In any event December 21, 2012 is the date that the ancient Mayan calendar comes to a conclusion. This end of a great cycle in Mayan prophesy coincides with similar prophesies of other indigenous peoples like the North American Hopi. The great angst people across the globe share about the condition of humankind and the planet itself suggests that a rapid transformation and change could happen. We are like the animals that can sense the storm coming and head for cover. It may be unavoidable.
In speaking about our collective angst I am referring to a plural consensus that exists across almost all national boundaries, that is a concern about dwindling resources and about what seem to be insurmountable environmental and political problems. It would seem that humankind goes from one crisis to the next. We exist in a constant state of alertness awaiting the next news of a new war, or rocketing costs of living, or the currency we use to buy things dwindling in its value. The Al Gore film, An Inconvenient Truth was hugely successful worldwide, and has galvanized mainstream thinking around the idea of climatic change due to carbon emissions.
We recently heard that the world’s human population will reach 7-billion by 2012. Population is now growing so rapidly that there has been a four-fold increase in just the last 100 years! When graphed this growth is termed exponential or asymptotic and the trend line is kind of J-shaped. Population growth occurred at a constant rate for 10,000 years (A in the graph below) until the Black Death swept across the European continent and resulted in a decline of one-fourth of all humans on earth. Then during a relatively short period of only 62 years, the Guttenberg Bible was printed in 1455, Columbus sailed to the West Indies in 1492, and Martin Luther put forth his 95 Theses in 1517. Thus you had the printed word, the dawn of the age of discovery and the Christian reformation occurring almost simultaneously.
If you consider that the commonly held belief of the time was that of a relatively small flat earth; the journey of Columbus changed humanity profoundly. This was also a time approaching the end of a 1,000 year period of the dark ages where all earthly authority was subject to the church, and so Martin Luther’s act of defiance revolutionized all human authority almost overnight. The dark ages were a time when almost all people could neither read nor write; there was no need of it. The dawn of the printed word exploded radical change in human experience allowing people for the first time to obtain information in a brand new way. These great transformations occurring almost overnight brought the conclusion of the dark age and ushered in transformation of individual and group consciousness with such speed that those people’s notion of their ‘humanness’ and even their ideas about their cultures were forever and profoundly transformed. The world was never the same again.
This astounding change of human thinking and consciousness transformed human culture on the planet and literally increased the ‘carrying capacity’ of human civilizations. Our confidence as a species expanded. We knew we had made a breakthrough to a new day! Then the further cultural efficiencies achieved during the period of the industrial revolution during the late 18th century have allowed human population to increase even more rapidly, resulting in exponential growth for the last 250 years (B in the graph above).(1)
A few years ago I read an article that suggested that around half of all the human beings that have ever been born are alive today. This idea has spread and been taken as fact when it is simply not true. Regrettably, I think I have made reference to this erroneous information in lectures I have given. What is true is that enough information exists to calculate that roughly 106.4 billion people have existed since the dawn of man say 55,000 years ago. That means that 5.8% of all the people who have ever been born are alive today.
In any case the 5.8% percentage is still astounding to me. The collective human consciousness that is embodied in living, breathing human beings presents the possibility I believe of a group or collective responsibility or karma that is drawing us to a conclusion and transformation. When the Black Death concluded on the European continent in the 14th century the remaining human population at the time also held a collective karma that catapulted humanity into complete transformation just 100 years later. People of the time had no idea of the enormous change that was just around the corner.
I believe that as we approach 2012 we are experiencing a sort of Karmic compression. This compression is a speeding up of the rate that consequences of our actions become manifest in our lives. Referring to consequences; I mean both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ consequences. They are only the result of our actions or of the energy we put out. Our intentions of service to each other are quickly forming into projects and cooperative ventures which are readily accepted. When this happens, we are experiencing our intentions becoming manifest. In like manner our karma knocks us back when we become self serving and arrogant.
Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you're gonna be dead
What in the world you thinkin' of?
Laughing in the face of love
What on earth you tryin' to do?
It's up to you, yeah you!
John Lennon, 1974
This principle of Karmic compression is important as we approach a time of great change because it will teach us that we are connected to everyone and everything. The great illusion and the great lie that we have been led to believe is that we have been separate from each other. When you act in a way that is unkind to another, and you very quickly receive an echo of your unkind act coming back to you, you then soon begin to realize that you and the person you were unkind to are the same. There is a synapse in our experience of ourselves and our experience of others that is closing.
I suggested in my first article about 2012, entitled The 2012 Problem, that our notion of time itself was going to go through a dramatic shift. Perception of time as we are accustomed exists in viewing each moment as separate to every other moment. In other words, we have become accustomed to experiencing time itself much in the same way as we do any other people, or things. Every part of time is separate from every other part of time.
Just like those people in the 14th century we now have very little understanding about what is ‘just around the corner’! Something really incredible is about to happen!
If in a relatively short period of time, a brand new ‘meta quality’ will be added to the consciousness experience of individuals, then the relevance of future or past events will fall away and the relevance of the clock will fall away. The consciousness we are adapting to is beyond any benchmark previously established. Human consciousness will come to exist inside a new holographic knowing. It will exist in the stillness of the present moment. This is a change over in consciousness that will forever transform who we are as human beings.
The renaissance period of the 14th to 17th centuries will mirror exactly another great revolution of consciousness we are now embarking on. We are standing in the doorway of a brand new renaissance; a brand new confidence.
The Kogi Indians of northern Colombia have a concept of consciousness called Aluna. They believe in a point of reference that is within us or an inner dimension where from that point time itself ceases to exist as we know it. In the Aluna dimension everything that is in the past and the future exists together with the present moment. The Aluna dimension is a real place; it is a real point of reference that exists in all of us. Perhaps it lies dormant in many people now, but like an unused or vestigial organ, it is a perception, that once awakened, becomes alive and prominent.
When Columbus made his journey even the skeptics had to take notice; commonly held truth changed … for everybody. This dimension of timelessness is real. Inevitably we will all awaken.
While the greatest percentage of humanity exists in post-modern consumer cultures, there are small numbers of indigenous Indian cultures like the Kogi all over the planet. These cultures have survived for millennia and most of their cultural values remain the same today. There is a deep connection among indigenous people with the earth as the source of life. They view the earth as the giver of life and sustenance. They live in harmony with nature. They will not put a spade in the ground to plant seeds without first making an offering or a prayer of appreciation to the earth. They know that who they are came from the earth. They view all living creatures as equal to themselves.
This connection to the earth is the recognition that all things and everything is connected. Many have lost this connection to this oneness or source; their waking minds are habituated to the notion of separateness. As human consciousness is transformed the perception of the unity of all things, the interconnectedness of all things emerges naturally.
In fact every cell of our bodies does come from the earth. Even ‘man-made’ materials are really just compounds that were first taken from the earth and re-shaped into something ‘man made’.
When we view the world as our domain to dominate and indiscriminately take from and plunder, we have forgotten that we came from the earth. We have fallen asleep in an illusion where we are separate.
The earth provides us with a perfect life support system. Our planet provides air to breathe; water to drink; animals and plants for food. Who knows what a perfect human diet is. We try to employ the use of superfood plants like Açai in our workshops. Certain foods like Açai can literally supercharge our bodies. Surely the plants provision of a ripe fruit, ready to eat, hanging on a tree for us to pick is nature’s definition of a fast food drive up window! I suspect that much of human diet evolved around priorities like food preservation and supply and not necessarily eating the most healing and nutritious food. The plants give us ready to eat food to nourish our bodies.
But plants exist in a much more complete (albeit sometimes forgotten) relationship with humans. There are a whole assortment of other plants that, being medicinal in nature, give us healing for the infections, illnesses and maladies of the body. Many of today’s synthetic drugs marketed by pharmaceutical companies are created as synthetic facsimiles of a medicinal plant source.
Still other plants exist that are healers of human souls. These plants are the shamanic plant teachers and have been used for millennia by people like to Kogi to enable their perception from the Aluna dimension. How fitting it is that we of the civilized world turn to indigenous traditions in order to comprehend and endure another great transformation of our very humanness.
I feel great hope for the future of those who open their hearts and minds to the great change that is upon us!
© Ralph Miller 2008
(1) Adapted from Population Reference Bureau (1984) World Population: Fundamentals of Growth, Population Reference Bureau, Washington, DC
Ralph Miller has worked with people from all over the world in an experiential journey which he calls Heart of the Initiate as a way for people to remember their "authentic selves".
Heart of the Initiate offers tours to Brazil where they help people make sacred inner journeys through an intensive workshop experience. Their Brazil workshops incorporate shamanic ceremonies using the ancient plant teacher, Ayahuasca.
Please check our their website! For more information on their upcoming workshops in September please http://www.heartoftheinitiate.com/
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