Amanda Butler Coaching and Consulting

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Making Contact: Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind

In this post I will share a close encounter which I realized through the power of dream, synchronicity and trusting my higher guidance. What better way to launch my inaugural blog post then taking a little time off from tinfoil hat construction to share an experience that had a paradigm shifting effect on me. I jest about the hat because it has been a real slow burn in coming out publicly, that is speaking freely, about my spiritual side.  For those close to me this won’t be a surprise as I in no way hide my belief in the magical and mystical, however somehow, I still feel blocked when it comes to being public professionally about my otherworldly experiences.  But today I am challenging the assumptions that tell me that I have to be a certain way to be accepted.  I am challenging the programming that tells me I have to limit myself in order to fit into society.  In essence this story I am about tell is about the capacity to expand. A story about the ability to see beyond the limits of the narrow perception that our day to day existence allows. 

And it all started with a dream…….

I guess I’ve always been fascinated with dreaming.  As a child I had repetitive dreams, that came through with crystal clarity. I have experienced prophetic dreams and suffered from sleep paralysis, I even used to sleepwalk. I don’t pretend to be an expert on dreaming, but what I do know is that dreaming is magical.  You can develop skill around dreaming and dream practice.  I know some incredibly well versed folx who have studied dreaming as a way to tap into the mysterious subconscious.  I am but a fumbling novice in this regard. However, when a prophetic dream comes in, it comes in hard like a soldier standing to attention, it says “HEY YOU!!!! LISTEN UP!”…..and so I do.  I’ve learnt my lesson when it comes to ignoring my inner guidance.  It pretty much never ends up well.  Or maybe it does, depending on how you look at it.  Sometimes a pattern needs to repeat so you can see the pattern, and the only way to begin to break free of a pattern is to acknowledge that one exists.  Therein lies the rub….

Let’s start with the dream: 

This dream took place in three distinct stages or dreamlettes (I think I made this word up and I LOVE IT).  I am only going to speak to the second and third dreams, because thus far I haven’t quite figured out how the first one fits.  One piece of context for the dream:  I occasionally take on call work in the film industry, however at the time of the dream I had not been called in almost five months.

 Dreamlette # two :

I am working on a movie.  We are building an “old timey” set and me and a co-worker, a young woman whom I have never met before, are moving boxes in a big old school room.  All of a sudden, my coworker flips out at me. I mean she absolutely loses it. She tells me I have horrible communication and that I need to stay in my lane.  Her emotion is huge and explosive.

 Dreamlette # three: 

I am at a staff day conference for the public library.  I am in a discussion with the director of Human Resources who is about to retire.  She asks me why nobody liked her.  I start to gently discuss her communication style and how it was challenging because she never remembered anyone’s name.  There are a group of children dancing around a maypole with spiderwebs as the ribbons.  Three of the children do not have spiderwebs and they want me to take them down to the garden to get some so they can play too.  Of the three children I only recognize one, it is the daughter of one of my oldest friends.  I take the children to the elevator and as we step in, I notice the elevator is broken.  I try to jam my foot into the closing door, but the door closes, and we plummet.  Regardless of the fall we end up in the garden unscathed.  In the garden a cardinal and a blue jay show up and a voice says to me “Don’t ever forget you are a cardinal, you are a cardinal, you are a cardinal”.  This is when I wake up.

These dreams were incredibly vivid with intense emotion and specificity.  These were my first clues to pay close attention to how the dreamscape might resonate in my waking life.

To begin with I focus in on the birds and immediately look up the significance of the blue jay and the cardinal. Apparently googling the significance of a symbol in your dream can be a bit of a rookie mistake. According to Lana Sackwild, a dream coach that I follow and admire, it is much more powerful to feel into your own interpretation of a symbol. However I was pretty amazed to see that blue jays often signify communication, something I was not aware of and yet were key themes in both dreamlettes. The significance of the cardinal would become more exact and personal.

This is one of those dreams that you want to share and for some reason I want to share this dream with a writer friend of mine who lives in Los Angeles. I am not sure why I want to tell her in particular because we actually haven’t spoken in months. I text Juliana about my dream and within the hour I get a text back telling me to call her as soon as possible.

So, as it turns out Julianna received my text moments before going into a zoom meeting. She skimmed through what I wrote telling herself she would read it more thoroughly when she was free. Just minutes into her meeting she heard a tapping on her door. A California Blue Jay had landed on the handle of her door and was tapping on the glass. This had NEVER happened before!!! Needless to say when Julianna shared this with me I knew this dream was more than just a fancy; it was going to lead me somewhere.


Stay with me cause this gets a whole heck of a lot more intriguing.

The following Saturday I embark on an art project in my office. I want to paint the four directions on the floor. I often do the prayer to the seven directions as part of my spiritual practice and I want to be more precise in where I call the energy in from. I let the project take its own shape and it looks a lot like these dream portals I have been painting (See video clip). In walks a close friend and he exclaims:

“What a beautiful cardinal you have painted!”

“Excuse, me? What did you just call this?”

“ A cardinal, you know the cardinal directions?”

I had painted what looked like a nautical cardinal on the floor.

Cue the twilight zone music…..da da dingo, da da dingo (yes, this what the twilight zone theme song sounds like to me)

So yeah, huge hits of dopamine. This still happens to me when my intuition hits like a bullseye and I’m not sure it will ever stop.

Ten days after painting the cardinal on the floor I get a call from my friend who works in the movies. He is lead on a film and needs help. Remember it has been almost five months with no word from the film company that I moonlight with, but the dream, so of course I said yes. The set is located in Chemainus, a small town about a 90 minute drive from my home. On the way up I stop to make a video on the top of the Malahat, a beautiful mountain drive. The content of my video is about seeing yourself through the eyes of an eagle way up high, becoming a planetary server (the video is woo to the max)

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As you can see the view from the Malahat is spectacular. Whenever I am in places like this my whole being expands. It was a great energy boost before a long day on set. I was going to be working 11-11 and would be driving home pretty late. It can also be super stressful to walk onto a set mid shoot and not have worked in five months, so the self care moment on the top of the mountain was particularly important.

At this point I’m sure you are thinking, “why the heck is Amanda giving me so many details”?….hold tight. Don’t forget I am going to tell you about the CE5 protocols. But at this point I had never heard of them. I PROMISE YOU - these details will apply.

I arrive on set and spend a brief moment catching up with coworkers that I hadn’t seen in a while and introduce myself to some new folx, when a young woman arrives for her first shift. Okay, you probably can guess what I’m about to say; It was the young woman from my DREAM. No mistaking it, no denying it. This was actually the second time this year something like this has happened. A dream character, whom I had no prior relationship with, showed up in my real life. But I’m sure the skeptic in you wants to believe that after all the other syncs I had experienced I somehow projected onto this person the dream character. I could see myself doing something like that, but what happened next made all of these synchronicities hard to ignore. It turns out Jenna, the young woman, is incredibly lovely. We get paired together to work and hit it off immediately. We are building a buccaneer days set (old timey!!). At the end of the night while cleaning up I walk past a storefront that is decorated completely in cardinals and blue jays. At this point I had to have a little talk with myself, could my dream please STOP talking to me???? Actually, I just smiled and said “I’m listening”.

Let’s just pause to talk about synchronicity for a hot second. Not sure if you are keeping track so let’s summarize:

  1. Blue jays symbolize communication which were the main themes in both dreamlettes

  2. A blue jay tried to break and enter at my friend Julianna’s house minutes after she skimmed my text about “the dream”

  3. I painted a nautical cardinal on my office floor without being consciously aware of what a nautical cardinal was

  4. I got called to work on the movies, something that I had basically given up on since it had been 5 months since my last shift

  5. The angry young woman from my dream shows up in real life and we are building a buccaneer days set (old timey!!)

  6. I walk past a storefront that is completely and totally decorated in nothing but cardinals and blue jays

Synchronicities generally happen in threes, here we have six. That’s what I call, a double down.

I have to admit at this point I am completely gobsmacked at how many hits I am getting from this ONE dream. It’s almost as if the dream and reality are blurring lines. I’m feeling rather dreamy as I drive home at 11pm. It’s pretty dark even though I am on the highway and I put on this soundcloud track that I had found the week prior. It’s a really trippy soundscape meant for meditation. The first time I listened to it I had an incredible out of body experience, but more about that on another post.

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As I am driving down the highway, about 20 minutes into my drive, I start to see this massive circle flashing in the sky. It’s really big and it looks like its flashing from the middle of the Malahat. The flash is going at a regular interval. At first I thought it might be lightening, but it is hitting in the exact same spot every time and it is distinctly circular in shape. This light show continues for at least 20 minutes, enough time for me to drive through the small town of Duncan and onto the Malahat. I have to admit I’m starting to feel a little nervous. Even though there are other cars on the highway it is really dark, really rural and the flashing light is really strange. The anxiety is creeping up as I drive further and further along the mountain, and then the flashing stops.

I’m feeling a little dazed as I drive the last leg back into Victoria. It probably wasn’t the safest idea to put that trance inducing meditation on while I was driving. Had I hallucinated the whole thing? My partner is asleep when I arrive home so I text the two guys I was working with, who left at the same time, to see if they had also witnessed the flashing circle. My coworker texts back “Yeah, what the heck was that?”. So something was flashing in the sky. I take to google to see if there is a logical reason for the light. Nothing. I ask my co-workers who left about an hour before us. Nope, they didn’t see anything. So it seems that the light only flashed for around 20 minutes at that precise time.

How interesting, how bizarre.

I have no idea what I saw. The connection to my dream is mind-blowing so obviously this is an experience that sticks with me. I don’t let it consume my life, but I’m definitely excited and super curious. I randomly do some digging, but nothing materializes. Oh well, I guess it’s just a mystery and a really fun story.

Over the next six months the experience is safe and sound tucked into the back of my brain. In the meantime I, by chance, learn about an individual by the name of Dr Steven Greer. He is a fascinating character:

Dr Steven Greer is a former medical doctor who left his career in medicine to found the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and the Disclosure Project, which seeks the disclosure of classified UFO information. His work was inspired by a close encounter he experienced at the age of 17. Since then he developed the CE5 protocols that have helped tens of thousands of individuals experience personal encounters with what they believe to be, extraterrestrial intelligence. Dr Greer has briefed every president since Bill Clinton and the list of people who regularly seek his counsel is impressive.


Fun! I love this kind of stuff. I watch a few of his YouTube videos, and I see that you can stream his documentary “The Cosmic Hoax” for free. So I watch it. There are some conspiracy elements to it, and I am fascinated. At this point it dawns on me that this could have been what I saw, but beyond watching this one film I don’t investigate too much. So Six months go by. I still think about the experience but I haven’t figured out what I saw or what it means. So far it’s just a dream that bled into reality and a pretty light show in the sky.

One evening in early September my eldest daughter and I decide to go for an evening stroll down to the Chinese Cemetery that borders our neighbourhood and the next. It’s a beautiful September evening and we are feeling playful. We watch the sunset on the water and sit at these huge “harmonic gates”. I’ve been coming down here more and more often, called by the serenity and the incredible ocean and mountain views. There is a very specific Feng Shui to this place. I’m feeling silly so I say to Ayden

“We could CE5 tonight, if you want?”

“What is CE5, mom?” She asks with a slight hint of sarcasm. She likes this kind of stuff but tends to be quite grounded.

I fumble through a brief explanation, but at this point I haven’t actually looked up the exact “PROTOCOLS”. So I just tell her it’s like creating an antenna with your body and intentions to signal extraterrestrials. We have a really good giggle. By now its dark. We are facing one another sitting on the platform at the harmonic gates. I am facing south west and she is facing south east when a huge circular light flashes in the sky to the west. The light bounces off both the gates and my face like a massive flood light in the sky. At exactly the same time Ayden and I exclaim:

“What the HECK was that?”

It only flashes once this time, but it is exactly what I saw driving on the Malahat six months prior. What an incredible experience to have with my daughter, we are buzzing. We head home in awe of what we experienced, at least now I’m not the only one in the family that saw the “light in the sky”. I feel vindicated (lol).

The next morning I decide to check the energy on the Dreamspell Calendar. This is another hobby of mine. Tracking energy through the Dreamspell which is an interpretation of the ancient Mayan Tzolkein Calendar modernized by Jose Arguelles (More on the Dreamspell in future posts). The Dreamspell follows the 13:20 frequency following the 13 moons of the year in a 260 day perpetual calendar. So I look to see what I was doing 260 days prior. I do this by checking my phone’s photo roll. December 22nd the day after winter Solstice and the only photo on my camera roll is, I kid you not, of the harmonic gates at the Chinese Cemetery.

So, this is starting to feel like my Amy Adams in the movie Arrival moment. According to Dr Greer ETs speak to us through telepathy. Had I experienced a telepathic extraterrestrial dream giving me clues to communication with another consciousness???? What I do know is it felt like I was experiencing some kind of wrinkle in time or loop where my past self left a clue for my future self. It was all too compelling to ignore.

I am now super motivated to learn the protocols, so I watch Close Encounters of the Fifth kind and look a lot more closely at the CE5 protocols. Here they are:

CE5 aka Human Initiated Contact Experiences:

  1. LOCATE/DESIGNATE AN APPROPRIATE SPOT FOR YOUR CE-5. Find a quiet and/or remote spot in your home, or outdoors. If outdoors, choose a remote spot, preferably away from city lights and with a full view of the night sky. CE-5 can be done during the day or at night. Night time is usually preferable, as sky viewing for starships, flashbulbs, or other anomalies is done before, during and after your protocols, and of course, easier to spot against a dark sky. If CE-5ing indoors; after your protocols, walk outside and look up into the sky if you feel compelled to do so. Sometimes, after a CE-5, you will see nothing in the sky, however instead, have an ET themed vivid dream or other experiences of the ethereal, spiritual, or benevolent high strangeness kind.

  2. PREPARE YOURSELF FOR MEDITATION. At your designated spot, if in a group outdoors, place camp or lawn chairs in a circle and sit facing each other. If at night, be sure to wear warm clothes, and consider bringing a blanket or poncho. Have a flashlight handy for convenience and safety. Sit up in your chair with a straight spine as much as you are able when meditating. Preparations for your meditation can include breathing exercises, playing music, singing bowls, chanting, playing a prerecorded meditation, and other techniques. At this point, you may also state intentions as well or introduce yourselves to each other. (Most highly advanced nonhuman Beings are telepathic. They can also feel your intentions, so staying heart centered and sincere throughout is key). STEP 3: MEDITATION, STATE INTENTIONS (OUTLOUD OR INWARDLY). Start you meditation

  3. MEDITATION, STATE INTENTIONS (OUT LOUD OR INWARDLY). Start you meditation. Meditate for at least 20 minutes. Use a guided meditation or meditate in silence. Remove all random thoughts and worries of the day and focus on a solo target; your heart chakra or 3rd eye. (the spot between your brows.) Use appropriate instrumental music if it helps you to go into a deeper meditation. Your thought should be centered on one thing, such as your heart chakra, love, peace, and calm, joy, happiness, or cosmic expansion in consciousness (by focusing on the 3 rd eye chakra). The mood should be upbeat, happy, joyous, and peaceful

  4. SCAN THE SKIES FOR ET CRAFTS OR VISUAL PHENOMENA. BE OPEN TO POSSIBLE TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION, or any other ET or nonhuman contact phenomena you may experience, even hours after your CE-5, or the next day. Repeat any of the above steps if you wish.

As I write my experience here I realize that I pretty much did these protocols without knowing what they were. When I stopped at the top of the Malahat I had stated my peaceful intentions. If you’ve gotten this far in my story but missed the video I posted up top go back and watch it now. I had put on a guided meditation which had played for around 20 minutes (I had it on repeat) and my mood was joyous because all of the cool synchronicities. In this case it seems as though they (whoever they are) had called to me through my dream and I had picked up the call. Total time loop.

What does it all mean?

I’m not going 100% UFO fanatic here, I do however believe I experienced something profound. I have a suspicion that this won’t be the only contact, but I don’t want to jinx it. What I know for sure is that my dreams are powerful and I think this one opened up a whole new door for me. I am feeling inspired to learn more about what is possible in this realm. After years of coaching I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to achieve lasting, meaningful and transformative change is to crack into the subconscious and I think dreams could be the master key. Inspired by this and other experiences I have decided to enroll in Lana Sackwilde’s Lucid Entrepreneur Lab so I can learn to harness the power of my dreams and help my clients hack their subconscious. Stay tuned for more adventures from the dream space and beyond.

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