Sense of Soul - Normalizing Talks About Aliens, UFO’s and Other Phenomena

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Today on Sense of Soul we have Mike Fiorito he is a freelance journalist, and author. Mike joined us last year to tell us about his book Mescalito Riding His White Horse, which received the 2024 Independent Press Distinguished Favorite Award in Spirituality. Today he is sharing his latest book UFO themed science-fiction novel For All We Know: A UFO Manifesto published in May 2024, a literary excursion into the lived experience of the UFO phenomenon, interwoven into a tapestry of music, psychedelics and the flux-and-flow of everyday life. Written from the first-perspective the book provides the reader with a biographical snapshot of the processes by which anomalous experiences are perceived, processed and incorporated into a personal perspective on the cosmos and the human condition. Check out his website and follow his journey on IG!  @mike3fio https://mikefiorito.com

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul Podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. There are things that happen that we do not understand.

If you want to be a jerk and just say, well, it's all in your imagination, you're crazy. That's just not good enough anymore. And even a scientifically rational person has to come to that conclusion. Otherwise, you're just not being a good scientist. Right. And I know this is another topic for your newer book. Let's do this again. Let's keep in touch.

Oh, yeah. I can't wait to hear about the aliens. Well, we're going to get down on that. Today on Sense of Soul, we have Mike Fredo back with us. Mike is a freelance journalist and author. He joined us last year to share with us his award-winning book, Mescalito Riding His White Horse. But today, Mike's joining us to share his latest book, UFO-themed science fiction novel, For All We Know, A UFO Manifesto. A literary excursion into the lived experience of UFO phenomenon,

interwoven into a tapestry of music, psychedelics, and the flux and flow of everyday life. Howdy. Hey, how you doing? Good. How are you doing? I am well. I'm excited because this is a totally different topic with you today, but you know, it's one of my favorite topics too. I love to talk about aliens. I love the title of your book. But for me, it's the question of what do we know? We don't really know a lot, but yet there's all of a sudden a light being shined. I think for the first time where it's not talked about as being kind of kooky. It's true. And I think it's funny because I think it still is. If you mention UFO, you're going to get a giggle. So it's just going to happen. I think what's changed is you had now

some mainstream things hit. So like the New York Times had an article, there's congressional hearings. What are they talking about if there's nothing to talk about? What's interesting is most people are like UFOs. yeah whatever you know it's still not really resonating and amongst friends that i have one guy's a professor and he has had a ufo experience and he says to me yeah i don't believe in ufos i'm like i i don't you saw a ufo didn't you so i think where part of it is that people aren't comfortable with not knowing, because we don't know what it is. And it is elusive. It's very elusive. It doesn't adhere to logic. So it's, you know, yes, we have data, we can talk about it scientifically,

but it goes out of the range of what we at least today have as instruments to record and to kind of have a consistent data that can be analyzed. I mean, and a lot of people might disagree with that, but the average person, take a photograph, it's not a good photograph. You see something, you take a video, it doesn't work. It seems to evade, I love what Carl Jung, who was really one of the first Western intellectuals to take it seriously. I mean, he wrote a book on flying saucers. And he basically says it is clearly both a physical thing and he believed also a psychological thing.

At the congressional hearing, they had said they were interdimensional, which I felt was very interesting. I thought that said a lot to the world for them to research what that word actually meant. I thought it was a huge thing for that word to actually come into a meeting like that. That was pretty amazing. yeah i think what it's interesting because you know when gresh brought that up and then he gave examples of like what what what even does that mean or how would it present itself and he said something like if you have an object and it casts a shadow so what we see is the shadow we don't see the object because it sort of casts into our dimension is what he thinks. And I think that probably we still don't really know. And hence the title, we shouldn't feel a completest sense of understanding everything. If you go back 20 years on a scientific premise, if you go back 50 years, if you go back 100 years,

I mean, we haven't, the modern era, even amongst people that are educated, even in science, don't really understand science that's from the 1920s and the quantum mechanics and what that says about's kind of strange, elusive, that this notion of spookiness at a distance, that subatomic particles communicate with each other. And even Einstein said, well, there must be a hidden factor. There's a hidden factor that... So he just put an X there and said, that answers it. The idea that when in a quantum experiment

the observer influences the outcome i mean that is astonishing i think it goes back to the hermetic philosophy too man i was just thinking that exactly i was thinking precisely just that. So you just read my mind. That was very telepathic there. I've been reading Carl Jung's alchemical subject I feel like it's making more sense of the alchemical stuff you know and if I could say briefly what for me at least you know Jung had these so you look at these texts and images because he was very much interested in the images. And they're very symbolically potent. Yes. But we don't really, it really speaks to us into what we see into our personal, the observer influences the outcome. So I look at these things, I am gripped and fascinated.

It doesn't answer any question. It points me in directions. Yeah. You know, that's how I feel. Man, I've been on that seeking path for so long. When you were describing what Grouch had said about being interdimensional, is that not what we are? Whether you are on LSD or meditation,

or just daydreaming, thinking about a memory? Yeah. I mean, we're interdimensional to other beings. Now, for instance, I don't want to gross anyone out, but there's bacteria that's on me right now. There's a fungi in my biome, my gut biome right now, in my mouth even. And what am I to that? What is it to me? We already in this terrestrial world, we intersect with species, with beings, and we don't really understand each other ants do these incredible formations and seem to communicate we don't know how they seem to do these they're incredibly productive they i know so i have a nest on my front door and usually the nest is they do it every year but right now usually they do it above the reef, but this time they did it in the middle

so we can see the baby birds real well and I've got all kinds of video. So cute. But I said, you know, it's been really windy. I said, I don't think all of those birds can fit in that nest and there's only like two left. And I was talking to my kids. They're like, well, they go and make their own nest.

And I was like, already? And they're like, yeah. I're like, well, they go and make their own nest. And I was like, already? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, well, how do they know to do that? They're like, it's in their DNA. I mean, my kids are so freaking smart. Are you kidding me? I mean, but it's like a no-brainer, but it's kind of like what you're saying. It's like all species can do these really miraculous things. We're so controlled by society.

We're taught what they want us to know. So this is the mold that they've created basically. But yet what would just be within our DNA, our instincts is I think what ends up happening to us, how I found myself very very attracted to the studies of Carl Jung too I didn't understand it at the time either but like you as my seeking began I kept going back to him and like oh this dude knew a lot he did and it he wasn't I think for there were Westerners that preceded him, you know, Giordano Bruno and, you know, a whole slew of, but of course, what he is talking about is shamans, indigenous American. Yeah. and are many other peoples and civilizations that have had a contact with these things and have had a culture that's receptive to listening to dreams, paying attention to dreams,

utilizing dreams, using symbolic. Well, we do too. We just pretend that we don't. Right. Synchronicity. That's something. And no one can ever explain that. And I love that he was one of the first people that tack don't. Right. Synchronicity. That's something. And no one can ever explain that. And I love that he was one of the first people that tackled that.

And it's interesting because he sort of, in an analogous way, he sort of said, is it the mind kind of projecting onto reality, onto consensus reality, even in the way he felt about UFOs? He didn't seem to have a conclusive opinion on it. But he said, clearly there's data, there's radar data, which I thought was interesting because he's writing this in, say, 1950-something. Right. And radar data, he says it in the book.

That would have been before 1950. Cause I think he died in the forties. Didn't he? I, I, I believe he died in the fifties. I'm not absolutely sure. I wouldn't bet any money on it.

No, maybe I'm thinking, I'm thinking of Tesla. Nevermind. There's another one. Another one. Yeah. But,

uh, I think that, you know, he was kind of curious, but he, there's some of the things he said are so thought-provoking and interesting, but that we kind of manifest it somehow through our collective unconscious. I mean, think of the way through time and through culture, the phenomena, if we call it that, sort of has transformed. It could be a shape-shifting animal or a person. It could be an apparition of some kind. It could be a fairy, like the Fae people. It could be a UFO. It became kind of more technological later please say angel oh definitely angels yeah definitely angels yeah so it's kind of interesting that it goes back to

what i had said before which is the observer influences the outcome so there's something here there's something going on and perhaps we don't have the right you know mental apparatus we don't have the right apparatus or maybe no being has the right apparatus to see all of the components maybe it's something that you you can only see it as it intersects your experience your world whatever kind of being you are you know much in the way we exist in the ecosystem with other beings creatures you know be it trees birds i mean you know there's intelligent you were just talking about the birds how do they know i mean they're clearly intelligent there's a huge amount of intelligence and they do all kinds of fascinating things like

male birds will make bowers to basically impress their you know their female bill and they'll find like cool things like a colorful toothbrush and they'll put it in there and you know it's like the dude pad as if to say check this out but really they'll have something they'll find objects and they'll put them in their bower that's so interesting almost like an ego it's fascinating it's and it's it's a way of demonstrating to the female bird, hey, look, if you get hitched with me, I'm cool, I'm clever, I can do these interesting things, which actually when you think about it, sounds extremely human. I can take care of you. This is a nice place. Look at my cool pad. And if the female doesn't like it, they destroy the bower.

They build another one. Damn. Wow. That's ruthless. Wait, Mike, how are we talking about birds again? I swear in our first episode, we talked about birds. We're bird people. Yeah.

You know, I read Jennifer Ackerman. I read her books, The Genius of Birds, and I've read a few of them. And they were so affecting. First of all, she's such a gifted writer. She's a very, very gifted writer. And she's able to combine complex science in a way that's not cumbersome. So you're not bored by it. You're interested. I was very interested in the detail. She'll go to exotic places and find someone who's an expert on the coastal region of Australia. And then she'll meet and talk with that person who's a well-recognized expert. And then she'll digest this stuff and then tell it to us in a story format i just loved it and it's her birds have infiltrated my imagination completely so speaking of birds have you heard that the owl is connected to aliens have you heard that one i've read mike cleland's book, which absolutely blew my mind.

And I have an owl story, too. I mean, there's so many amazing owl stories. I mean, Dolores Cannon had an amazing owl story. I have a very creepy owl story. I would love to know your owl story. I think you sent me something on it. Oh, did I send you the black you did is that not creepy totally interesting yeah yes that it did not look i mean that was a

you know and i always say it's one thing if i would have saw an owl but that owl was different right you have certain moments when you experience things that you may experience every day, but this time it's different because there's a feeling. Yeah. I'll tell you briefly my owl experience. We were driving, it was during COVID. We live in a small Brooklyn apartment. I mean, it's really small. My apartment can fit in people's houses. That's how small it is. We have a joke that one of our friends has like four houses and my apartment could fit in her kitchen.

So during COVID, we're going berserk from the isolation and we rented an Airbnb. And believe it or not, we rented, we were denied rental at one point because we did the rental, we registered. But at one point, Brooklyn was the epicenter of COVID. So it was deemed by the CDC an epicenter, so they wouldn't let us come. So we found another place where driving, you know, it's, in New York, you get outside. We're in Connecticut. It's a rural part, but it's not that far from the city, but it looked very pristine. But we'd driven off the main highways. Now we're on a local highway. We're on a local road, getting closer to the destination. It's raining out. It's late at night. We stopped somewhere and I had two beers, so my wife is driving. And as we're driving, we see rain puddles and we see frogs on the road, scampering away, little frogs. Is that normal? It's very weird. I'm not sure. maybe the rain brought them out i don't know it seemed that during covid yeah life that was hitting hiding in the bushes kind of emerged

because people left the scene so we're driving and we see up in the distance and i i think it's like say a hundred ish feet or so and there looks like like there's a cone, one of those traffic cones. So we slow down. And again, I'm looking out the window. We're both looking out and my wife is trying to avoid the frogs, which you can't really do. So it's not really happening. And as we get closer, then it becomes clear, it's an owl. And what we both had estimated, it was roughly about a four-foot owl, a gray owl. Wait, what? A four-foot? Right, exactly.

So we looked it up. That is not common, okay? Common? Right. It's totally uncommon. So we get up to, you maybe my maybe my estimates were wrong but this was a big owl but even as big as a cone i mean which is probably about three feet it's basically so it's in the highway standing sentry right and it's kind of standing there and it's you know our lights were beaming on it now we see it and i go to get out of the car i open the door and she says you know my wife says get back

in the car what are you stupid you know this it'll claw your eyeballs out so i'm oh okay yeah good idea so i get back in the car and it's just kind of staring us down and the way it felt was we were on that borderland between like the city-ish part and now you're entering its domain its territory okay and it was kind of sizing us up and saying you know who are you What's the magic? It didn't say anything. I'm making up words. But it seemed to be granting us or it was in its decision to allow us or disallow us. I mean, we couldn't proceed without it moving. So it's staring us down. We're just kind of fascinated. Its eyes are, and then at some point, its head swiveled around. It picked up like a spaceship, really. And I would say, again, I'm not an expert in this stuff, but maybe a six-foot wingspan, a six foot wingspan. And it like majestically flew up and silently just kind of, but it's such a magical moment

of, you know, you're being granted access. You're deemed worthy by this creature that was way more intelligent than we were. Certainly I was. And then we proceeded to our destination but it was it was fascinating an encounter a standoff in a way really that's in the book i kind of changed it a little bit in the book because you know the book it is a fiction book it reads like a memoir I'm not intending it to be. I wanted it to be, it's not like other UFO books, maybe you call it. I wanted the latitude to express some of the

things that I'd been reading and inspired by in the form of narrative. You're such a great storyteller. Well, thank you. Thank you. So I did include the owl, but it's a little bit adjusted for the story, as are many of the things. Some of them do come from experiences. My goal too was to connect to people that maybe wouldn't be interested in this topic. So I think some people will pick up a book that says UFO, and they'll go, oh my God, I'm not going to read that. And they're missing so much. There's so much that they're missing.

And I wanted to connect it to experiences that relate to, there's a kind of close-up experience of a death based on, you know, real stories. A real story. I mean, my mom's passing, you know, without getting, you know, too maudlin on it. But when you're that up close to something like that, it's very transformational and you you can there's something between you know that world in this world that jump that space between which is very hard to define i mean yes you could say your heart's not beating but it's there's that the place where they leave and how they go and how that connects us to the earth had that were made from the earth every single atom in your body i mean they say also comes from the sun but everything

we are made from is of the food the water that's consumed having come from this planet and we're essentially just to just another configuration. Yeah. And then you move to some other place. And it's profound. It's profound on the people left behind because where are you?

You become memory. You become other things. And some people visit us and they visit us for sure in dreams. So no matter how stubborn someone might be about these things, you probably dream people. And I think there's more truth in dreams than we give credit for. It's another reality. So yeah, there's a lot of this exploration of dreams, of near-death experience, of dealing with death. Of course, there are UFO experiences as well. It goes very deep into music as being a connecting modality.

Of course, your music love would show up. It's a vibration that moves us into that higher dimension. It takes us out of our busy mind. It takes us out of the body for a moment. Yeah, I agree. Out of our ego. Out of our ego. So I saw that you had met and taken a picture with Diana Pasuka. And I really liked her new book because I felt like she was trying to do that a little bit too in her research as she discovered.

And I have seen this over the past year or so. I started to notice that, and you mentioned something like this earlier, how I perceive the world, that's the result of my experience, basically. So I grew up Catholic. And so a lot of my experiences with interdimensional beings, I say would be of Christian background. So they're going to be very angelic, which is so interesting because someone else could have an experience with that same being or same idea of whatever, and they're going to see it maybe as something totally different, which I find is amazing. But yet, we're talking about really the same thing. Yeah. You know, there's the idea that our consciousness is made of constructs that are built from our experience. And so we're going to see the world. Now, some of us have shared constructs, but if you're from another culture

or another time, you know, I mean, a simple example is if i went to the amazon with this laptop and someone who's never seen anything technological and i said oh look at this they would they wouldn't be able to fathom in in the way that we can't fathom what is that what is this experience that's coming to us? What is this UFO object? I mean, unidentified, it could be an operation, an orb. It could be a shiny metallic thing. It's something we can't comprehend. So I think there's some analogy there that the constructs that we have built in our consciousness and unconsciousness

determine how we see the world. I mean, we can stretch it a little bit. We can penetrate it through things like meditation, you mentioned. You have to get out of your mind to be able to do so. Yeah, which it's a great way to put it. You have to get out of your mind to get into it. You have to get into your mind to get out of it. You're out of your mind to be able to do so. Yeah, which it's a great way to put it. You have to get out of your mind to get into it. You have to get into your mind to get out of it. So when someone says you're out of your mind, that's actually a good thing. Right, right. Well, I mean, out of body experiences, but there are many ways and many cultures of different ways of doing just that. But still, when you penetrate that other realm, a dream,

an alchemical text or an alchemical drawing or an altered state, be that from a meditation or listening to music or listening to binaural beats, listening to rhythmic drumming. You know, I've been to shamanic ceremonies where listening to rhythmic drumming. I've been to shamanic ceremonies where there are rhythmic drumming, and you're taken aloft. You're going away. Yeah. But it's hard to bring it back.

What was that? It is. It's like a dream. I hate to come back to. Right. Some experiences, there's beauty. And like we were talking about earlier, there's beauty and like we were talking about earlier there's beauty and horror and um you you may depending upon maybe your state of mind at the moment or maybe just who you are um who they are you know are tigers good or bad? You know, are hurricanes good or bad?

There are dogs that are not nice, right? You know, human beings and anything else. It's a matter of perspective. It's a matter of, you know, who are you? Where are you in that configuration, in that relationship? You know, are you the one being sought after? Are you the one seeking? Do you think that when you experience those things, for me, I think the first thing that

a person would do would be have fear, and then they would try to get away from it, which is much like we do with all challenges, problems, our life's pain, negative emotions. But I've learned that those are the things that you actually need to understand the most. I'm not afraid of this beautiful owl that sits in my tree at night, but that fricking dark ass one that was at the top of my tree, that was fearful to me. So it's those fears that we actually have to confront and explore more. Don't you think? I think so. And that's not easy to do. And we all have fears and they're all different. So yeah, I can see, i know for myself you know i've

done things like a sensory deprivation tank honestly it was it was scary it was uh somehow because it's dark you're you're floating in these like salts so you're kind of you're kind of floating like this and you can't hear or see anything so your imagination is run amok and you know everything all the stuff that's hiding in the dark recesses come out like bats i mean i tried to i tried to i've done things to to push that threshold um i'm no master of consciousness. I'm more of a curious person that's sitting by the crick, making observations, trying to do one inch better of myself and seeing how I fall short, frankly. I mean, fears can be things like people you don't like, even. Why don't you like those people? What is it about you that makes you not

embrace that type of person? Why do we feel morally superior to someone? I think it gets tricky. It's like that alchemical text. You're just kind of seeing reflections back of you. So true. And with that, and speaking of Carl Jung as well, did you find, because what I've also learned over the years is that there are archetypes when it comes to beings. And I had a listener, Donna, and she does Reiki and she called me and said she had a client that was seeing like this devil-like looking figure during her session. And my answer was, well, she was probably visualizing some sort of fear. I mean, because what would that mean? We see it as all these things evil, blah, blah, blah. But when it comes down to the emotion that you're attached to, isn't it fear?

But when I think about Archangel Michael, protection, or the goddess energy, that mother energy. So there's different archetypes that kind of go along with the emotion that you experience. Yeah. I think it's enigmatic. Even amongst people, there are good... I'm not saying that people are inherently evil. Some people are nicer than others, and some people have a greater depth of compassion. I mean, that's just a fact. I mean, some people do. Some people are able to give more and they're able to care more. So it's complex. And when you're seeing that person is seeing that devil, who knows, is that some reflection of them? Is that just something independent or both go back to you know where we started it's not so much an either or it's uh it's a both kind of thing i just feel like we're so programmed we're so programmed we're even so programmed that we think of alien as just little green people

right and some people say that they're us in the future or they're us. They're just us in some other way. I mean, why do they, they're bipedal? You know, they often have two eyes. They're standing upright. You know, they kind of, it's kind of peculiar that in this super various universe where you have tarantulas and fish and eels and bacteria. Yeah, those little birds right before they had fur looked like freaking aliens. Yeah. Very much like. Yeah, it's just strange. Mike Masters writes about, so he basically says that what we're seeing is the trajectory of evolution of how we would look. So that's why some people have that feeling. My opinion on these things is I'm very provisional on it. I feel that, well, I don't know. Interesting idea. I'm more of a questioner and I don't feel so resolute in a particular position I have great feeling and compassion you know since the publication of For All We Know and I'm also working on another non-fiction book I've been getting a lot of calls from people and emails from people.

And then they'll tell me their very impassioned story because I'm writing it down. And the power of these stories, I mean, they're undeniably powerful. And all I say is, you can tell, there's people come to you in a way and I just say, well, I'm not here to question your story. I'm just writing it down and telling it. I'm trying to connect it to other things maybe. I'm trying to contribute to the conversation to, and I would say mostly positive, connected to other connected to other things that, other subject matter that even are in the realm of ordinary, you know, so, so for instance, you know, you know, I'm a big music fan, I'm a music journalist. So trying to connect these things to even music, because

everyone likes that. How do we increase this conversation, expand the footprint of it? I like the term that Jeff Kripal uses. He says, you know, making the impossible possible. So how do we get those things connected? Because we live in an extraordinary universe that's full of miracles. And it's, I think our tendency, default tendency is to say well that's just you know let's just push that yeah right i mean and and it's funny because the ceos and the most powerful people and the most whatever it is type of people they live in their imagination they They flock to Star Wars. It's the icon on their desk. They're living in an imaginal world. Maybe they just put it in that place of it's just in your imagination.

Just in your imagination is where everything is. It's how the world gets created. Yeah, out of your mind. Out of your mind. You got to be out of your mind to get into it. You got to Out of your mind. Out of your mind. You got to be out of your mind to get into it. You got to get into your mind to get out of it. So true. I love that.

Mike, thank you so much. I love that you've created this space to be able to talk about this and for people to be able to see that this is interdimensional, really. And it could be, you know, sought in many different ways. It just is on your perspective, how you see the world. Well, thank you, Shanna. Always great to speak to you.

Always fun to speak to you. And we're just two curious wanderers asking questions and observing the magic. And I appreciate you so much and the work you do. And I see the podcasts that you have and I'm following you in the nicest way. But it's lovely to see all the work you're doing

and thank you for what you do. And thank you for having me on. Yes, anytime for your next one and the next one. Thank you. You're so creative and you're a great storyteller, like I said. Tell everybody where they can find your book and where they can find you and follow you. Well, great. Thank you. So if you go to mikefiorito.com, M-I-K-E-F-I-O-R-I-T-O.com, you'll see links to everything.

But you could also go to your favorite bookseller and look at for all we know by me and you'll find it. It's available now. I just started to actually ship. Although some people have gotten early shipments, but thank you. Let me know what you think folks. And if you have questions, I look forward to them and Shana, thank you so much. Be well, enjoy the lovely, lovely day. I hope the sun shines on your face and the wind is on your back.

Yes, you as well. Take care. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul Podcast. And thanks to our special guests for joining me. If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at www.mysenseofsoul.com where you can work with me one-on-one or help support Sense of Soul Podcast by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.