Liara --
I appreciate your response. (I really wan't expecting one, and my note sat for a while with no one responding anyway ... )
I've been evolving these thoughts over the last few days, and I think I'm clearer on what to do. My "difficulty" with the field, as fascinating and valid as it I think it is, is that the people who are genuinely serious about it are interested in it as part of the puzzle of how the phenomenon works or how reality works, as opposed to the mystery of
their relationship with reality. I hope I've conveyed this clearly enough so the distinction here is apparent.
The people who
are in the second category are witnesses and experiencers/abductees. In
one of my more recent postings I point out that in order to be of real help to experiencers/abductees it would require
years of schooling on my part, and then a willingness to explore the cutting edge of Psychology as it applies to the phenomenon, and endure the professional stigma of being associated with it. I feel confident we can understand the phenomenon ultimately by going in this direction, but getting meaningful
data is going to be a while.
I personally don't think this is "other people's spaceships." That's too pat an answer, and doesn't even remotely cover all the aspects of it. Not to deny the possibility of an some "otherworldly" intelligence as part of this, but I don't think it's from something as mundane as another planet.
My take on the subject is a personal thing, really: how can I add value to the world
now -- as a writer, as opposed to many years from now (and approaching retirement age, honestly) as a scorned psychologist.
I recognize there's an audience, and a big one if I wanted to "market" myself to it, but my bottom line is to add
value to people's lives, and I don't see that I'll be doing it there with the level of rigor it demands for some time to come.