Decoding 2012: Part 1—Global Guilt?
Submitted by Birgitte Rasine on October 30, 2009 - 6:46am
December twenty-first, two thousand twelve. This innocuous-looking date has spun frantic circles around the Western world, sparking an international firestorm of assumption, expectation, hype, and in some cases, fear, hysteria, and panic.
The Mayan Calendar says the world is going to end, the blogosphere moans. Is 12/21/2012 the call number of doomsday? intones the media. Sign up here for your survival lottery, beckons Sony Pictures’ latest self-serving marketing machine.
Oh yes there is money to be made. Gobs of it. And Hollywood is first in line, with Roland Emmerich’s aptly-named 2012, scheduled for release on November 13, 2009 in the U.S. The website of the “Institute for Human Continuity” has, until recently, avoided disclosing that it’s a cold-hearted marketing tactic for the movie, designed with the careful engineering of a spider spinning its sweet sticky web for anything that ventures near; it’s already managed to scare more than a few expectant movie goers out of their socks. And then there are all the survival stores, online and off, books, DVDs, workshops, seminars, retreats and maybe a few sweat lodges. Today, October 30, Google returned 194 million hits for 2012.
Meanwhile, the living Maya shake their heads, wondering what all those Westerners are going on about. Why is the Long Count suddenly so critically important? Could it be that the Armageddon the world has been impatiently clamoring for all of these millennia, was simply delayed due to an archaeological technicality? And above all, just why do we have this persistent fascination with The End? Do we perhaps feel some sort of global guilt for having massacred each other and our fellow living beings for so many thousands of years?
Besides, if it’s all true, should the Maya elders not be traveling the world right now, speaking on Oprah and CNN and all the talk shows warning humanity of impending apocalypse? They’re tending to their local affairs, more concerned about the continuing changes in the climate and degradation of the environment and natural resources, than Day or Year Zero.
Indeed, if we keep our heads stuck in the sands of the future, we may not have a present to live in. 2012 was not meant to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But on and on the doomsday wheel spins, fueled by its own blind self-righteousness and sped up by fast-paced technological innovation in communications tools. Over the past few decades, the global media and marketing machine has been very finely tuned to play the rich range of human emotions to its own agenda and motives—ultimately to line the bank accounts of the top media corporations. It works because nearly 4 billion people today are literate, and many if not most of those have access to some form of communication, be it television, be it radio, be it the Internet. Centuries ago, it took months for a letter to travel a few hundred miles, and even then there was no guarantee of delivery.
The speed of and level of access to information today is extraordinary—and wonderful. The problem is that the intentions and motives of some of those who produce all that content and communication are not all that pure. And so the river that’s burst out of its medieval dam, this flood of 60x24x7 words images and sound, this great big sea that swells with brilliant research, lively debate, unexpected discoveries, friendly exchanges and all kinds of communication, art, music and culture, is also polluted with deception, manipulation, suggestion, misinformation, misinterpretation and plain old ignorance.
These are the hidden snares you need to watch out for as you explore the online ecosystem, especially with future-dated events that no one can prove until the day of.
But there’s another problem: the entire 2012 debate is way off-track when it comes to the Mayan Calendar. We’ll explore that in Part 2 of this blog series.
~ Birgitte Rasine
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Comments
Thanks.... And why are the
Thanks....
And why are the Maya not (as you put it) running around announcing Doomsday on Oprah?
What they used to tell me was this: "We stopped using the Long Count a thousand years ago. But if our ancestors said that this date was important, maybe it is. But sitting around worrying about it won't help you walk the Road of Life in a more spiritual manner day by day."
And doomsday? Please. Western civilization seems unique in its constant desire to anticipate -- and with such gusto! -- its own imminent demise. The idea of time as a straight line, from a beginning point to an apocalyptic finale -- is characteristic of monotheistic religions. It doesn't have a place in, for example, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, or any other tradition which sees time as a series of endlessly recurring cycles rather than a straight line.
The Maya, too, see time as cyclic rather than linear. To project our monotheistic expectations of doomsday onto their traditional vision of time is to infuse misunderstanding and disinformation into their indigenous lifeway.
That reminds me of something else they used to tell me. "Do you think that all these outsiders could please stop turning our spiritual traditions into some kind of bizarre dog-and-pony show?"
2012 Movie Rebuttal!!!
Thanks Birgitte!
I agree wholeheartedly, no, worldheartedly about films spreading terror and disinformation re: 2012 - and this is why our group, StarvingFilmStudents has produced THE APOCALYPSE ACCORDING TO DORIS.
We are a totally independent collective who have produced this film - a group of refugees from Hollywood who have offered counter-argument! We cover much of what you point out in your work in this spiritually subversive feature film which is funny, shocking, and at the same time emotional while it challenges our beliefs about existence and meaning in a metaphysical story about our higher nature, what is real, and what is "woo-woo."
This is a new way of knowing, dealing with conscious awakening and the meaning of our lives. This film might change the way we think, the way we act, and the way we live our lives.
I know you are busy Birgitte, but if you can log onto our site and view the trailer and clips - I'd love to arrange a pre-industry screening for you. Just send an email vg@starvingfilmstudents.com as the film will be completed early July.
http://www.doristhemovie.com
thanks, keep up the good message
victor goss, writer, director
vg@starvingfilmstudents.com
is there differnt dates for harmonic convergence ?
hi brigitte
make this really quick , carl calleman,s last essay was the beginning of the sixth night in the galactic underworld , In it he calls the date for the cosmic convergence at july 17th , 2010 , and yet when using the daily Tzolk"in at the portal , and beautiful work by the way , I use it everyday ..
but using the portal calendar if i bring up the the galactic underworld,
http://mayaportal.lucita.net/tzolkin
it says the dates for the harmonic convergence is may 27 2010 .
ummm , whats up ?
peace
hemp.
media hype
Hi Brigitte,
Interesting, the comment about what the Maya are doing. Maybe we should take a leaf from their book? Tend to our daily affairs, build local communities, co create that way.
From what I hear from people around me, a lot of what 'happens' on tv, hardly figures in their daily lives. I feel that people are being bombarded to such an extent that they have begun to shut the sound and sight out.
Inner vision, not: tell a vision.
not all westerners are the same.
Waterdog
inner peace
Re: media hype
Waterdog... no, not all Westerners are the same, as you say. And of course this is just a label to denote geographical location; we can find "western" mentalities in the East and "eastern" mentalities in the West; the same goes for North and South.
I think you really hit on it — it is time to let go of these labels and simply recognize that the world really is round. In other words, we are all One and we are all Six Billion.
Re: the media, yes, it has forgotten how to listen to its listeners and how to see its viewers. It is a powerful, incredible tool, but technology and money have driven off its tracks. This is one of the reasons why we are very active in the social media spheres, and hopefully will do more with media: it's the intention and the content that matter, not the technology and not the profit margins.
Namaste
Birgitte Rasine
media hype
Hi Brigitte,
Thank you for your response and I agree with you on the one ness, whilst reading Carl's Purposeful Universe!
The media really has forgotten to listen to its viewers as the comments on rotten tomatoes site (UK) shows, for instance. This is a very hopeful sign and I see more of these signs in people around me, every day.
Resonance, how true this is, I am surprised even myself!
Namaste,
Waterdog
Dear Brigitte, Thank you for
Dear Brigitte,
Thank you for your reply.
As to the matter of human freedom, Emanuel Kant had a go at it in the eighteenth century and his conclusion was, we are not free. I don't agree with Kant and more with your view, though I feel that if one accepts the evolution of conciousness as viewed by the Mayan Calendar interpretation of Carl Calleman, then this means that we evolve from a former pre-logic conciousness that was more part of the right hemisfere in which the non materialistic world could be seen and communicated with,(paradise?) through a conciousness that later had to become inprissoned in the head and inwhich only rational logic can stand by itself, with a strong feeling of the self, to evolve in our days into a conciousness wherin this self is retained and logic is still present but to which the intuition of the right brain is added.This means that next to logic, universal love will evolve as the active response to intuition. This process can only take place when it is lived by us humans. God may be omnipotent, but conciousness must be acquired and is not a mere magical act from some devine force. We have to struggle to get there. In this proces, I feel that our freedom becomes bigger and bigger, emcompassing the world(s) that our conciousness has acces to. So in that sense I agree, that we are free beings, but only to the extent that our conciousness goes.
And as my own conciousness is still limited, so is my freedom, although in principle it is without limit.
Today I saw a preview of the hollywood movie 2012: it is time for you people to leave California, as it is going to slide into the sea, with Hollywood aswell I hope. Seldom have I seen such misleading nonsense. It is clear that very much is at stake.
Kind greetings
Phil
This process can only take
This process can only take place when it is lived by us humans. God may be omnipotent, but conciousness must be acquired and is not a mere magical act from some devine force.
Fear and illusion
Dear Brigitte,
thank you for your statement. I think you are quite right about the Mayan people. Their wisdom tells them to live in the devine present. The thing is however that we westeners are awfully curious about the future. We want to know in advance and think we can prepare. But that is very relative. I fully agree with William Shakespear who says in As You like it: "All the world's a stage; And all the men and women merely players." Carl Calleman has learned us that we all are part of a devine evolutionary plan that started out at the very beginning. In this plan there is only limited freedom for us, as the great director of this divine play corrects us when we are endangering the plan. However individualy we may want to bring ourselves in line with the devine plan and this is our own responsebility. Two great psychological forces are constantly trying to delude us and make us go astray. The one is fear for what the future may bring, the other is escapism in illusionary feelings. Hollywood has grabbed both feelings in many of their catastrophy movies of which television and the cinema is poluted. Fear and illusion work very well together, combined it is a very strong coctail to paralise our spiritual life. Certain people will laugh and reject the Hollywood nonsense, others who don't have much insight in spiritual matters or in this case, the Mayan Calendar, or are vunerable in this respect will be clowed in darkness and will for some time not be able to awaken to the present spiritual reality. For those the true information about our present time as revealed in the Mayan Calendar must be available, as for instance in Carls magnificent books, It will be there when the moment comes that life opens their inner eye. Untill that moment we should not judge them for their ignorance but love them for what they too are: gods in the making.
In my perception it is all in the devine plan, even persons like mr Bush who has helped us to recognise that his way leads to nothing of value. Where it all boils down to, is that each individual must learn to live with the energies of the prevailing Underworld, which in our days requires a higher form of ethics and morality. This will bring us in the right position for the events to come. Even Hollywood hitting the jackpot with its fearfull nonsense is part of the game.
Re: fear and illusion
Dear Phil,
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. You are quite right that we in the West are very curious creatures and that Hollywood plays on our very human emotions as an expert musician plays the strings of the harp. I do think you put it very well when you say that fear and illusion "work very well together... to paralyze our spiritual life." You've hit it on the head.
But I am not so sure that there is a divine plan that limits our freedom. My humble sentiment about this is that we in fact ARE the divine, and that there is neither a plan nor a preset "destiny", but that we simply ARE. This is the problem with our very conception of time... that it's a linear, logical, rational, B follows A, cause-and-effect experience we have lived with all of our lives.
If you let go of that concept, things become very different. Everything takes on an exponentially explosive potential, because it is no longer constrained by this definition of time, or existence. And that's where you can start to accept the possibility that we can access the divine life force, very simply because we are all part of the divine. As you say... "gods in the making."
Namaste,
Birgitte Rasine