AND ALLOW THE LOVE TO POUR FORTH! Good job my friend ... You are doing GREAT.”

This inspiring quote from Marla matches what Anya told me in her summation, some of it word for word.