A Little More Perspective on 2012

I've edited and paraphrased key points in a recent article written by Mark Stevenson concerning 2012 and the Mayan calendar. I met Larry Joseph in Lisbon this year, by the way, and respect his journalistic integrity. I pass along the perspectives here because there has been such a terrible stir about what might be coming. I do not feel great negativity at all concerning 2012, but feel that there is definitely a transformational shift in the works, though I do not get that it is tied to a specific date. I will pass along ideas related to "The Shift" as I receive them. I continue to advocate that we stay fully in the moment and raise our personal vibration, becoming "transparent," which to me means that we dissolve our holding patterns and mental/emotional contractions so energy can flow through us unimpeded.

The Mayan Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 BC, dividing time into approximately 394-year periods known as baktuns. Thirteen was a sacred number for the Mayas—the completion number before a new cycle begins again—and the 13th baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012. "It's a special anniversary of creation," said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. "The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they're just recording this future anniversary."

Tribal elder Apolinario Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says a significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date but most Mayan elders say the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas, and are nonsense.Others say there are astronomical alignments that coincide in 2012, including one that happens only once every 25,800 years. Mexican archaeologist Guillermo Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012—including one that roughly translates into the year 4772. Bernal suggests that apocalypse is "a very Western, Christian" concept projected onto the Maya, perhaps because Western myths are "exhausted."

Some say the Maya knew that the Earth's axis wobbles, slightly changing the alignment of the stars every year. Once every 25,800 years, the sun aligns with the center of our galaxy on a winter solstice, the sun's lowest point in the horizon. That will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, when the sun appears to rise in the same spot where the bright center of galaxy sets. Author John Major Jenkins says his two-decade study of Mayan ruins indicates the Maya were aware of the alignment and attached great importance to it. "If we want to honor and respect how the Maya think about this, then we would say that the Maya viewed 2012, as all cycle endings, as a time of transformation and renewal," said Jenkins.

Author Lawrence Joseph says a peak in explosive storms on the surface of the sun combined with a hole in the earth's magnetic shield could knock out the power grid, triggering food shortages, water scarcity—a collapse of civilization, especially in regions closer to the poles. Solar peaks occur about every 11 years, but Joseph says there's evidence the 2012 peak could be "a lulu." While pressing governments to install protection for power grids, Joseph counsels readers not to use 2012 as an excuse to not live in a healthy, responsible fashion.

Other sources say a galactic alignment or magnetic disturbances could somehow trigger a "pole shift" creating the ultimate planetary catastrophe. Scientists say that, at best, the poles might change location by one degree over a million years, with no sign that it would start in 2012.