And yes, it did feel like my ever-seeking, ever-analyzing (“nail it down,” “figure it out,” “get it right”) left-brain mind suffered through yet one more (re)birthing process, shattering old paradigms that I didn’t really know I had, and tossing me, prostrate, like a limp rag doll, once again, into the bounding Mystery.

More on all that later, I hope — unless Life continues to gallop so mercilessly forward that I have no time to “look back.”

Here’s me, at the start of the nearly six-day event, Tuesday, February 16, having just arrived at the Wekopa Resort and Conference Center in Scottsdale from an hour-long shuttle from Phoenix after a long, strangely routed series of flights from Indy to San Francisco to, finally, Phoenix. A bit addled, but eager (?), of course I was one of hundreds to get a selfie between two little grey “aliens.”

As usual, during the conference the vendor room was a hum of activity,

especially during the 15-minute interims between power-point presentations with images and short videos. They went on non-stop, one hour and fifteen minutes per, two in the morning, three in the afternoon. I missed one talk entirely; I walked out of another as “too fundamentalist and negative.” I got nourished by the ones that moved out of three-dimensionality into larger, more profound perspectives, and, as usual, was a bit bored with any presentation that focused narrowly on the “nuts and bolts” — i.e., “scientific evidence” that such and such was “real.” As if we can “prove” anything that way! As if reality doesn’t include more, always more, much much more, than our puny little attempts to control it!

And then there were the evening events: a meet-and-greet with wine and Mexican food the first evening, banquet and awards the final evening, movies of various sorts, all ET related, other evenings. But I didn’t get a chance to watch them, since I was whisked away first, to an extraordinary “goddess dinner” with award-winning filmmaker Jennifer Stein and six other amazing, multidimensional women on the patio of a beautiful Farm to Table restaurant overlooking the desert, and the following evening, to a cozy AirB&B dinner for twelve thanks to the largess of an attorney from LA, during which I sat next to one of the main event speakers, Nick Pope (he had been the man in charge of the “UFO Desk” at the Ministry of Defense in Britain from 1991 through 1994).

I thank my UFO buddy Joan Bird for my inclusion in these evening soirees. She and I have been attending these UFO/ET events since 1998 — she goes every year to multiple conferences, I attend one every few years. On our first evening there, she told me of a woman she met in the vendor room at last year’s UFO Congress; they traded books. Joan loved Devara’s book and wanted me to meet her. Okay!

Joan on left, with Devara ThunderBeat, a funny, earthy, award-winning musician (originally a drummer!), healer and explorer. She and I traded stories of eerie encounters in Egypt. See mine: Meeting Sekhmet

I decided to purchase her book, LOOK UP: My Encounters with ETs & Angels.

I wasn’t going to carry any new books home. But this one called to me. If nothing else, I figured, the title is terrific! How often have I said that all we do on this here planet is look down and move stuff around. Why don’t we just look up ! Devara does. And zowie! I couldn’t put Look UP down! A truly mind-blowing series of short-hand reports on astonishing personal experiences which leave us ordinary mortals in the dust.

Oh, but wait! As a result of Devara’s book, which I finished in the middle of last night, I asked for a dream that would show me what remedy I should get to heal, or at least stop the progress of, the primary tremor that I have been subject to for the last dozen years or so.

This was at about 3 A.M. When I awoke in the morning I remembered both the dream and the plant: ROSEMARY.

Googled it. Yes, it is one of the two herbs used specifically for tremors. Bingo.

I will purchase rosemary in essential oil form.