Introduction
For a long time, I thought contact meant something external we experience in our physical reality. A moment where someone from another world would arrive and, in some way, validate the longing my soul has felt throughout life.
Back in 2020 and 2021, I was fixated on the idea of extraterrestrial contact. Growing up, I often felt like an outsider. I carried a sense that I did not fit in, or at least that I did not relate to the world in the way I was “supposed” to.
So the idea of people from another planet, or beings from another dimension, who embody unconditional love and acceptance was fascinating to me. I wanted to meet someone from another world.
I wanted to go onto a ship, fly around in orbit, visit the moon, travel to another planet, or even explore Inner Earth. I wanted the experience. I wanted the relationship. I wanted to receive something from them that I did not yet know how to give myself.
I wanted the glamorized cinematic version of being an extraterrestrial contactee.
Looking back, I can see that my desire for contact was an externalized projection of what I was being guided to remember about myself.
That does not mean my desire was wrong or irrelevant. In fact, it meant I was willing to follow my intuition and be courageous enough to explore the possibilities of life outside of Earth. But over time, I had to grow into a different understanding.
What Is Contact, Really?
A UFO or craft in the sky.
A being appearing in front of us.
A hand extended from one civilization to another.
A melodramatic “invasion” scenario with a species hell-bent on “taking” Earth from humanity.
These are some of the most common themes that our human race has developed over the last eighty years to define what a “contact” experience is like. So much of our cultural understanding of contact has been built around physical arrival. Movies, television, books, and popular stories have conditioned many of us to imagine contact as something dramatic, visible, and often frightening.
For me, the unexpected extraterrestrial visitation scenario was the version of contact I wanted most when I was younger in this journey. I wanted to be walking along a hiking trail which then led to a person from another world standing in front of me. Naturally, I would then step onto the ship and travel the cosmos and I’d say:
“Nice knowing ya Earth! I’m outta here!”
But I no longer see this scenario as a reality when it comes to contact. I see it more as a rare exception, one that may require a level of mental, emotional, and spiritual maturity many of us are still growing into. So what does this mean for those of us still maturing mentally, emotionally, and spiritually within our human experience?
Well, we need to redefine our perceptions of contact into something new. Something that temporarily silences the desire for external and/or physical contact, and empowers our curiosity to look within ourselves, rather than only looking outward.
This is the flashpoint of awareness that allows us to see the interconnectedness of life. Not only on Earth but throughout the galaxy and our universe. Within each of our hearts is where the deeper power of contact resides.
Through meditation, inner stillness, and shared energetic work, this is how we begin building a bridge between ourselves and people from other worlds or beings of higher frequencies.
Contact, as I understand it now, is not just an interplanetary response to a radio signal sent by humans decades ago or an unexpected visitation from an intergalactic traveler, it is a meeting of consciousness.
Does Contact Happen To Us, or Through Us?
In the last couple of years, I have had opportunities to participate in group contact meditations. Sometimes these groups happen in person or they happen over a video call. Five people, ten people, fifteen, or more gather together with a shared intention. In those settings, we are not waiting passively for something to happen.
We are opening our hearts and cultivating an energy within ourselves to enter a state of stillness. We are creating a space where the connection can become possible between humans and people we define as “extraterrestrials,” or by the more common but less precise term, “aliens.”
So if contact means meeting within the heart space, within consciousness, or within the subtle fields of meditation, then contact is not simply something that happens to us, it happens through us. That distinction has supported the evolution of my limited view of contact into something that is based in meaningful participation between two civilizations.
I am learning how to meet them halfway and also give myself without fear for a shared experience based in equality.
Contact Is Already Happening
Another major shift in my understanding is this:
Contact is already happening in ways most of us do not yet perceive or understand.
I would further say that I believe contact has been happening for thousands upon thousands of years. Again, I grew up with a very physical image of contact. A formal first-contact moment that everyone could witness and agree upon because it was on “the TV”.
A moment like that is very exciting in its own way, but it is also limited. In reality, contact does not always announce itself in the ways our minds expect. Most of the time it does not come with proof, spectacle, or certainty.
Sometimes it may come as a subtle awareness, an energetic shift or as a dream with a “person” that leaves us with a feeling we cannot easily explain when we wake up the next morning. This is delicate territory because this is when discernment matters most.
Not every thought, image or internal experience that I might have in meditation necessarily means that I’m having contact or that I am on a grand cosmic adventure. Often, the thoughts, images and/or internal experiences are archetypes provided to me by my higher self to convey a message of guidance.
But I also believe it is possible to dismiss too much simply because it does not fit the physical framework we were taught to expect.
There is a middle path: one that allows us to explore contact inwardly with openness, but without fantasy; discernment, but without cynicism; and gratitude, without becoming obsessed after a profound experience. That is the path I am learning to walk.
Projection, Imagination, and Genuine Contact
A key question that requires patience and honest reflection in relation to non-physical contact during meditation is:
How can you distinguish contact from psychological projection or imagination?
For me, this distinction is not based only on what I see in meditation. It is based on the energy that surrounds the experience.
When I am projecting, I can usually sense the mind working. I am thinking about what I want to happen. I am imagining an experience because I have been reading about someone else’s experience. I am trying to create a result. That energy feels mental. It has almost a mechanical effort to it. But the contact experiences I have had feel different.
Before, during, and sometimes for a day or even a week afterward, depending on the depth of the experience, there is a particular energy that remains with me. I feel this pristine harmonious vividness in my heart and mind. I feel loved while balancing a playful spirit. It is authentic in a way that does not require thought, just beingness. It’s beautiful and peaceful.
I realize those are only words, and they do not fully capture the feelings of the experience. But that is part of the challenge. Some experiences cannot be translated cleanly into a spoken language. They can only be lived.
The closest I can say is this: genuine contact, at least as I have experienced it, carries an energy that is difficult to manufacture with the mind. I do not have to intellectually grasp at an imagined fantasy or force the experience to happen. It feels like being met in a presence of stillness without attachment.
The Shift I Had to Make
When I first became interested in contact, I wanted something from “them.” Whether it was validation, the distraction of a cosmic road trip around our moon, or evidence that the longing of my soul was not based only on being a lonely outsider.
But over time, I have come to understand that contact is not only about receiving an experience. It is about becoming available to relationship. That requires inner work and the willingness to reflect on why we want contact with people of other worlds and dimensions in the first place.
Do we want connection?
Do we want proof?
Do we want escape?
Do we want someone else to tell us who we are?
I had to ask myself those questions many times. Heck, I still ask myself those questions.
And the more honestly I ask them, the more I understand that contact is not separate from healing. It is not separate from consciousness or from the way we relate to ourselves, to one another, and to the unknown.
That is why this series begins here.
Before discussing disclosure, physical evidence, government secrecy, collective readiness, or the ethics of contact, I have to start with the first shift that changed everything for me:
Contact is not only something out there. It is also something within.
And perhaps the more we learn to meet it within ourselves, the more prepared we become to meet it elsewhere.
Thanks for reading and have a great present moment!
Matt
Editor’s note: This article was adapted from a Planet Phoenix video transcript and edited by Matt McGee with assistance from AI.