"Connection is the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued." ~ Brené Brown

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This coming Friday we have a LiveStream with Daniel Nichols and Steve Neill. Daniel and Steve will talk about their experiences and perspective of where and why this experience is happening to so many of us and how we are helping other experiencers in the community

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Last Friday night we had a marvelous Community Chat with lots of sharing about what is going on with experiencers, this project and other organizations that purport to help experiencers

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Breaking the Silence is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, Subscribe for free or consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our Zoom meetings, the Breaking the Silence Project and other content.

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We had a two-fer last weekend, not only the Community Chat on Friday, but a private Zoom meeting on Saturday night as well. Over 22 people joined us Saturday for a 2 hour meeting. There were many fascinatiing stories. Thank you all who attended.

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The Chat feature in Substack continues to have some interesting discussions.

Check it out

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Our Supportive Listeners program has several people signed up and congratulations to Erin McAdam for obtaining her Be There certificate so quickly📜. As soon as we have 6 volunteers with the certificate, we will schedule a Zoom planning meeting.

BTS Supportive Listener Program

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Our September schedule thus far is as follows:

September 3^rd: Live with Steve Neill and Daniel Nichols 4:00pm Pacific on YouTube

September 11^th A Conversation with Meridith Sperman 4:00pm Pacific

on YouTube

September 12^th BTS monthly Saturday Zoom 10:00 am Pacific

September 18^th A Conversation with Beth Ward 4:00pm Pacific on YouTube

September 19^th BTS Ladies’ Zoom 10:15 am Pacific

September 25^th A Conversation with Debra Kauble 4:00pm Pacific on YouTube

September 26 BTS Evening Zoom at 6:00pm Pacific

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Thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us. You Are Breaking the Silence in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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“A true community is not just about being geographically close to someone or part of the same social web network. it’s about feeling connected and responsible for what happens.” ~Yehuda Berg

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Looks like we’re going to have a busy weekend and end of August. Friday we are having a YouTube Community Chat and have invited about a dozen people to join us on camera. This is a great way to end this crazy summer. Please join us and connect with friends around the world.

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💫 We have changed the night for our monthly evening Zoom meeting to this coming Saturday. Invitations have been emailed. It is Saturday, the 29^th at 6:00 pm Pacific.

💫 We have started to use the Chat feature in Substack and it has some interesting discussions. Check it out

💫 In regards to the Breaking the Silence Project, job descriptions for Listeners and directors, we are in the process of writing them. We are starting slowly and will be evolving over time as we work things through.

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Breaking the Silence is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, Subscribe for free or consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our Zoom meetings, the Breaking the Silence Project and other content.

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Last Friday, we have a conversation with Daniel Nichols . Daniel is a life long experiencer who has a channel on YouTube(Grey Druid) that also brings experiencers together in this movement and come together in unity and empathy to change the world from darkness to light. Come meet Daniel and hear his story . Daniel’s channel: The Grey Druid

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Friday we inadvertently put up a Conversation with Steve Neill and Amy Bond at the same time. Amy’s chat was supposed to air in a week. Whoops. Here is the link for her chat: A Conversation with Amy Bond

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Thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us and your Breaking the Silence in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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We are only human and have been used as a springboard for some. No worries. Everyone ends up either with the community or ultimately, by themselves.

As a result of seeing this happen to experiencers, we are expanding The Breaking the Silence Project. What this means is that that we are banding together with experiencers to include community outreach, not just referrals to professionals but Listeners (think someone to talk to personally, a buddy), more meetings, both in person and Zoom and other services to help and support our community.

Mary Cacciapaglia & Steve Neill

The Breaking the Silence Project

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This is a conversation space exclusively for subscribers—kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post questions and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.

Join chat

How to get started

1. Get the Substack app by clicking this link or the button below. New chat threads won’t be sent sent via email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens. You can also access chat on the web.

Get app

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.

"You are not in the universe, you are the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself." ~ Eckhart Tolle

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Well, we are back to our usual scheduled life and programming. It was delightful being with family for 2 weeks

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This coming Friday at 4:00 pm Pacific, we have a conversation with Daniel Nichols . Daniel is a life long experiencer who has a channel on YouTube(Grey Druid) that also brings experiencers together in this movement and come together in unity and empathy to change the world from darkness to light. Come meet Daniel and hear his story . Daniel’s channel: The Grey Druid

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On Saturday, we will be gathering on Zoom for our monthly BTS Ladies’ meeting. The invites went out on Monday. Hope to see many of you there. 💃💃💃

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Breaking the Silence is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, Subscribe for free or consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our Zoom meetings, the Breaking the Silence Project and other content.

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Last Friday we premiered Steve’s film, “ My First Encounter” In this film you will experience what it was like to be a 6 year old child in 1958 who woke to a defining silence and beams of light penetrating his bedroom. For this film we built a set that recreated my bedroom on our studio stage. This represents Steve’s childhood bedroom in San Francisco on 47th avenue in 1958. The production used a full professional crew, camera, sound and lighting. It features Whitley Strieber who starts the film off with his introduction. Mark is Steve’s middle name and his character is based on himself, Stephen “Mark” Neill. What happens in the film is real. And it’s accurate to what he remembers and has never forgotten.

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Breaking the Silence Project will be having a meeting in September with those who can attend to expand it’s reach in helping Experiencers. Stay tuned for further information.

Thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us and your Breaking the Silence in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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“For us physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion.” ~  Albert Einstein

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Join us Friday for a conversation with two well known experiencers Suzy Hansen and Bob Salas. Three friends sharing their experiences and views on the current status of the Visitor phenomenon. Suzy Hansen the book that triggered so many of us in remembering forgotten experiences especially from childhood. Her book is “The Dual Soul Connection” and it’s a must read. Bob has written three books about his experience atMalmstrom Air Force missile base in 1967 where his launch control capability in the missle silo was made inoperative by a UFO hovering above the silo. A very famous case our government tried to explain away. His current book is, USPs and the “Nuclear Puzzle.”

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Las Friday we all had a great chat with Steve and Jeff and those in the chat

.Here are some comments from the video:

@KerryFord-q4v ~ Magnificent Esp loved the introduction because the little boy looks just like my grandson .Thankyou Steve and Jeff

@lapislazuli7876 ~ Not sure why, but I’ve never seen anything and yet I’ve been into it for decades and I believe it’s real. I’m also a very spiritual person, so I don’t understand. Maybe that’s a blessing.

@ExperiencerInterviews ~ Jeff has an amazing story to tell. Glad you had him on.

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The Experience and Meditation

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Steve is making a new live action film as a follow-up to our movie, “But Something is There.” that was made in 2017. The story continues.

For thousands of years the indigenous people of this planet sat around the fire pits of ancient times where they communicated with the people from the stars. Their stories and beliefs were discounted by the Europeans who invaded their lives that lived in peace with nature and destroyed their culture, never realizing that they were speaking the truth all along.

These conversations with the cosmos and the life out there still continue to this day. ~ Steve Neill

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This August we will be with the grandkids until the 13^th. We have great Conversations for you every Friday and several Zoom meetings planned. We also are creating more shorts for you. We are all looking forward to a wonderful August .Thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us and your Breaking the Silence in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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“ The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. “~ Arthur C. Clarke

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This week we are going live with a Conversation. Our guest is Jeff Selver. Please join us and you can also join in the conversation in the chat box.

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Thursday is our monthly evening Zoom meeting and the invitations have been sent out. Our Zoom meetings are similar to our Communiy Livestreams, however they are private and unrecorded so experiencers who do not want to be public can still share in our growing community.

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Last Friday Whitley and Steve continued the conversation on the subject of non-human intelligence...or is it non-human? This is and very different hour of conversation from the ones we have had over the last three years on The Breaking the Silence .Our understanding of subject, like the experience, continues to evolve.

Here are some comments from the Conversation:

@Long-ShortStories ~ Always enjoy hearing Whitley’s voice and listening to his stream of consciousness. We are fortunate a great portion of this early contact phenomenon landed on his shoulders. Whitley has dealt with this with immense patience and intelligence and its not only impressive but riveting to listen to. This was just a great interview and fascinating conversation. Extremely entertaining, well done.

@carrieyoung7530 ~ Thank you so much Steve and Whitley Absolutely fascinating and loved every second. Going to check out your Substack pages also, thank you so much again

@dianaskarbek2664 ~ I feel like I am sitting in the kitchen with coffee and talking with you both.

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We are going to take a break. This weekend our grandchildren are arriving for our yearly summer visit. There is art to be made, beach going and we plan on going to the movies to see Minions and Monsters. We are looking forward. We will be back to working on The Breaking the Silence Project the middle of August.

Thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us and your Breaking the Silence in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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“The universe seems to me infinitely strange and foreign. At such a moment I gaze upon it with a mixture of anguish and euphoria; separate from the universe, as though placed at a certain distance outside it; I look and I see pictures, creatures that move in a kind of timeless time and spaceless space, emitting sounds that are a kind of language I no longer understand or ever register.” 
~ Eugene Ionesco

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This Friday Whitley and Steve continue the conversation on the subject of non-human intelligence...or is it non-human? This is and very different hour of conversation from the ones we have had over the last three years on The Breaking the Silence .Our understanding of subject, like the experience, continues to evolve.

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Breaking the Silence is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, Subscribe for free or consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our Zoom meetings, the Breaking the Silence Project and other content.

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Last Friday we premiered the Chat with Chris Hancock. He approached us to have a conversation about being an experiencer and how he could help. Chris is a psycho-spiritual therapist who is offering his services to work with experiencers that would rather regain their memories of their experience without hypnotherapy. Chris has a different perspective on this subject. He is hoping to work with experiencers to help them and understand this phenomenon. In this conversation with Steve, who is a life long experiencer, Chris hears what it is like to be an experiencer. This is a fascinating hour of a different kind

Here are some comments from the conversation:

@AineEithne~ What a beautiful interview! I KNOW experiencers will reach out to him. He’s an experiencer too, though he doesn’t seem to recognize it. The mantid beings don’t just reach out to anyone. How cool is that?!?
@mattx229 ~ Everytime i hear the sound extracted from the location it tends to send me back.

@Daniel5670 ~ Really great and intelligent conversation. Thank you, both of you!

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We just found a group on Meetup called LA UFO and are thinking about going to their event this coming Sunday. They have almost 1300 members on MeetUp

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Our good friend, Casey Veal, owner of From the Infinite Jewelry has a new line of jewelry based on crop circles that are stunning.

Mist Messages is a jewelry collection inspired by crop circles, sacred geometry, and the mystery of forms that seem to appear with messages from beyond the misty veil. Designed for those drawn to symbolism, curiosity, and the unknown, each piece offers a radiant way to wear your fascination with the mysteries of this world. ~ Casey

Here are a few pieces you will see:

Mist Message

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Thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us here at The Breaking the Silence Project and in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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“We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.” ~Jimmy Carter

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Our Guest this Friday is Chris Hancock. He approached us to have a conversation about being an experiencer and how he could help. Chris is a psycho-spiritual therapist who is offering his services to work with experiencers that would rather regain their memories of their experience without hypnotherapy. Chris has a different perspective on this subject. He is hoping to work with experiencers to help them and understand this phenomenon. In this conversation with Steve, who is a life long experiencer, Chris hears what it is like to be an experiencer. This is a fascinating hour of a different kind

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“New Intro for Breaking the Silence” ~~~ Steve is continuing to make new intros for our shows and films. This is the third in the series and these are all made using his visual effects career working with CGI since the late 1980s. He uses Blender and Unreal Engine. This one is based on his childhood memories of his constant visits and travels with the visitors

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Last Friday we premiered the Chat with Courtney Buterbaugh. We discovered Courtney on SubStack a while ago. One morning Mary read me one of her articles and it was outstanding and important. First one was her reflection on “Disclosure Day.” It hit every point perfectly. I could have never expressed it so well. The other amazing article was about Patriarchy and how woman experiencers have been treated by the media and men in general. We talk about these things but we also explore her experiences with the greys. In our conversation she brought up something that triggered a forgotten memory of my own that relates directly to Disclosure Day directly. It was a very emotional moment for us both. Experiencers are finding each other and coming together. This is a moment in the history of this subject like no other. Something is about to happen. Something wonderful.

Courtney’s writings can be found on Substack as “The Unidentified Felt Object”

Here are some of the comments about the livestream:

@Grantlers77 ~ bout the cardinal... prior to my seeing Disclosure Day, the same day, a YT reel was on my feed and was of a human-cardinal encounter, typical of other unique humam-animal encounters, that was very special for the guy. Hours later at the film, effectively the same scenario occurred and I was (mildly) jawdropped as the two were completely unrelated sources and the timing was so proximate. While synchronicities abound, and are about us all the time if we look, that was a particularly good one!

@theunidentifiedfeltobject ~That’s amazing! Thank you for sharing your experience. I’m hearing of so many cardinal synchronicities for people lately.

@BlueJayinPA ~ Thanks so much for this interview; I enjoyed Courtney’s article and resonated so much with her experiences (as I am also a lifelong experiencer). Your comment on how we are our own worst skeptics hits hard. Increasingly I am being guided to ‘get out of my own way’ to be more accepting of my own lived truth. Thank you for that reminder!

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This Saturday is the Ladies’ Zoom meeting for The Breaking the Silence Project. The invitation was emailed Monday morning. This is an unrecorded private meeting. Email us if you are interested in being put on the email list.

We are looking forward this week to seeing you either in the Zoom or in the Chat on Friday

Thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us and your Breaking the Silence in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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“My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”  ~ Nikola Tesla

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Happy full first week of July. Over half way through the year. I can’t say it hasn’t been interesting. Hey, If you watch our YouTube channel we would appreciate your subscribing there too (it’s free). We have been at 19,750 for over 6 months and just can’t seem to get to 20,000. Just give it a click on the subscribe button next time you give us a watch.

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Our Zoom meeting list has become quite large so we are bifurcating it into an invite list for those wishing to attend the Saturday morning Zoom and a Thursday evening one. Our first July Zoom is this Saturday the 11^th. Invitations went out Monday.

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Friday, July 10^th we have a conversation with Courtney Buterbaugh. We discovered Courtney on SubStack a while ago. One morning Mary read me one of her articles and it was outstanding and important. First one was her reflection on “Disclosure Day.” It hit every point perfectly. I could have never expressed it so well. The other amazing article was about Patriarchy and how woman experiencers have been treated by the media and men in general. We talk about these things but we also explore her experiences with the greys. In our conversation she brought up something that triggered a forgotten memory of my own that relates directly to Disclosure Day directly. It was a very emotional moment for us both. Experiencers are finding each other and coming together. This is a moment in the history of this subject like no other. Something is about to happen. Something wonderful.

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Last Friday we chatted with Keya Murthy. We have known Keya as a friend for many years now and it’s about time we had her on this show. She has helped so many people achieve a spiritual enlightenment and taught meditation, Reiki and Buddhist philosophy. She is also a healer. And a good friend. She has also experienced the visitors like so many of us. In this hour we talk about all things spirit and more.

Here are some comments about the chat:

@DrPhillip-w9t ~ Wonderful show Steve...She is a teacher & beautiful soul & I am fortunate to have found (no coincidence) your special place on You Tube. Your a talented being my friend & doing important work for those “with eyes to see & ears to hear” I honor your dedication to move the dialog to higher places, to plant the seeds that are our truth & our future. Blessings my brother~

@erstwhile3793 ~ Everything seems to have intelligence and consciousness, awareness. I say “seems” because there are many, many people around the world, willing to tell us how things Really Are, both spiritually and materially, and they often as not contradict each other, as well as align with each other, so although I have 99% settled for myself the question of conscious intelligence in nonhumanity, I also know for sure that I don’t know for sure about…anything. However, I have learned for myself through direct communication, that plants and animals (dogs!) are conscious and able to share and receive verifiable, useful information. I’ve experienced the sensations of receiving communication from other species, and the sensation of being “heard” by them, as well as the amazement of discovering that the information they shared was factual, evidentiary, and real. Lots of other people have had these direct experiences, too. Time to stop asking IF other beings have consciousness and intelligence, and start asking what is the nature of their consciousness and their intelligence; what can we learn from it and from them.

@dionrupa2748 ~ Great conversation, some stimulating points & thoughts that resonate so true. love the dreaming talk.

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We are looking forward this week to seeing you either in the Zoom or in the Chat on Friday

Thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us and your Breaking the Silence in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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“The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.” ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

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Hello July! June was indeed a wild ride and we will continue to connect the dots that lead us to our connection with the universe.

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This Friday, June 3^rd our guest is Keya Murthy. We have known Keya as a friend for many years now and it’s about time we have her on this show. She has helped so many people achieve a spiritual enlightenment and taught meditation, Reiki and Buddhist philosophy. She is also a healer. And a good friend. She has also experienced the visitors like so many of us. In this hour we talk about all things spirit and more

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Last weekend was great. Greg Bishop put on a fabulous art show event on Saturday and spoke about it last Friday in our conversation and other great topics

.Here are some comments from last Friday’s show:

@jasonblevins8280~ I highly enjoyed Gregs conversation . thank you

@FleaMarketGold~Another great conversation! I’m excited to hear how the art shows goes.

@BennofromOz1975~ Hope your Art-show goes well brother

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In July we have some exciting guests, we have 3 private Zoom meetings on the calendar and we will finish with a Community Chat on the 31^st.

Thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us and your Breaking the Silence in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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Greg’s lecture was on the history of UFO Art in culture reaching back to the caves at Lascaux, France. It was Fascinating. If you ever get a chance to attend one of his lecture’s don’t hesitate. After Greg’s lecture, filmmaker, Dean Alioto spoke about his career in film and his documentary on UFOs and his other films.

My favorite part of the evening was hearing from the artists who attended, Lucinda Morel, Sam Shearon, James Pike, Renee Reeser Zelnick and, our very own Steve Neill. Each artist spoke of the pieces that were there at the show and their journey with UFO art as an experiencer and a non-experiencer who created UFO art. All spoke of Art being an important aspect of expressing our feelings about the phenomenon. It was followed up with a Q&A from the audience. The event was very well done and well attended. The venue, The Crooked Path, was also a fun place to visit.

We need more of these events. It was a wonderful evening.

~ Mary Cacciapaglia

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“Art is our one true global language. It knows no nation, it favors no race, and it acknowledges no class. It speaks to our need to reveal, heal, and transform. It transcends our ordinary lives and lets us imagine what is possible.” 
– Richard Kamler

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Here we are already at our last week of June. Hope everyone had a wonderful Soltice and first day of summer last weekend. This week we have two Zoom meetings. Our evening meeting on Thursday and our Ladies’ one on Saturday morning.

Sunday Mary wrote a piece on Steve’s art called: Steve Neill, The Godfather of Alien Art, Origins of the Grey Archetype in Today’s Art , check it out here on Substack:

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Friday, Join us in an amazing hour of conversation with Greg Bishop. Greg Bishop is an author and researcher in the field who is also an art historian. On June 27th in Burbank California he his hosting the Power to the Paper: Jailbreaking Disclosure - UFO Art Show and Lecture. This art show will feature many experiencer’s artwork and 5 of the artists will be present opening night along with Greg Bishop and the filmmaker, Dean Alioto.

and here is the Poster for the art show Saturday (click for ticket information :

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Last Friday was our June Community Chat. There were nine of us on camera (for the most part when the wifi wasn’t crashing then it was fun and chaos they told us 😉) It is wonderful when we can all get together

Here are some of the comments about the livestream:

@RichardOGorman-ti8iq~ Great chat everyone. Loved listening to you all. Look to the skies over the solstice, especially at night, and around dawn. A significant energy around this year. ‘ They’ are pressing a feeling here, the last few days. Reach for the stars. This feels like an encouragement to tune into the energies. It’s all a very subtle thing. Anyway just sharing a feeling (message?) It’s all about resonating with childhood curiosity.

@andrewrollins4898~ In the animation at the beginning of the episode, the colors that the craft produced were spot on. The red color I’ve seen enveloping a disc as it skipped around in the sky, and the blue-green color I’ve seen in their tractor beam technology. Not many get these colors right, congratulations!

@dennissdigitaldump8619 ~ I think we had some fun, finally, as it went full chaos mode.

@4dulcelife ~ I had my selenite wand with me when I watched later. If time isn’t linear, it helped.

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We are looking forward this week to seeing you either in the Zoom, the Chat or if you can make in person to the Art Show on Saturday.

Thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us and your Breaking the Silence in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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Steve Neill’s influence on the visual iconography of the Grey is genuinely remarkable and in many ways under-appreciated, given how prevalent his imagery became in our culture.

The 1990 Drawing and Its Origins

In 1990, Steve created a now-iconic drawing — a pointed-chinned Grey with slanted eyes, based on his own personal experience as well as accounts from other experiencers. He was working closely with the experiencer community at the time. In the early 1980s–90s, Steve set the look of the now-popular Grey aliens by working directly with not only his experiences but also those of other close encounter witnesses.

Spread Through Mass Media

What makes his contribution so significant is how that imagery circulated anonymously on a massive scale.His images were used extensively in the Sightings TV series on Fox in the early 1990s and also appeared on book covers and in magazines — reaching potentially millions of viewers and yet he was rarely given credit for it.

The Grey Face Sculpture

Before the 1990 drawing, Steve had already been casting and selling a Grey face sculpture. That sculpture had a heavy influence on the look of the Grey alien artwork that came after it, and he sold casts to many people in the late 1980s — including Chris Carter ( who bought two), which led to his meeting with the creator of The X-Files.

Puppets and Production Work

Steve also built full-sized puppets for the TV show Sightings, further embedding his particular vision of the Grey into the popular consciousness. He also created covers for Whitley Strieber’s Beyond Communion comic book series in 1991.

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The Legal Dimension

The reach of his design was so pervasive that it even prompted a corporate response: Steve was sent a cease and desist letter from Alienware (the tech company), though his pointed-chinned, slanted-eyed Grey image predated their own use of the archetype and style. When he proved to them through signed and dated artwork that his predated their use, they quickly stopped communicating and Steve chose not to pursue his legal recourse. Interestingly, Steve uses Alienware hardware in his video production.

The Larger Picture

Steve is now well known in the community for this artwork, and the 1990 image is described as the now-familiar iconic image of the Grey Alien. What’s striking about his role is that it sits at a rare crossroads: he was simultaneously a Hollywood special effects professional with the technical skills to render these forms convincingly,and a genuine experiencer drawing from first-hand accounts. That combination gives his work an authenticity and craft that likely explains why it spread so far and became the template others followed — often, without realizing, that they were copying Steve Neill’s original vision.

~ Mary Cacciapaglia

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"The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention." 
- Rachel Naomi Remen

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Join us Friday for a June Community Chat for an interesting chat with the Breaking the Silence Project’s community members - your fellow experiencers. I am sure we all will have plenty to say

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On Thursday last week, eight of us went to see Disclosure Day and dined at a Chinese restaurant for discussion afterwards. It was good to be with others to share.Both Steve and Mary wrote about their reflections on Substack.

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Last Friday, Erin McAdam shared with us her life and experiences with non-human intelligence. She goes deep and personal about what it’s like to have such experiences and abilites as a result of her near death experiences and more.

Here are some comments on the Conversation:

@caitlynnwakeman6574~Erin you’re such an amazing story teller. I felt like I was in the experience with you. Thanks Steve for interviewing my friend. She really is fascinating and healing to be around.

@cindybleam4808~Wonderful information and I feel like the whole time I was in the room with you both. You both are helping people with your experiences and connections to the greater love energy that surrounds us all. Cousin Erin you are beautiful inside and out. Thank you for sharing yourself with the rest of us.

@dennissdigitaldump8619~I loved the description of “returning to life”, having been there and done that, yes it does feel like imploding when you take that first breath

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On June 27^th, at The Crooked Path, Burbank, California, Steve will be showing three pieces of his art in Greg Bishop and Creepy Kingdom UFO Art Show & Lecture: Power to the Paper: Jailbreaking Disclosure through Art. This show will be featuring unique visions of NHI contact by 10 Artists:

Steve Neill, Lucinda Morel, Susan Demeter, Barbara Fisher, Erica Lukes, David Metcalfe, James Pike, Sam Shearon, Peter Stichbury and Renee Reeser Zelnick.

There will be a lecture by Greg Bishop with Roundtable with the artists and filmmaker Dean Alioto

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Thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us and your Breaking the Silence in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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That sentence alone might resonate with some of you — because if you’ve seen Disclosure Day, you may be sitting in the same uncertain emotional territory I am. Not quite sure what you feel. Not sure whether what you feel is about the film, or about something much older that the film disturbed.

I want to be honest about that before I try to say anything else.

Spielberg’s film arrives at a strange cultural moment. The government has released UAP files. Former presidents are speaking openly about the reality of non-human intelligence. The word disclosure has moved from the margins of our community into mainstream conversation. And now a major Hollywood film — with a $115 million budget, Emily Blunt, and John Williams — has put the word Experiencer on screen.

For those of us who have carried that word quietly, privately, sometimes at great personal cost, that is not a small thing.

But visibility is not the same as being seen. And I think that distinction is at the heart of what many of us felt watching this film.

I was part of a gathering of experiencers shortly after seeing it. I won’t share details — that space belongs to the people in it — but I will say that the emotional response in the room was striking. The word I keep returning to is exposed.

Not validated. Not celebrated. Exposed.

And sitting with that, I think I understand it. When you have spent years navigating a reality that most people dismiss, deny, or ridicule, you develop a kind of protective interior life around your experiences. They are yours. You share them carefully, with people you trust.

Then thousands of strangers are suddenly watching a version of it — the empathic gifts, the contact, the sense of being changed by something beyond ordinary explanation — projected large, wrapped in a chase thriller, processed as entertainment.

That’s disorienting in a way that’s hard to articulate. It’s not that the film gets everything wrong. In some ways it gets things startlingly right. It’s that the context strips away the sacredness that experiencers know surrounds this territory.

There’s something else worth naming. A few people I spoke with felt let down by the film — felt it missed the point, or didn’t go far enough. And I wonder, gently, if some of us arrived so primed for threat, so conditioned by years of being dismissed, that we couldn’t quite receive what Spielberg was actually trying to offer.

Because there is a message at the heart of this film. It’s about empathy. About the unifying power of truth. About what becomes possible when humanity stops being afraid of what it doesn’t understand.

That message is quiet. It arrives after nearly two and a half hours of tension and chase and noise. And for some of us, by the time it came, we may have already been too emotionally saturated to let it land.

I don’t say that as criticism. I say it as someone who is still finding that message in myself, still deciding what I think of it, still sitting with the gap between what I hoped the film would be and what it actually is. It was too fast for me to “count all the bolts”.

What I know is this: the fact that we are feeling anything this strongly is itself significant. This film touched something real. The reaction in that room — the emotion, the discomfort, the complexity — is not a sign that the film failed. It may be a sign that we are living through a moment that is genuinely unprecedented, and that none of us quite have the emotional vocabulary for it yet.

Disclosure doesn’t come from a government nor from Hollywood.

Disclosure is not a single event. It’s a process. And we are in the middle of it.

It is/will come from within.

Are we ready to receive it?

🫶 Mary Cacciapaglia

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“The diversity in the human family should be the cause of love and harmony, as it is in music where many different notes blend together in the making of a perfect chord.” – ‘Abdu’l-Bahá

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Thursday, as we shared last week, we are going to the movies to see the much-awaited film, “Disclosure Day”. We can’t wait to talk about it with you who are attending the Zoom meeting on Saturday morning. Email invitations went out this past Monday.

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On Friday at 4:00 Pacific we are delighted to have a chat with Erin McAdam. Erin shares with us her life and experiences with non-human intelligence. She goes deep and personal about what it’s like to have such experiences and abilites as a result of her near death experiences and more

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Breaking the Silence is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, Subscribe for free or consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our Zoom meetings, the Breaking the Silence Project and other content.

Subscribe now

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Last Friday we had a Community Livestream and chatted with several experiencers that we shared company with at Contact in the Desert.

Here are some comments :
@CknittingNewEyesQ~ Hi, Steve and Mary! This was such fun to watch, even for a non-experiencer like me! You are all linked by an invisible thread as experiencers, and it’s beautiful to see! It’s a real shame that “UFO stars” are so out of tune with all of the attendees! Glad you all had fun together and that you each took away so much joy from that convention! Thank you all for sharing! Many heavenly blessings!
@9thincarnation ~ Now if the event was strictly experiencers I’d have to go . What a nice bunch in this chat Steve and Mary . Hi to Susan and Deb . Love ya , Walt M .

@RichardOGorman-ti8iq ~ Thank you for sharing. It is my feeling that the visitors are calling experiencers to gather together in a natural way. Much like indigenous people would always gather. I see tents in wild woodlands, meadows and open landscapes, I see people gathered around campfires and heart felt conversations. This is the way it has been for countless generations, this is the natural way. And I must add, Steve, in such gatherings, it would be quite natural also for individuals to experience visions, and for all gathered to fall silent, sit in respectful grace and await the message being gifted to all those present

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This Saturday is Whitley Strieber’s Birthday.

Visit him at Unknown Country

Happy Birthday, Whitley and wishing you many more!

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I also want to thank You for all the lovely comments you leave us and your Breaking the Silence in sharing our newsletter.

Thank you for being part of and supporting the Breaking the Silence Project.

Love & Light 🫶💫

Steve Neill & Mary Cacciapaglia

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I researched with Claude (Anthropic) about the “Stigma” surrounding the UFO/NHI Experiencer phenomena and found the following:

The Stigma Was Deliberately Engineered — The Robertson Panel (1953)

This is the most documented origin of the stigma. In January 1953, with UFO reports mushrooming around the country and Cold War anxieties running high, the CIA convened a group of scientists to investigate whether unknown phenomena in the sky represented a national security threat.

Their solution was explicit: strip UFOs of their “special status” and the “aura of mystery” they had acquired, and do so through a coordinated campaign of education and ridicule. They proposed enlisting television figures, collaborating with Disney’s animation studios, and producing films to teach the public how to recognize and dismiss misidentified lights, planets, aircraft, and balloons. This was not simply public education — it was a managed debunking strategy tied to real security policy.

The panel recommended that the National Security Council debunk UFO reports and institute a policy of public education. In August 1953 the Air Force issued Air Force Regulation 200-2, which institutionalized secrecy at the air-base level and prohibited the release of any information about a sighting to the public except when the sighting was positively identified.

Captain Edward Ruppelt, Chief of the Air Force’s Aerial Phenomena Branch, later testified: “We were ordered to hide sightings when possible, but if a strong report does get out, we have to publish a fast explanation — make up something to kill the report in a hurry, and also ridicule the witnesses, especially if we can’t find a plausible answer. We even have to discredit our own pilots.”

Within a few years, the panel’s objectives were achieved: UFOs had lost their aura of mystery, the subject had become marginalized, scientifically taboo and often ridiculed in the media.

The Military and Career Consequences Were Real

For over 70 years, a toxic culture existed within the military: pilots who reported UFOs were subjected to psychological evaluations, grounded from flight duty, and faced career-ending ridicule.

George Knapp testified to Congress that “men who have seen strange things and stepped forward to tell the world about it — whistleblowers and witnesses who step up — are routinely insulted, belittled, or worse. They risked their reputations, their careers, their clearances, their livelihoods, and sometimes much more than that.”

Academia Was Also Affected

A 2023 national survey across 14 disciplines at 144 major US research universities found that most faculty believed UAP research was important and curiosity outweighed skepticism in every discipline — yet fewer than 1% had ever conducted UAP-related research. Researchers were not primarily deterred by intellectual skepticism, but by fear: they feared losing funding, facing ridicule from colleagues, or finding their careers quietly derailed. Faculty reported being told to “be careful.”

The Experiencer Burden

A common theme among experiencers — from those who had mere sightings to abductees — is that they find it exceedingly difficult to reconcile their exceptional episodes of the “unreal” with the necessity of going on leading a “normal” life. This is linked to the unrelenting stigma and ridicule that attaches to stories which most people find ranging from patently unbelievable to seriously disturbing. The lack of channels for safe communication increases the mental burden, especially for those who have had multiple negative encounters and dread the next.

Is It Changing?

At a recent congressional hearing, Representative Jared Moskowitz addressed the stigma directly, stating that “a void of information has allowed conspiracy theories to fester,” while Luis Elizondo accused a small group of government officials of keeping the truth from the public, saying “excessive secrecy has led to grave misdeeds against loyal civil servants, military personnel and the public.”

Recently, new military directives have explicitly prohibited commanders from penalizing aviators or forcing psychological evaluations based solely on the reporting of anomalous phenomena, and pilots are now equipped with standardized UAP reporting forms embedded directly into their post-flight debriefing software.

Part Two

So I asked Claude to research the Global Impact and not just a U.S.-centric response. It told me that The stigma is genuinely global but takes very different forms depending on the country, culture, and political system. Here’s a more complete picture:

Where the Stigma is Rooted in Western-Exported Policy

The U.S. Robertson Panel strategy, while American in origin, had ripple effects globally because of U.S. cultural dominance during the Cold War. Rear Admiral Hillenkoetter, the first Director of the CIA, acknowledged this tension directly, being quoted in the New York Times in 1960 saying: “Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.” That manufactured dismissiveness spread through Western media and academia worldwide.

A Dutch airline pilot’s case illustrates how far that culture reached — KLM pilot Mark Juch stayed silent about his UAP close encounter for more than two decades before finally speaking out, saying the stigma kept him from telling his story.

Where Countries Have Handled It Very Differently

France and Chile run scientifically rigorous, publicly accessible UAP programs. The UK has retired its desk and released its files. Brazil and Latin American partners maintain active programs with mixed transparency. Russia and China operate active programs with limited public disclosure. Japan only formalized UAP reporting protocols recently.

France stands out as a particularly notable counterexample to stigma. France’s GEIPAN, a dedicated UAP investigation unit within its national space agency, has operated since 1977 and has publicly archived approximately 5,300 French UAP cases, of which about 2% to 3% remain unexplained after rigorous analysis. France essentially never had the same culture of ridicule that the U.S. engineered.

Where the Stigma Takes a Different Form Entirely — Religious and Cultural Contexts

In many parts of the world the silence around NHI contact isn’t about ridicule — it’s about religion, tradition, or politics taking precedence.

In deeply religious societies across the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia and Latin America, encounters with unknown intelligences are far more likely to be interpreted through existing spiritual frameworks — as angels, djinn, demons, or ancestral spirits — rather than as NHI. This means experiences may be reported but not recognized as UAP/NHI contact, or they may be suppressed because they conflict with religious orthodoxy.

In authoritarian states like China and Russia, the stigma is less about ridicule and more about state control of information. Individuals have little institutional channel to report anomalous experiences without potential political consequences.

Where There Was Never a Stigma — Indigenous Cultures

This is perhaps the most striking contrast. Indigenous communities around the globe have been aware of UAPs for thousands of years and kept records through oral tradition and artwork. Among various Native Nations, these beings were often called “Sky People” or “Star People.” The Hopi say their first home was in the Pleiades constellation, and the Cree Nation has legends that say their ancestors arrived on Earth as spirits from the stars.

Research into a remote Australian Aboriginal community found that residents regularly sight and discuss UFOs, but do so in ways that draw on traditional Aboriginal ideas and values, emphasizing environmental themes and local cosmological narratives. For these communities, there was no stigma to begin with — the phenomenon was simply part of their understanding of reality, until Western colonization and its accompanying worldview imposed a framework that marginalized those traditions.

The Broader Academic Picture

A peer-reviewed paper argued that the assumption that UAP is a Western or exclusively American phenomenon is simply incorrect, and that this Western-centrism reflects a bias in academia rather than the reality of the phenomenon itself, which is genuinely global.

Decades of secrecy, taboo, and deliberate disinformation have made it difficult for those involved to process their knowledge and experiences in healthy ways globally — not just in the U.S. — with some experiencing what researchers call “ontological shock”: a fundamental challenge to their beliefs about the nature of reality and what it means to be human.

So in summary — the stigma is global, but its origins, forms, and intensity vary enormously by culture. The U.S. actively engineered it. Western allies absorbed it culturally. Authoritarian states suppress reporting for different political reasons. Religious societies filter experiences through spiritual frameworks. And indigenous cultures, in many cases, never had it at all.

Thank you for reading. This was enlightening for me as well.

Mary Cacciapaglia

Breaking the Silence Project

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