My work as a Psychiatric Counselor has involved helping a variety of distressed people, including recognizing those who are Wanderers or Walk-Ins experiencing difficulty adjusting to this often turbulent planet and dimension. Their experiences may include loneliness, alienation and vague homesickness, to recognition that they do not belong in 'this insanity,' to severe mental and emotional disarrangement.

Much of my work has been psychiatric crisis assessment and intervention in hospital emergency rooms. A few years ago, at work one night in a metropolitan hospital, I was called to the emergency room to assess a patient familiar to me from past admissions. A likeable, thoughtful and intelligent man, he had what most Western clinicians would call 'fixed religious delusions' and 'auditory hallucinations.' Just before the call, I had been reading Brad Steiger's book The Fellowship in which he wrote that in recent times, many wanderers have been awakening to their true nature and purpose with the intuited message that "THE TIME IS NOW!"

I had heard myself, years before, in a moment of questioning my presence in this world and my ability to make helpful contact with greater life, the intuited message that, "WE ARE GATHERING!" I heard, saw and knew these words as if they had arisen from the center of my own being, along with all the voices in Creation speaking as One. I found myself out of my body, high above the Earth, with a multitude of beings, both in bodies in ships and free, as I was. I knew that we had all come to help and witness Earth's difficult birth into spiritual adulthood and true cosmic community. I saw, as did astronaut Rusty Schweickert, an Earth free of personal and political boundaries. This experience, among others, helped crystalize my awareness of my real nature and purpose.

Arriving in the hospital emergency room, I sat down across from the patient and began asking him the usual psychiatric questions to determine his situation and mental status. He described with more than the usual 'psychotic' patient's clarity and reason his unhappiness with his job, living quarters and life. When I asked him what the 'voices' were telling him, he paused, gazed downward and listened, with unusual thoughtfulness and focus, before looking up at me straight in the eye, and saying with great intensity and evenness, "They say 'The Time Is Now'."

Most Wanderers do not seem to have the severe mental and emotional problems this patient had, but experience the milder difficulties I mentioned. The RA Material, Brad Steiger's books, ET 101 and many others discuss the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual symptoms many encounter. Western Transpersonal Psychology has begun the personal and professional work of incorporating the millenia-old wisdom of its grandsire, the Eastern spiritual psychologies. While I do not wish here to discuss Wanderers from the nascent perspective of Western psychology, there are an increasing body of psychologists doing progressive research. John Mack at Harvard and Rina Laibow in New York, Kenneth Ring, Leo Sprinkle, Richard Boylan, Scott Mandelker, myself and many others whose work is available in print or online in professional psychology literature databases and indexes, have found UFO contactees, Walk-Ins and Wanderers to be on the whole eminently sane, above-average, intelligent, successful and altruistic people. The psychology literature seems to have a growing recognition of the need to treat these issues responsibly, forthrightly and positively. This encouraging development will help us all get on with our work.

As I continued my emergency room assessment of the fellow's needs, I was struck by the immediate, coincidental validation of my reading. This experience of harmony, synchronicity, or in Buddhist terms, 'interdependence,' was not new or unusual to me, but wonderful all the same, and underscored the reality of Wanderers, and the fact that indeed, "The Time Is Now!"

Many of you probably have had and heard of such awakening experiences, or are interested in spiritual development and your role in these times, and I hope that more forums for communication continue to open.