Hen and Egg

The sense of Self needs to be released from bondage and emerge as a new creature, with a new base and foundation. Whether this is a psychological event or mystical one, it is definitely experiential.

In being felt, understanding deepens. There is a perception of actuality, of something real but transcendent unfolding. Belief does not seem to be a factor, neither abstract intellectual grasping.

It is like a mist gradually clearing and revealing the outlines of the moon, whereas before only a vague, diffuse light could be discerned. It is a natural movement manifesting as one returns over and over to a state of watchfulness, like a hen who broods over her nest waiting for the egg to hatch.

One senses how inappropriate and useless are any mechanisms attempting to force or hurry this process. All that is required, and all that is possible, is to diligently, mindfully watch.

"And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch" Mark 13:37

We need only be present, observing the energetic currents as they flow back and forth like waves at the beach or the tide in its rhythms.

This, it seems, is the real deal. This is where the action is.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

At last the old joke is actualized in one's own experience, when we realize . . .

. . . we are both.

The Hare

I was staring into a large aquarium in which a rabbit was sinking head-first toward the gravel bottom. The animal paused in its descent and looked out at me. I could see it was not distressed, and was in fact calmly holding its breath underwater. I got the impression it had been doing so for a very long time already.

Then I woke up and mulled over this peculiar dream, wondering what it was trying to convey. Water is a symbol of spirit, but why would a rabbit be spending time in that?

I picked up my current book, "Man and His Symbols" by C. G. Jung, then flipped a page and immediately read: "The second stage of human life is characterized by the Hare, in which the individual is starting to become socially adapted."

Hmmm. A rabbit, then a hare?  Seemed a bit on the synchronous side.

That night I went to a lecture on the Mayan calendar. At the front of the room was a statue of the Mayan fertility goddess Ixchel, characterized by - guess what? - a rabbit!

Whoa. Synchronicity seemed to be closing in. It appeared that my unconscious was pretty determined to communicate something to the rest of me. Was I getting the message though?

Perhaps it was saying that denial of one's life is an act of self-betrayal, and that inner light needs to be taken from under the bushel basket and allowed to shine.

Or maybe, that to assume oneself "not good enough" is to pronounce God a failure - a deity capable of making mistakes.

Or that staying stuck in a developmental phase allows primal wounds to remain unhealed, and that a soul's journey needs to be understood, accepted and embraced so it can be set free from wherever it is trapped.

Possibly it was just pointing out the obvious - that my creativity and sociability have been submerged long enough and it is time to express them in a new and fertile way.

So I opted for an experiment:

I headed to a Goodwill thrift store to see what might be there as confirmation. I knew this would have to be pretty special - not your typical Easter bunny or cartoon rabbit figurine. It would have to really fit the sober synchronicities that had already been presented.

So I went in like someone picking up a layaway, as though I already knew what was there.

And inside I found . . . a hare

Not looking not down toward the bottom of the fish tank,

But rather up . . . toward the stars.

Dragon Breath

Our real need is not to feel “good” in some fleeting, transitory way, but rather to integrate the experiential journey that brought us to where we now stand. This process may be painful, yet it is necessary for assimilating and viscerally comprehending the implications of that vast trek.

We need to trace the currents and sub-currents of psychic events that have composed this journey and discern the overall shape of their flow. We need to understand how our reality has been formed, deformed and reformed in the process, in order to see ourselves as we really are. We need to reach a more sober and stable energetic state, in which emotional and intellectual movements are coherent with our life-intent.

We should not position our attitudes such as to be indifferent about what has happened. Nor sink into useless condemnation and justification – either of ourselves or others. Rather, we should embrace the experience in its entirety, as its parents and co-creators.

Our darkest shadows have played out onto both the personal and world stages. Yes, we have witnessed the amazing and incomprehensible, not to mention the utterly repugnant.

We have in fact found the enemy, and he is in fact us. Yet any response short of responsible acceptance is a denial of truth, a pushing back into the unseen and the unconscious of what we paid dearly to bring into the light of awareness.

In our bodies, in their very cells, we feel the energetic reality of existence, the dynamism fueling each step that manifests in this moment of decision. Here is the power to go forward, to “move on” with confidence and composure. The dragon has breathed its fire into our lungs and enflamed our hearts.

Yet, whatsoever we deny about our experience and ourselves depletes the future by depriving the present of the rich complexity of all-possibility. With such immense power, we can easily bury ourselves in an early grave.

Or . . . we can build a mountain from which to survey this world

Anew . . . and from on high.

Someone Who Knows What to Do

The Potter

The priest announced that Lent was nearly half over and that we should “redouble our efforts.”

What “efforts”? To not eat meat or dairy products? I am fasting, diligently in fact. But it seems like no big deal.  Certainly no herculean effort.

Of course, true "fasting" involves more than that. Its purpose is to cleanse the whole person of toxins, both physical and spiritual.  Beyond not eating certain things, it should include the obvious no-no’s - like not breaking the Ten Commandments.

Yet none of this, even if perfectly executed, would necessarily evidence spirituality or wholeness. What do fasts and renunciate behaviors really matter to God, who looks at the heart?

What counts is my inner state, and this remains an impenetrable fog of un-reconciled, un-reconcilable dissatisfactions that coalesce into a yearning for the warmth of true love - a yearning that has never been met. I feel like a child weeping in the dark that sees itself as both unloved and unlovable, longing to appease a Parent that long ago showed (or so I’ve come to believe) that this was ultimately impossible.

Perhaps from time to time a temporary reprieve occurs, an experience of sharing and affection with someone, maybe even a fleeting moment of happiness or peace.

Then the darkness swirls back in. Despair hits again – and in that same old spot which is already bruised and wounded beyond all hope of healing.

The world then seems a weary and miserable place, and life itself no great gift.  But such an attitude is pure ingratitude, despondency.  What to do?

I am advised to “resist the devil” and to be submissive to God's omniscient will. I am reminded that the created object has no right to critique its Creator; the pot should not demand explanations of the Potter who formed it.

What consistent counsel! How very much like what my own parents drove home with their incessant mantra about how children should not “talk back” when scolded or disciplined.

So, our amazing and supposedly all-powerful God is just as insecure as my human mother and father, who in their surpassing maturity could not endure a child’s expressions of helpless grief and rage.

I want to forget them all.

To hell with parents and lovers and deities that need a person to be “just so” in order to merit their affection and approval – which they never give 100% anyway.

To hell with wagging one's tail in order to placate another person's misplaced fury, and betraying oneself over and over and over in the process.

To hell with carrying the burden of not being good enough, strong enough, smart enough, together enough . . .  anything enough.

To hell with being held responsible for how someone else is feeling, as though whatever is wrong in that person's life is my fault.

Let the dead bury their own dead.

Soul Sweets

One’s outer life is like a seed that must die for the soul to live fully. As Jesus said,

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: but if it die, it brings forth much fruit” (John 12:24).

When this “death” of the egoic person occurs, some sorrow is natural. The soul has - until then - completely identified with its external life. The soul has sympathized with it's struggles and problems, and imagined existence to be nothing more than this.

But the demise of the outer man signifies that a vital transformative process is occurring: namely the birth – or rebirth – of the whole man. The germination of that seed represents a quickening the soul, an awakening to its essential reality. The soul turns away from an externalized, incomplete projection of itself manifested as the ego, and devotes itself to birthing the seedling of Being.

As God first breathed life into the soul, so in a sense the soul had also breathed life into the ego. The ego became the soul’s reflection into this world, the mirror through which it came to see and know itself, to differentiate between truth and falsehood, most especially through the process of “sinning.”

Sins typically produce judgment upon those who commit them by those who do not, but rarely do they result in real understanding, wisdom or compassion. It is only one’s own sins, personally committed violations of the spirit of life, which teach those things. The soul, through its instrument the heart, must - and invariably does - experience the pain of “transgression.”

In fact, it longs for this pain. It fervently desires the fullness, the wholeness, the depth as well as height, of all experiences that God has made possible. The soul is “born” a babe, innocent and naïve, yet only through sorrow’s door may it venture into the household of the King. Only after having tasted humility via a seemingly self-imposed exile from the Light of Love can it appreciate the glory of divinity.

The rags of its human apparel must be discarded at this formidable entrance. Yet it is through having borne and worn such forlorn garments that the soul has gained its power. By undergoing the journey through profound darkness, it learns to perceive the unimaginably wondrous - that it, a creature, was made in the very image of God Almighty. Thus humbled and strengthened, it prays the ultimate prayer - for union with God.

St. Teresa of Avila speaks of this state in The Interior Castle:

“True union transcends all earthly joys, exceeds all earthly delights, surpasses all earthly satisfactions. You can tell from experience that this joy has a very different source of origin. The difference is like feeling something with the skin of your body or the marrow of your bones. I think that hits the nail on the head. I don’t think I could say it any better than that.”

As the holy Light dawns, it is felt as much as seen, for the soul’s powers of knowing are of a different order from those of the ego, of the conceptual man. They radiate throughout the body and convert the entire organism into a unified instrument for communicating with the divine.

Like an ant, which from outdoors on a blade of grass detects a grain of sugar dropped upon the kitchen counter, the soul distinctly perceives the infinitely subtle “sweetness of God.”

“Oh taste and see that the Lord is good,” says King David (Psalm 34:8).

Seeking this sanctified sweetness, the soul moves unflinchingly past its personal sorrows toward the eternal nourishment, using every faculty at its disposal. Thus, even the skin and the marrow of the bones become required participants in the mystery of communion and union with the divine.

And the incarnation of God into human form occurs once again . . .

. . . this time in us.

Soul Food

Outer experiences are really inner experiences. Whatsoever happens on the external level derives its significance and perceptual impact from our inner state. When we are not comfortable within, nothing without can bring comfort.

Teresa of Avila suggests this in “The Interior Castle.” Describing conditions in the Fourth Mansion she writes,

“If we find peace where we live, there is no conflict that can disquiet us.”

One way to come closer to peace is to stop considering one’s outer life as a realm where things go wrong, problems which are resented and resisted. It is actually possible for conflicts and crises to produce the very energy needed for inner growth.

John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus then said,

“He must increase but I must decrease,”

The outer person should lead progressively to the inner one, decreasing while the latter increases. The Christ Self is the germ of the seed which, as it begins to grow consumes the nutrition of the surrounding seed material.

Our “lives” as we know them, our ego selves – are food for the emerging Self within. If we understand this, crisis and catastrophe lose their threatening power and appear as sources of transformational energy for the seedling soul growing toward the light.

This awareness brings peace where we live.

Conflict can not disquiet us when digested into soul food.

The Inner Child

The “Inner Child” mythology is usually presented in terms of a wondrous and beautiful being within that we would automatically love and adore.

My encounter with this person inside wasn’t like that. In fact, as it became more experiential than theoretical, I discovered the Inner Child and I were very much at odds. We glared at each other from a distance suspiciously.

The adult taunted, “You’re the kid that your parents rejected! They didn’t like you so why should I?”

While the Inner Child spat right back, “You’re the adult who has screwed up his life. Why would I want to grow up toward you?”

This dynamic was unexpected and troubling. I didn’t know how to interpret it until it I realized it was symbolized in the life and Passion of Jesus Christ.

Jesus was the embodiment of sinless innocence, of divine beauty incarnate, yet He was rejected to the very death. Isaiah wrote:

“He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

The Inner Child is not merely “me” at a younger age. It seems to be a self, the Self, the expression of divinity incarnate that is nevertheless rejected and despised by the worldly egoic “me.”

The Inner Child is actually in a sense the Master of this organism, to whom the ego should, and eventually must, surrender its control.

Here is the archetypal conflict, in which some form of crucifixion is predestined and inevitable.

Shadows

Peter Pan remained a child because he had lost his shadow. Without his shadow something was missing, some important information about who he was and how he fit into the world of substance. Without a shadow he could not grow up.

Under certain circumstances a person might appear to have several shadows, such as when walking under a set of street lamps in the night. From whatever source light is coming, there is the side of us that is illumined and a side that casts a shadow – a side that remains out of sight.

In terms of the psyche, this shadow side is most often unconscious to its owner. Yet it still influences events. Indeed, being unrecognized and unmonitored, it can have a tremendous effect, yet remain incognito. A person feels at the mercy of powerful but incomprehensible forces.

Like Peter Pan, the child within us is in search of its shadow because it knows it needs to grow up.  It wants to expose this seeming monster, which is really nothing other than the unseen dimensions of its own self, to the light. It craves to become fully consciousness in order to be free of the fear of an “other” that doesn’t really exist as a separate entity.

As the process of individuation progresses, the shadows that had formerly been invisible (until they fomented some crisis, at least) begin gradually to grow more opaque. They can be felt and even seen to some degree.

Wendy sews the shadow to Peter's toes and it becomes part of him, reflecting his place in the world of beings. Its ability to create havoc is contained.

When this connecting, this embracing of the shadow happens, we can make conscious choices about its influence in our lives.

And we begin to understand that the shadow is not merely ours,

but us.

Feast

For lunch there is a can of kippered snacks. I hold it in my hands and images of herring appear, darting through the cool vastness of the sea.

With reverence and appreciation I consider the freedom these creatures have relinquished in order to be with me today. In return I offer them a continuation of their life as part of mine.

I feel a movement of grace between us, the energy of acceptance passing from my hands into their flesh and back again.

Some people do call this practice of blessing food, “Grace.”

We commune in silence, the fish and I, each surrendered in our own way to the mystery and magnitude of life.

The moment is magic . . .

As before the can is even opened,

This simple meal of kippered snacks

Becomes both a prayer

And a feast.

Nostalgia

Nostalgic thoughts seem a bit like fat wormy things twirling through the ethers. They don’t have fangs or long claws, because these are not necessary. They don’t need to be fast and furious to be accepted. Nostalgia is virtually irresistible and knows it. So those thoughts can be slow and lazy about coming along.

At least, until a person reaches a certain level of discernment. Before then, nostalgia worms can enter easily into a person’s thought field. They pass nearly undetected because of their sedating seduction into feeling something “familiar” that is “missing.” A person opens to this impression, falling through amnesia into the Neither-Either Land of What-Is-Not.

Neither-Either Land is a pretend place of limitless unfulfilled promises or possibilities: those which never happened and those which will never happen again. A wanderer here is overwhelmed with yearning for what he thinks can never be or could never have been.

Such visitations to N.E.L. generally happen many times. It is as though one must hope every last God-forsaken hope, and experience those hopes dashed ad infinitum, until the face of perpetual disappointment is beheld and known in every feature.

Such a stark image of hopelessness is intolerable even though, or perhaps because, it is ultimately false. The wanderer eventually realizes that anguish cannot be appeased through nostalgia, and that there is no release from the dungeon of despair until he is able to answer the following question in the affirmative:

“Do you really want to live . . . now?”

For one who is adrift in Neither-Ether Land, this is by no means an easy reckoning. He will almost certainly say, with grim determination, “No, I do not!” Because nostalgia posits that life in this moment is life without something he wants but cannot have.

And so, disappointment carries him further and further down into the realm of dissolution, where the hardened brick of impossible desires is broken bit by bit into tiny meaningless particles. When there is nothing left to hold onto, then suffering loses the power to possess.

This is the nadir of the dark night, the point at which the forces of light begin to increase. Faint at first, felt rather than seen, more of a fragrance than a vision, dawn trembles through the void.

The wanderer gradually perceives that something has changed. The seemingly endless darkness begins to wane, the mortal chill to warm, the fog of confusion to disperse.

Light brings discernment. Even a candle’s flame can make a blackened room negotiable. Shadows appear, illuminating form.

Before, nostalgic thoughts were invisible until actually felt as intrusions. Now, their wormy shapes can be seen and no longer seem inviting, but rather tedious and tiresome. Consequently they find no receptive landing place.

And with attention embracing the Now, the energy of the Present blows them away like a wind.

Warehouse Feast

The sky is dark and overcast, moist as with the sweat of invisible beings. I pass through an industrial part of town - warehouses, empty parking lots, motionless trucks with lights and motors off. There is no nightlife, no movement, nothing whatsoever to invite visitors.

In times past this passage would have seemed depressing. But tonight the aesthetically dull has acquired a spiritual vitality. My awareness of the seemingly ugly scene passes beyond conventional mental filters and lands in strange new territory.

So much of the world remains unperceived regardless of how often we look at it. We see the outer surfaces, the shapes of things, but miss their essence, their magic, their "life."

Life? Yes, even old bridges and scarred buildings have life. They vibrate with the impressions of events that have happened in them and on them and around them. Of the people that have walked and talked, lived and perhaps died there.

Even the most drab and unimportant of structures has its own story, flavor and fragrance. And this neglected tale is thrilling if a person can get clear and close enough to sense it.

Because it speaks, in its own inimitable way, of the mystery of human life. Of the depth and height, the amazing richness, texture and intensity of

the spirit made flesh.
And so . . . I caress the moment's experience like a lover,

Feeling into it, yearning to penetrate its subtle essence and be nourished thereby.


Tonight there is FEAST among the warehouses,

Yet very few are crowding toward the table.

Raising Lazarus

Now there is peace in the graveyard. The dust is settling and the sun can be felt, if not actually seen.

Lazarus stumbles out of his tomb. He heard a voice - someone calling.

That voice was not plaintive, but insistant, even demanding:

"Lazarus, come forth!" it said.

And so, he comes. Somewhat reluctantly, perhaps. Death is a relief, after all.

All life's agony and pain finished at last.

"Loose him, and let him go," the voice commanded.

So Lazarus finds himself blinking in the light of day, weak and stinky after four days of playing dead. Four days of bugs crawling on his skin and nipping at his eyes.

Someone unwrapped the grave clothes around his hands and feet. He stands wobbly and hesitant, uncertain what to do.

What's your next move when you've gone on to the other side? When life's greatest mystery is a secret no more?

What do you do when there is nothing left to fear?

When you are not scared of being hurt anymore?

When you've lost everything already?

. . . Oh bliss!

. . . Oh joy!

Journey's End

It came to me of leaving the track of thought that runs in circles - continuous fears about the future, anguish about the past.

Another way was shown that did not go back and forth. It was more like an open window.

And the message above the window was this:

"We let you take that path to its hardest ending so you would know what death was. So you would know how deeply the grave was dug from which you are called to arise.

For those who are comfortable in their graves do not seek resurrection - the slumber of seeming is enough for them. Only those who taste the bitterness of dying yearn for rebirth into life."

The former track fades, along with its forays into dreamy, nightmarish elsewhere.

Whereas the way that was shown extends not into what was and what might be.

This way has no destination, no movement, no goal, no expectation.

It's journey has ended.

Debt Free

In his book The Authentic Tarot: Discovering Your Inner Self Thomas Saunders describes a person’s life as a “play” in which growth toward self-knowledge should unfold through three great “acts” of experience. Act Two, in which one’s inner conflict and conditioning is reflected out into external circumstance to be resolved, is where some get stuck.

Saunders writes:

“The only way we get off this eternal, spinning and not so merry-go-round of Act II is to begin the process of forgiveness. This means forgiveness of mother, father, sister, brother and everyone else in our life, which ultimately means self-forgiveness. Only when we are released from the burden of blame, playing ‘victim’ and this meretricious obligation that we must make a gift, will we be able to complete the play. Otherwise Act II will still be unfinished when we come to the end of this life.”

Pretty scary thought: to come to “the end of this life” without having accomplished what this life is for. And surely it is not “for” making money, achieving success or accomplishing grand things, although these may occur incidentally.

It is for being whole, for becoming who we truly are and always have ultimately been. And forgiveness is the key.

Such forgiveness is of a different order than what one normally imagines by that word. It is not merely voicing sentiments, however genuinely felt, but rather releasing others of their obligations to us. It is freeing them from the unilateral commitment we made on their behalf that they would become “better,” which is to say, able to meet our conditions.

Of course this unspoken commitment is mostly unconscious. We don’t speak of it; we only feel vaguely unsettled and upset. Perhaps we have deeply held residual anger, a smoldering grudge whose flame never dies because of wounds received at someone’s hands.

We are convinced that this supposed assailant needs to apologize, needs to try to “make things right” with us. But maybe they won’t or can’t, or even if they did it would not be enough. Their words of apology would be as ineffectual in soothing our souls as our words of forgiveness in soothing theirs.

At the same time we know that others expect the same of us – the apologies, the groveling humility, the fruitless attempts to make things right by somehow becoming BETTER.


Thus, we all endure an ongoing and perpetual sense of both owing and being owed. For how can any of us pay off our “creditors,” and how can they pay us off? How can anyone prove that they merit unconditional love?

Maybe leaving Act II of life's play begins when a person suddenly “gets” that such proving is impossible. What is owed simply CANNOT be paid back - by anybody, to anybody.

Like the parable Jesus told of a king frankly forgiving a subject who had no means of repaying his vast debt, the only real option is to write the whole thing off.

But this kind forgiveness is not a “word” thing. Nothing needs to be said at all. It happens silently when we decide that no one owes us what we thought they did.

In a serene glimpse of how things really are, we understand that no one needs to pay us back at any time, in any form. We no longer expect an apology, acknowledgement, appreciation . . . or even love.

This experience of forgiveness changes everything. Those we had held under obligation are allowed to go, to totally leave in every way. Contracts are negated, Commitments absolved, agreements released, ties cut, karma unwound.

They can walk away and never look back . . . debt free.

Saint Nicholas

December 6 is when St. Nicholas is commemorated within Christianity, as this is the day on which he died in the year 346. St. Nicholas has become associated with many noble activities over the centuries, the most familiar of which is gift-giving. He is the model for the contemporary Santa Claus that children love.

But it is St. Nicholas’ reputation as a rescuer of travelers that can speak to all, not merely the young at heart. There are numerous stories and legends of him saving seafarers from calamity and death.




It is no great stretch of the imagination to conceive of one’s earthly life as a voyage in a fragile ship upon a tumultuous sea. Often the compass seems to have stopped working, guiding stars are not visible, fog and mist obscure the horizon and monsters from the deep have raised slithering tentacles over the bulwark in search of someone to devour.

Or so it seems.


Where are we going and how are we to get there? These are life’s fundamental questions, and only the very wise or the very ignorant think they know the answers. Yet when the deck of our boat pitches at the mercy of a raging storm, even issues of direction and navigation lose importance. Staying afloat becomes everything.

So the image of St. Nicholas helping weary sailors is comforting, even for the seemingly landlocked.

For we are all somewhere “at sea,” trying to steer our small craft through great difficulties to a safe harbor.

And if we believe someone cares enough to reach out and help us, our journey becomes more hopeful.

The Great Dance

The body spoke calmly to the mind and heart as one whose foundation is the very earth. It spoke kindly, gently - yet in words firm and immutable as a mountain’s root.

“Do not hide your sorrows in me,” said the body. “Do not seclude here the grieving which neither your thoughts nor affections can bear.”

“Why not?” asked the mind, somewhat indignant, while the heart carefully pondered.

“Because if you do,” said the body, “I must accept such stiffening intrusions obediently. Yet I yearn to dance instead. I would move to the joyous rhythms of life, allowing the music of divine madness to ripple and rumble through every cell of this temple which I am. I would set chakras shimmering and auras radiating. I would quiver with the everlasting energies of eternity. Deliver me from your sadness and you shall witness the Great Dance of Being!”

“I am nearly persuaded,” the mind allowed, “yet a smallish matter occupies my attention. I would set you free even now, but cannot spare the moment necessary to secure your release.”

“A smallish matter consumes my senses as well,” admitted the heart. “No bigger than a pea is it in the grand scheme of things, yet a true princess would feel it beneath a hundred mattresses.

“And what is this ‘smallish matter’ which is nevertheless so large that that it overmasters you both?” inquired the body.

The heart glazed and glanced, then both muttered askance:

“Why, it is but a memory.
A remembrance like a Rose
With thorns for its foes.
It snags our attention
And pricks our intention
leaving nothing to spare
For the joy that you mention.”

The body considered the poetics of the wounded heart and troubled mind, and spoke to them thus: “Look upon me whom you so often have disdained and disregarded. Do you know what lurks just beneath the surface of those sufferings? It cannot be well seen by such eyes as yours, but reach forth and touch. Feel the raw essence which emanates from the core of me.”

So heart and mind reached into the body, beneath its pack-load of perturbing, problematic protuberances. And in the quiet, contented, profound depths within, a wonder occurred.

. . . the Great Dance began.

The Tortuguero Monument

Reproduced below is Carl Johan Calleman's article about the relationship between the Tortuguero Monument 6 and the Mayan end date:

When I started my independent research on the Mayan calendar late in 1993 not a single inscription from the ancient Maya was actually known which would describe what would happen at its so-called end date. All that was known were the various descriptions of the beginning date of the Long Count, notably in the inscriptions in Palenque, which said that the First Father then “erected the World Tree”.

Irrespective of this dearth of information, I started to develop my theory about the nine levels of evolution, the nine underworlds, and the various days and nights that generated their wave movements. I simply assumed that the significant Mayan pyramids had been built in nine steps because they were symbolic of nine levels of creation, each effected by seven days, or seven creation gods. I then found that with such a model an enormous amount of historical facts started to make sense if they were seen as results of cosmic energy shifts.

This however could be seen to be true only if the nine levels all ended at the same time, similarly to how some of the Mayan pyramids had a straight back. It thus seemed obvious that the understanding of such energy shifts must have been the basis of the prophetic tradition of the Maya. This was of course not how traditional Mayanism saw it, which essentially treated the calendar and the various deities associated with it as superstitions. Yet, I came from a different scientific tradition, and was primarily interested in if the Mayan time cycles and deities were true reflections of reality.

In the beginning of my scientific carreer in the seventies I had thus been mentored by a member of the Nobel committes in Stockholm and had then at least indirectly seen how science operates from what arguably is its highest level. This meant among other things zero tolerance for making up theories from “beliefs” without empirical facts to back them up and constant emphasis on experimental reality checks. At least professionally this has remained my mind set ever since and the fact that some people believe that Jesus was born on December 25 or that the Mayan calendar ends on December 21 does not constitute proof for me that this is actually the case.

The idea that there were as many as nine Underworlds was for a long time criticized by some who said that there was only one cycle of a longer duration in the Mayan calendar system, namely the 5,125 year Long Count. Yet, already then there were some indications that the Maya had recognized nine steps of evolution. It was for instance known that the Long Count was sometimes referred to as ruled by the Six-Sky-Lord, indicating that it was the sixth level, and that there were names for time periods beginning with that of the first of the nine levels, the hablatun.

Based on these indications of nine levels I proposed my theory since it could be empirically substantiated from human history even though some thought that it was not orthodox enough. Somewhat later, in 1996, Mayanists however started to decipher Monument 6 in Tortuguero, only some 50 kilometers west of Palenque, which would further strengthen my model of nine levels of evolution. For the first time an inscription was found that seemed to refer to what would happen at the end date at least from the perspective of a Mayan king around AD 670.



The text segment describing the descent of
the Bolon Yookte from the Tortuguero monument 6.
Drawing by Sven Gronemeyer.





More broadly this inscription only gained attention in 2006 and its final text according to David Stuart, who is an expert on Mayan glyphs, reads essentially like this: Tzuhtz-(a)j-oom u(y)-uxlajuun pik (ta) Chan Ajaw ux(-te’) Uniiw. Uht-oom ? Y-em(al)?? Bolon Yookte’ K’uh ta?

or translated to English: “The Thirteenth ‘Bak’tun” will be finished (on) Four Ajaw, the Third of Uniiw (K’ank’in). ? will occur. (It will be) the descent(??) of the Nine Support? God(s) to the ?. "

As is common with such ancient inscriptions they may be difficult to read partly because the glyphs are effaced (which is the case here) and partly because the meanings of the glyphs are not unambiguous. The critical part from our perspective is the deities (or deity) called Bolon Yookte, who at the end date would “descend.”

To understand how to interpret this I think it is important to know two things about ancient Mayan deities. The first is that they were not as personalized as for instance Roman or Nordic deities, who were perceived to act more or less as individuals. A Mayan (or Aztec) deity instead typically symbolized a cosmic force associated with a time period and the mythologies of these peoples really describe fairly high level impersonal cosmic relationships.

Hence, we know how the ancient day-signs were carried by daybearers, deities that were associated with particular days. Time periods, gods and day-signs were thus more or less interchangeable and it depended on the context how they would be expressed. The second thing to know is that these deities could easily split into several different deities and vice versa depending on whether the context called for the whole or its parts to be expressed.

This is almost certainly the case with Bolon Yookte, which can be seen as a whole deity with nine parts or as nine parts constituting a whole. Bolon Yookte is at the same time a whole and its nine parts because Mayan cosmology is essentially holistic and looks upon everything in creation as connected.

John Major Jenkins in 2006 wrote an important and interesting article about the Bolon Yookte: Comments on the 2012 text on Tortuguero Monument 6 and Bolon Yookte Ku, http://edj.net/mc2012/bolon-yokte.html, where he summarizes epigraphic information about this deity called Bolon Yookte, which according to the abovementioned inscription will descend at the Mayan end date.

Among other things he cites an article by Gillespie and Joyce that states that Bolon Yookte was called “the God of the Nine Steps” and also that this was a deity that was present already at the beginning of creation as can be seen from the famous Vase of the Seven Lords. He also cites Eberl and Prager, who said that the Bolon Yookte was associated with the underworld, wars and conflict.

Really what this is telling us is that the structure of Nine Steps of evolution, Nine Underworlds, has existed from the very beginning of creation, what we in modern terminology would call the Big Bang. The Tortuguero Monument 6, and Jenkins study of their meaning, thus provides a perfect verification of the theory I proposed fifteen years ago. The Bolon Yookte are the Nine levels of evolution carried out by the nine underworlds.

These nine Underworlds are then obviously also associated with the Seven Lords of Creation (the seven DAYS) as can be seen from the famous Mayan vase. Moreover, as we know from history, all of these Underworlds are associated with conflicts and wars, since shifts in cosmic energies generate shifting balances of power and as a result, warfare. To me, the relationships between these Mayan deities provide a model of evolution that has been verified by massive empirical evidence. Because of this connection to reality this is crucial information for humanity at the present time and not mere mythical relationships.

What this inscription means is that on the end date there is not just one cosmic power that will manifest, but Nine and that these were symbolized by a Nine-Step pyramid that was Bolon Yookte – The God of Nine Steps. It is also clear from Jenkins’ article that Bolon Yookte was associated with the World Tree, which especially my forthcoming book The Purposeful Universe will demonstrate as the source of all creation – not as a myth, but as a reality.

In light of the Tortuguero monument I feel the model of Nine Underworlds and Thirteen Heavens can only be denied by someone, who completely ignores not only the actual Mayan inscriptions, but also the massive empirical evidence of how the Mayan calendar system is connected to reality. If instead this body of evidence is recognized it is however easy to see how in their mythology the Maya would interchange deities, time periods and cosmic energies in a way that can now help us make sense of evolution and how it has played out in biological and historical reality.


The Bolon Yookte, the Nine-step God with its Nine Underworlds, as this is symbolized by the Pyramid of the Jaguar in Tikal. The Nine Underworlds will all be completed, “the Bolon Yookte will descend”, at the same time and to symbolize this synchronistic event the pyramid has a straight back. Photograph by the author.

The verification from the Tortuguero monument that the ancient Maya looked upon the end of creation as the simultaneous descent of Nine different deities, or manifestation of nine cosmic forces, is however very timely as we are now on the eighth level of evolution and soon about to climb up one step to the ninth level, the Universal Underworld. It is not an exaggeration to say that for many people now their future will directly depend on knowing exactly how the energies of these nine levels will be playing out.

Today it is thus crucial to know about this basic structure of evolution, Nine Underworlds and Thirteen Heavens, and the exact timing of activation of the different wave movements of creation. That nine deities will descend (nine cosmic forces manifest) simultaneously at the end date is thus no longer an unorthodox idea, but instead the only meaningful explanation that can be given to Tortuguero monument 6.

What this means is also that the Bolon Yookte mentioned at the Tortuguero monument is not about a single event occurring only at a specific date. It is instead about nine different wave movements, each generated by the Seven Lords of Creation (the seven days in each Underworld) going back to the beginning of the universe (the Big Bang) when, as Jenkins also points out, Bolon Yookte was already present. Thus, any viable theory about the meaning of the Mayan calendar needs to be able to account for such long term evolutionary processes, spanning up to 16.4 billion years.

As a consequence, serious researchers need to take their focus off from what might happen on a single day, the end date, since this can only be understood in a much larger context. From this perspective it is thus a problem that especially many American “experts on 2012”, along the lines of the upcoming Hollywood movie 2012, have committed themselves to some physical event that they associate with the singular December 21, 2012 date, such as a pole shift, a galactic alignment, a volcanic eruption, an asteroid impact, a solar flare or some other (usually not very well-founded) idea of what may happen on this particular day.

Given the total unreasonableness of such ideas, especially in light of the Tortuguero monument, is it not time that they instead start considering an evolutionary model for the Mayan calendar that is consistent with this monument? “2012” has for too long been a playground for pseudo-science and the many unfounded “singular day” ideas blur the fact that the end scenario of the Mayan calendar is really about a socio-economic transformation resulting from processes influencing human consciousness. It is thus about the human beings themselves and how we co-create the birth of a new world and not about any geological or astronomical event that we only would be observers of anyway.

There is of course a reason that, as I pointed out before, no one advocating the October 28, 2011 end date has ever advocated or been lured into advocating that this date would be “the end of the world.” This is that this date emanates organically from an evolutionary process and is not associated with any real or purported physical or astronomical event. It is simply the day when the universe after nine major quantum steps, starting with the beginning of the universe, attains its highest energy state and there is no logical reason that this would mean the end of the world.

It is just an evolutionary completion point when Bolon Yookte fully descends. When it comes to the many events that have been purported to be associated with the singular December 21, 2012 date on the other hand it is not surprising that they invite speculations about the end of the world. If you for instance propose that this end date is about a pole shift or a giant burst of gamma rays from the galactic center, why should people not believe that this could be the end of the world? To propose physical events is like asking for the mainstream media to create fear and hopelessness around the real transformation that is about to occur.

I thus believe it will be people at large that will suffer most from the neglect of the understanding we may gain from the ancient Maya, which as we have seen speaks about the fulfilment of a composite of nine evolutionary forces, the Bolon Yookte Ku, and not what happens on a single day. Because of all the confusing information focusing on December 21, 2012 that is already out there I feel however that people will start to align with the true end date of October 28, 2011, not because they realize that the energetic end date logically must be 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13 13 Ajaw or that the 4 Ajaw end date was the result of politics much like the placing of the birth of Jesus at December 25 by the Christian Church.

People are instead likely to come to accept the October 28, 2011 date in practice simply because they will not be able to deny the actual wave movement of energies that they themselves are experiencing, especially in the socio-economic realm. Yet, for those seeking to consciously co-create the birth of a new world a knowledge of how the cosmic energies lead up to the October 28, 2011 date will be instrumental, simply because without it no understanding of how the new world will be born, and how this is timed, will be possible. Hence, the activation of these energies, and their preparatory phases in the Galactic and Universal Underworlds will, as always, take place according to a very precise relative timing until the Bolon Yookte, the nine underworlds, will “descend”, manifest fully, and create the foundation for a millennium of peace – the end of the Shift of the Ages.

Beginning of the Sixth Night

According to Carl Johan Calleman, today marks the beginning of the Sixth Night of the Galactic Underworld. His most recent opinions about this period are reproduced below:

The Final Mayan calendar steps to 2012:
November 8, 2009 – the beginning of the Sixth NIGHT

Before going into the specifics of the upcoming sixth night, November 8, 2009 – November 2, 2010, of the Galactic Wave Movement (or Underworld) I feel I should clarify some of my basic points of departure for understanding the Mayan calendar, since the various ideas that are currently proposed for this vary significantly. There are for instance those that believe that the end date of the Mayan calendar only marks the end of a cycle and the beginning of a new. On my own part I however think that we are approaching something much more profound than just a point in a cycle that again will be repeated. The only Mayan inscription from ancient times, the Tortuguero monument, which describes the end (http://bit.ly/3Ni2rD) of their calendar says that nine cosmic forces will then manifest. Empirically, there is also overwhelming evidence from modern research that we are approaching a point in time when nine evolutionary levels (so called Underworlds) of the cosmic plan are simultaneously going to be completed. This would imply that we are approaching not another cycle or another shift, but the end to all shifts, which have been driving evolution since the beginning of the universe. Such an end to all shifts could conceivably provide the basis for a harmonious eternal peace on Earth.

What is about to transpire now is in other words not something that has ever happened before in the history of the universe. Maybe this impending change, partially unknown, causes the widespread denial that I feel dominate many people at the current moment. Rather than facing a great change in our socioeconomic relationships (since any change in human consciousness also implies a change in our relationships) many prefer to fantasize about some physical or astronomical event, that purportedly is going to happen on December 21, 2012. In reality the Mayan calendar is however not about something that will happen on a singular date, but a description of a divine plan for the evolution of humankind where quantum shifts between calendrical energies bring about shifts in consciousness. Thus, human consciousness will continue to be transformed step by step in accordance with this plan until we come to the real end date of the process of creation, October 28, 2011. At this date the highest quantum state of the universe will be attained (13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13 13 Ahau) when the shifts disrupting the harmony will come to an end. Obviously, we are not there yet.

In this plan for the evolution of consciousness we are now approaching the sixth night of the Galactic Wave Movement, the eighth of the nine levels, which will begin on November 8, 2009. If my understanding of the Mayan calendar is correct we will in this coming night be witnessing the most significant transformation of consciousness ever in the history of mankind. What is exciting about this is that I feel that a relatively clear picture of how a new world is going to be born is now finally becoming evident. On the other hand, what is also becoming increasingly clear is that this birth is likely to become very demanding. For this reason it becomes all the more important to understand how some of the difficulties ahead actually serve the delivery of this new world even though it may not always seem that they do so in the moment. If people can gain a realistic understanding of how this new world will be born they may be able to keep a hope for the future, which is based on something more than mere wishful thinking. Unfortunately, much confusion reigns about the Mayan calendar and many that present themselves as experts on this deny the ancient Mayan knowledge that there are nine cosmic forces that are about to manifest, and that it is these, and nothing else, that explains why a new world will be born.

Thus, what will happen in the time ahead cannot be understood from the sixth night of the Galactic Underworld alone. The overlapping of the cycles preparing for the ninth, and highest, level in the cosmic evolution scheme; the Universal Wave Movement (see Figure) with the energy of this sixth night will then also need to be taken into consideration. Because of this overlapping, and the speed-up of time associated especially with the latter Wave Movement, not only do I think that the upcoming period will be unusually intense, but also energetically quite complex.


At the time of this writing (October 31, 2009, 1 Ben) we are towards the end of the sixth day, the period of flowering in the process from seed to mature fruit in the Galactic Wave Movement, which precedes the sixth night. As I predicted in an earlier article it would now to some economists seem that the “global economic recession” (or the worst of it) is already over. There are however certain things currently going on in the world that belies this and are more in line with the prediction I made in an article in May (http://bit.ly/qeisX) of a further economic downturn, especially expressed in a fall in the value of the US dollar, to take place around the time that the sixth night begins (see also: http://bit.ly/2faPHG). While several sources now predict a dollar fall it is important to note that mine was made a relatively long time ago and if it proves to be correct shows that what is happening in the economy is part of a divine plan charted by the Mayan calendar.

My prediction of a further economic downturn was based on the observation that nights, at least in the second part of an evolutionary Wave Movement, usually mean at the very least a slowdown of economic growth. An indication of such an impending downturn at this upcoming night is for instance that there has been a rush for gold, which for the first time passed the magical limit of USD 1000/troy ounce. Moreover, an index of insider trading shows that people knowledgeable about the actual basis for valuing US stock tend to think of this as highly overvalued. Most importantly, increasingly higher voices are now raised in almost all corners of the world for the replacement of the petrodollar system and thus also of the use of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. These various indices thus do not indicate that the “recession” is over, but if anything that an intensification of the economic decline, especially in the indebted West, is imminent. It seems that investors are escaping assets in the form of paper or digit values, which is exactly what we would expect from this late phase of the Galactic Wave Movement, when a shift in consciousness amounting to a shift from abstract to concrete economic values is taking place. Thus, while many will say that the changes are a result of a conspiracy, for instance against the US, the point to realize is that if that were the case they would not have been predictable from the Mayan calendar.

I believe that what is happening in the world’s economy is something much more profound and fundamental than a temporary recession and is a direct consequence of the particular transformation of consciousness that the Galactic Wave Movement is bringing. As I explain in my new book The Purposeful Universe (http://bit.ly/yvXjH) consciousness is primarily a relationship to the Tree of Life, which exists on many different levels of the cosmos and causes synchronized shifts on these different levels. What this means is that the shifts in consciousness that give new directions to our lives will also directly affect the world and society at large and how we relate to this. A shift in consciousness is hence not something that only happens in our heads, but is simultaneously also expressed in changes in our relationships. Our economic relationships are thus also subject to shifts in consciousness and the evolution of this. We should then expect an even further escape from abstract values as the sixth night begins, a shift that may be expected to especially severely hit the western economies of the United States and the United Kingdom, which remain the financial centers of the world and control much of its banking activities. At the present time these nations, and especially the United States, are so indebted that there really is no need to present an explanation as to why there would be another downturn in its economy. All that is needed for this is something to trigger what is going to happen anyway one way or another. While many things may trigger such a downturn, and the media will place all the emphasis on this trigger, the deeper reasons for a downturn is best understood from the Mayan calendar. From a Mayan calendar perspective the ongoing decline in economic growth reflects a stepwise adaptation to the end of the economic cycles that will be associated with the Mayan end date (or beginning date of a new world if you like).

If the downturn of the economy is part of a process creating the conditions for the birth of a new world a relevant question to ask is how deep it is going to be. Even if it seems clear that the value of paper money, and especially the US dollar, will be hit, it is still somewhat of an open question how far-reaching the consequences of this will be. I think this can only be understood from a study of what might be the nature of the new world to be born. When it comes to understanding this it seems however that there are actually no ancient Mayan sources to consult. The Mayan sources only say that Nine cosmic forces are going to manifest as the calendar comes to an end, but there is no ancient inscription, which talks about what will follow upon this. Because of this dearth of material I suggest that we turn to sources from the large Abrahamic religions such as the Bible or the Quran, which do say something on the matter. If we combine these with our understanding from the Mayan calendar I feel we may gain some idea of what is to come. I believe everything that has been happening in this time plan has been subordinated to the delivery of this new world.

Hence, the Quran says this in Surah 82:17-19: “And what will explain to thee what the Day of Judgment is? Again, what will explain to thee what the Day of Judgment is? (It will be) the Day when no soul shall have power (to do) aught for another: For the command, that Day, will be (wholly) with Allah.” I believe this disappearance of dominance may refer to the Universal Underworld, which brings a consciousness of oneness and transparency to our whole beings and all of our past actions. If we take this seriously it would imply that all chains to people dominating others would need to be broken. The last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation 21:4-5 also describes a new world to be born: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.” This would seem to imply that all chains to the past would need to be broken for the new world to be born. Taken together it would seem that as pre-requisites for the birth of a new earth we would need to free ourselves from the chains to the past as well as from chains to other people.

To some these changes may look so great that it might even be more comfortable to fantasize that the world would come to an end than to go through all of the necessary changes that would more or less turn our world upside down. Certainly, there is also a tremendous amount of people in power, who do not want to see such a transformation towards equality and harmony coming about. These quotes may however give us a hint about where the economic downturn may be leading us and how deep it will be. Will money for instance completely disappear? I think the answer to this is that money will disappear to the extent that it no longer chains the world to the past. In practice, this probably means that all thinking about profitable investing etc is somewhat beside the point, since the emerging new world is not likely to be a growth economy based on the drive for accumulation of abstract values. More likely, the new world is going to be one based on sharing and care-taking of all members of society as the unity consciousness of the Universal Wav Movement, presumably after much turmoil, eventually is established. The more immediate time period in the sixth night will then be when the practical expressions of this transformation will need to be tested out and implemented. This may from the perspective of the current world seem unthinkable. Yet, there is no such thing as an eternal human nature and our perception of reality, and what we are propelled to create, always varies between the different Wave Movements. The human beings of the Regional, National, Planetary and Galactic Wave Movements are completely different in their approach to life and the universal human being that will be created by the Ninth and Universal Wave Movement will represent the crowning step of the evolution of consciousness. Thus, she is then likely to embody a different perception of the world and different qualities compared to previously. An economy based on sharing is of course fully possible if the unity consciousness carried by the Universal Wave Movement is successfully established. Even if the energy changes will now be happening quickly I should add that it may take some time (in the range of a few years after 2011) until this economy takes its final form.

So how in practice could such a transition come about from a human being, who essentially looks after herself to one that sees the unity of all and shares the fruits of creation? Such a transformation of our experience of life may now seem as impossible as the fall of the Berlin Wall once seemed. But similarly to how the fall of the Berlin Wall ultimately was a reflection of a transcendence of an east-west polarity in human consciousness the new world to be born is designed to result from a transcendence of the inner and outer walls maintained especially by the western mind. Thus, my suspicion is that during the first half of the sixth night the world’s economy will increasingly slow down as the consumption of the US population will no longer be able to keep the industrial engines of the world going. The power of the US in the world would decrease as a result of a dollar fall.* Yet, because of the indirect effects of this downturn, no part of the world can expect to be untouched. In this downturn it will then come a point when it will start to dawn on many people that it will never be possible to resurrect the old growth economy and that there will never be any return to a “business as usual.” At that point very radical socio-economic solutions will need to be explored for people to survive also in a literal physical sense as it becomes obvious that it is the nature of the economic relationships and the chains to the economy of the past that cause the problems. We may for instance ask what will happen if major portions of the population in economically significant countries will not be able to pay their mortgages? Will these people then have to leave their houses in mass so that countless houses owned by banks will sit empty when people are out on the streets? This is the kind of situation that has already appeared in some previously car manufacturing suburbs of Detroit. Hence, this scenario is not hypothetical, but has already to some extent happened on a limited scale.

What likely will happen then is that demands will be raised for a moratorium on debts, so that people will no longer have to pay to the banks to stay in their homes. Maybe this will be preceded on a larger scale by some nations that see it necessary to push for the cancellations of national debts as a means of stabilizing the world. If such a moratorium on debts is instituted it would however be like cancelling the power of money and the chains to the past as it exists now. This would effectively create a path towards a sustainable economy an economy where it is emphasized that the needs of people are met in the present moment (returning to the theme of cutting the chains of the past). This of course would be nothing short of a revolution, and most likely a worldwide such, since the worlds’ economies at the current time are so deeply entangled. Possibly this would spread from the US to much of the rest of the world. Such an enormous transformation of the world’s socio-economic system would then be likely to take place in the time period between July 17, 2010 (the Cosmic Convergence)** and the beginning of the Seventh day of the Galactic Wave Movement (November 3, 2010). Naturally, it would serve to dissolve many of the other systems of dominance that the world has inherited especially from the National, but also the Planetary, Wave Movement. Energetically speaking this time period, July 17- November 3, 2010, is created through the overlap of the pre-Universal Underworld and the Galactic Wave Movement.*** What this revolutionary time period most likely is going to amount to is a corresponding decrease of governmental and national authority (not that of any particular government, but governmental authority as such, something which humanity has inherited from the National Wave Movement and its patriarchal frame of consciousness. Needless to say some would try to take advantage of such a situation). It will seriously come into question what we need governments and national borders for “when no soul shall have power (to do) aught for another.” My vision for the time period from the Cosmic Convergence until the beginning of the seventh day of the Galactic Wave Movement is thus a total overhaul of human civilization. This then would also be a time to make choices of path individually.

Why would this particular time period, July 17, 2010 – November 2, 2010, bring such a revolutionary transformation? Well, there are two earlier time periods that are noteworthy as parallels to this upcoming one. One is AD 1498-1617, the Renaissance, which in a broad sense meant the overturning of the feudal system that saw the Vatican as the ultimate source of worldly power and the beginning of the modern era. The other is 1986-1992, which carried a revolutionary wave of democracy (including the fall of the Berlin Wall) resulting in a world whose hemispheres were no longer separated.

We may also notice that the two corresponding revolutionary time periods gave rise to new expressions of spirituality, in the first case the Reformation and in the second the Harmonic Convergence**** that became somewhat of a starting point for the eclectic New Age movement of our own time. This would indicate that also this time, following the Cosmic Convergence, there will be a new spiritual awakening. Since the Cosmic Convergence would be the first breeze of a unity consciousness this would imply that people would then be divinely inspired to share and recognize the unity of all creation. I believe it will be a spirituality beyond words based on the immediate experience of the divine. Hence, while the Reformation was an awakening emphasizing the written word and the New Age movement originated in esoteric ideas that were sometimes channeled or spoken I believe that the spiritual awakening ahead will not be something that can be formulated in words and will be based on plain knowing.

I feel it is an open question whether this transformative revolution between July 17 and November 3, 2010 will be peaceful, but the parallel to the time period 1986-1992 indicates that this at least is possible. What seems clear however is that people will be divided as to whether they want to flow with the incoming energies leading towards a new world or if they will resist them and seek to hold on to or go back to the system of the past. It is then no wonder that strong forces will try to present the Mayan calendar as if it is about something that will happen on the date December 21, 2012. (A typical example of this is the upcoming Hollywood movie 2012, a disaster movie, but most New Age gurus have prepared the ground for these nonsense fears by emphasizing this singular date and ignoring that the Mayan calendar is constituted by nine levels of evolution). How people will relate to this change will thus also depend on the understanding people have of the Mayan calendar and the cosmic plan, which at the current time only a very small minority is aware of at least in its true form as a manifestation of nine cosmic forces. People at large may in fact never recognize any conscious warning signals for what is to come. Yet, inasmuch as they understand that the large-scale changes emanate from a divine plan this would mean that a spiritual awakening could take place. If this happens they will not be inclined to look at the changes around them as just meaningless chaotic events as they surely will be presented by the dominating media.

Considering that this is all about the participation in a process of evolution of consciousness there is a great danger in people believing that the Mayan calendar is about a singular date when some event will take place, whether this is made up to be a “pole shift”, “galactic alignment,” “Planet X,” “end of the world” or “shift in consciousness.” This is an incredibly naïve view of an essentially superstitious nature where a new world is believed to simply fall down upon the human beings from the sky without their active and conscious participation in the processes leading up to a state of unity consciousness. In reality, there is overwhelming evidence that the Mayan calendar describes sequential shifts in consciousness, which will begin to be experienced at an even higher frequency after July 17, 2010 and even more markedly so after the beginning of the actual Universal Wave Movement on March 8, 2011. Only at October 28, 2011 will the shifts come to an end and a unity consciousness stabilize that will provide the basis for a millennium of peace. This frequency increase incidentally also explains how such a tremendous overhaul of all systems of dominance could take place in such a short period of time. A recommendation I would like to make, in addition to ethical living and telling the truth, is to learn to flow with the ninth level (http://bit.ly/WWjiG). Stay in the middle of the river with a focus on the manifestation of the new world!

End of the Sixth Day

Today is the last day of the "Sixth Day" of the Galactic Underworld, according to the reckoning of Carl, Johan Calleman, author of "The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness."

This is good time to pause and reflect on what changes the last year has brought, both individually and collectively. The article reproduced below is by Calleman, and may assist readers in that process.


The risks of believing that the
Mayan calendar ends December 21, 2012!

About eight years ago John Major Jenkins and I had a debate about the meaning of the Mayan calendar end date focusing especially on whether the energies of the Long Count ends on October 28, 2011 or December 21, 2012. This still remains the most important question anybody interested in the “2012 phenomenon” is faced with, but while at the time the debate might have seemed theoretical, or even hairsplitting, it is now a question that has very significant and practical consequences as to how we relate to the future. While many would like to sweep the end date question under the rug or sit on the fence, no one can do so with their intellectual integrity intact. Since that debate Jenkins has appeared on a History Channel documentary where December 21 2012 is presented as a predetermined “doomsday” when the world is going to come to an end. I get quite a few letters, sometimes from young people that worry that the world will come to an end at this date since they have seen this documentary posted on YouTube. While most knowledgeable people would probably reject this way of presenting the Mayan calendar it is still important to ask the question who benefits from it. I feel there are indeed many people, also apart from the participants in such documentaries that benefit from the claim that the Mayan calendar ends December 21, 2012. Thus, I do not think that it is an accident that we do not hear of the October 28, 2011 date in public media. To begin with, as far as I know no one who adheres to the end date of October 28, 2011 has ever presented this as a predetermined doomsday and thus unduly associated the Mayan calendar with fear.

Since the abovementioned debate two different intellectual cultures have emerged around the two possible end dates, one based on belief (December 21, 2012) and one based on evidence (October 28, 2011). These two cultures are about as different from one another as any one of them is from that using the Gregorian calendar. The proposal of the December 21, 2012 date is based on the unproven belief that the precessional cycle actually means something for human evolution, and, amazingly, as far as I know no one advocating this end date seems to have even bothered to try to prove this basic assumption. In contrast, the October 28, 2011 date is based on massive scientific evidence that the Nine Underworlds and Thirteen Heavens known from ancient Mayan sources indeed describe cosmic evolution in all of its aspects. Moreover, while there is extensive evidence that the Maya based prophecy and prediction on shifts between baktuns, katuns, tuns etc, not a single ancient Mayan text mentions the 26,000 year precessional cycle. Since those advocating the December 21, 2012 end date do not identify shift points in the Mayan calendar leading up to their end date their hypothesis is however not testable from the predictions made, which is the hallmark of any serious scientific theory. Hence, it must be qualified as belief rather than science. Based on nothing more than belief a culture has subsequently emerged around the December 21, 2012 date, since it serves as an ideal projection screen for fantasies, fears and hopes rather than something that can be proven and understood scientifically based on the patterns of the Mayan calendar.


The October 28, 2011 end date can however be rationally understood. It has also been verified by several predictions, most recently my own that an economic collapse would set in and when it would do so: Regardless of what forms such a [financial] collapse may take it seems that the best bet is for it to occur close to the time that the Fifth NIGHT begins, in November 2007 [strictly speaking the 19th] (The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, page 233). In accordance with this prediction economists now agree that it began in December of 2007, see Figure 1). This prediction was actually formulated already in my first book in English, Solving the Greatest Mystery of Our Time: The Mayan Calendar written in 1999 and published in 2001 (page 187). This is really a direct parallel to Edgar Cayce’s famous prediction of the time for the New York stock exchange crash, in this case however made about ten years in advance, and so was made much earlier than any professional economist even considered such an economic meltdown. I however do not claim to have some unusual psychic abilities, and instead this prediction attests to the fact that with the right end date, October 28, 2011 the mystery of the Mayan calendar has been exactly solved. That these predictions were accurate can be verified by anyone, who cares to examine the relevant pages in my books. In contrast no one who claimed that the end date of the Mayan calendar is December 21, 2012 made any similar prediction and can mostly not credit themselves with having made one single accurate prediction based on the Mayan calendar. Already this should be a red flag for anyone looking for a way to understand the evolution of civilization based on the Mayan calendar.

Before going into the more practical consequences of adhering to the evidence-based or a belief-based interpretation of the Mayan calendar I however think that it is necessary to discuss the nature of time and what it is that makes the Mayan calendar special. It is in other words important to know whether we have any reason to concern ourselves with the Mayan calendar in the first place. Why is it that unlike all other calendars the Mayan calendar has an end date? The answer to this is that the Mayan calendar expresses an entirely different kind of time than other calendars. Most calendars, such as the Gregorian, Muslim, Buddhist or Jewish calendars, are based on astronomical cycles and reflect continuous time. They describe measurable mechanic time, the aspect of time that the Greek would call Chronos, which is also the only one that is recognized in the modern world. Since astronomical cycles, whether they are cycles of the moon, the earth or the precessional cycle, will continue over the next billions of years or so there is however no reason that calendars based on them should ever come to an end. Since the Mayan calendar however has an end date this must obviously be based on another type of time than mechanical time and its end date must be discussed against the background of consciousness-based time – what the Greek would call Kairos and so we must ask what could be the origin of this.

If we go back to ancient sources to find out information about the origin of the Mayan Long Count they never say that this would be based on any astronomical cycle*. Instead, the Mayan sources, for instance at the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque, explicitly say that the Long Count is based on the World Tree or what other cultures usually refer to as the Tree of Life. As I will be describing in my forthcoming book The Purposeful Universe (Inner Traditions, December 2009) Mayan time is in fact quantized and describes different quantum states of the Cosmic Tree of Life. It is always against the background of such quantum shifts in time, and not continuously flowing astronomical cycles, we may understanding the defining moments of our lives, but also of human civilizations. The Cosmic Tree of Life at the center of our universe behind these quantum shifts was discovered by modern science only in 2003. Yet, the fact that it is real, and not a mere symbol or myth, calls for a revolution in how we view our whole existence. It affects not only science, but also how we understand religious prophecies, which often include references to the Tree of Life. Hence, for instance the Book of Revelation refers to this and it seems to be returning to our awareness in the nick of time. Since the Mayan calendar originates in the Tree of Life not only every day, but also every katun, baktun, pictun etc is associated with a symbol, such as a day-sign and a number, symbolic of its different quantum states. These states are then creating the geological and historical eras of cosmic evolution, which the Maya would refer to as ages. Many people are expecting a quantum shift as the Mayan calendar comes to an end – and rightly so – but a continuous astronomical cycle by definition never gives rise to quantum shifts. The reason the Mayan calendar is able to explain so many quantum jumps in the fossil record and paradigm shifts in the history of mankind (which is far from slow and continuous) is the very fact that unlike other calendars it is quantized.

The understanding of Mayan time as quantized also provides a meaningful way of looking at the so-called end date where it is not even potentially a preset end of the world. (This is why no one embracing the October 28, 2011 date has fallen to claim that it is a preset end of the world). The end date simply reflects the point in time when the Cosmic Tree of Life attains its highest quantum state. This also implies that it is not the beginning of a new cycle and it is only on this basis that it is rationally understandable that this state would serve to create a millennium of peace in the “New Jerusalem” as the new world is called in the Book of Revelation. To instead use a Hindu metaphor it becomes logical that the attainment of this highest state means liberation from the wheels (cycles) of Karma. As the student of the evidence-based Mayan calendar will know almost all conflicts and warfare in the history of mankind actually originate in quantum shifts between cosmic energies and only as those come to an end is there any serious reason to hope for the emergence of a world in harmony. Hence, in this interpretation of the Mayan calendar there is absolutely no reason to think that the end date means the end of life or a “doomsday” when the world is predetermined to come to an end.

What the end date does mean however is that on October 28, 2011 the shifts between energies will come to an end and it is thus no wonder that many intuitively sense that the year that follow upon this, 2012, is very special. The processes that have been driving cosmic evolution until now will no longer be operating and after some time for things to settle the human beings will be left to create evolution themselves. What this means is in my view that the end date is not just another shift. Instead it constitutes the end of the shifts that have been caused by alternations in the quantum states of the Tree of Life up until that point, exemplified by the abovementioned quantum shift that led to the decline of the economy as the fifth night began. Such a vision of a new Garden of Eden (albeit on a higher level) obviously lacks any rational basis among those advocating that we look upon the Mayan calendar as based on mechanical astronomical cycles, where a new cycle will then begin. To understand the liberation of mankind and a future return to the Garden of Eden however simply mandates quantized time. This illustrates an important principle, namely that even if the evidence-based Mayan calendar is not difficult to understand, it is not trivial. It is not something that you can thoughtlessly put in your old box of thinking. The Mayan calendar is fundamentally different from all other calendar and how and why that is is something that needs to be deeply honored and respected.

From this perspective, where we are approaching the end of cyclical changes and the highest quantum state of the universe, it is also logical that the economic meltdown that we are now in is not merely a “recession” or a “depression”, such as we know to have been precipitated in the past by nights in the calendar. The decline is instead the beginning of the end to the cycles of the economy. Yet, since we know from the study of the Mayan calendar that the time periods when the economy shrinks are the nights we can make some predictions as to how this end of the economic cycles is going to play out. The first pulse of bringing the growth economy down thus came with the fifth night and led to a rapid decrease in growth, a fall in stock values, and increases of lay-offs and foreclosures. We are currently in a period in between such nights, the sixth day (see Figure 2), when the same processes are continuing more slowly and may even temporarily be slightly reversed. Around the time that the Sixth night begins on November 8, 2009 we may however expect that the meltdown intensifies and the US dollar collapses and with it the established monetary system in the world. Many things may trigger such an event, but it is important to understand that whatever triggers it, and this may be some kind of political event, it is the energy of this night that will bring it about. This incidentally, is also why it is so important what will be made of the rebirth energy of the second half of the sixth day.


We can only imagine what such a collapse will mean, but I feel it is clear to everyone that the consequences for our every day lives will be very far-reaching. Because of the hardships many may come to lose faith in this Creation or think that we are being punished. I look upon it differently: The consciousness of the Galactic Underworld is already preplanned to set in a protective mechanism for the planet by first stopping the growth, which is what any cancer doctor would do before any healing could take place**. As the reader may now realize we have come to a point where the discussion of the end date of the Mayan calendar is a critical issue since how we relate to the future will directly depend on it. This is neither academic hairsplitting nor irresponsible New Age fantasies. Those that advocate the evidence-based Mayan end date of October 28, 2011 may in fact advice people to prepare themselves for this further economic meltdown beforehand in the sixth night. Those that talk about December 21, 2012 are however, consistently with their logic, likely to continue to make projections on this fantasy screen in the future. What these people in effect are saying to people is “Do not prepare yourself for the New World now! Wait until the shift comes December 21, 2012!” since they do not recognize any quantum shifts before this point in time. To know the exact end date is then a matter of paramount importance to people, because it is their only way of knowing what quantum shift they are experiencing in the present moment. While many people advocating the December 21, 2012 date are simply jumping on a bandwagon to create some visibility for themselves (and sell various products) I feel it is time that they consider what kind of responsibility this implies also for other people. It is probably not an accident that the first major Hollywood movie, surely planned to confuse people about the Mayan calendar and tout the December 21, 2012 date is scheduled to be released in November of 2009 as the sixth night begins. The ruling media will then use the December 21 2012 date to manipulate the truth and of course there are always some that are willing to play along. It is quite easy to see in whose interest it is that the Mayan calendar in this way is projected to a time in the future when all alignment with it will be too late.

As the established international monetary system collapses in the sixth night things can go essentially in either of two directions. It will go either in the direction of a grass roots organization of a new economy without banks, interests or growth serving to create a world without dominance. A collapse of the international monetary system, especially if it is linked to a moratorium of all debts, holds the potential of paving the way to a world that is truly egalitarian, based on willful cooperation and where greed will not destroy the world. This of course precludes the existence of a banking and monetary system organized in the interest of a minority and driven by the craving for abstract values rather than human needs.

I think however that it would be naïve to think that such an implementation of a New World according to the cosmic plan would happen without resistance. Some want to hold onto power over others. To many more the downfall of the established order of dominance would be shocking because it would ruin their experience of security in a world that they have become accustomed to. The bankers, governments, medias and ruling establishments world wide will then naturally seek to set up a new single global currency and remain in control, which they are very well prepared for. This especially the case if people are unaware of the evidence-based Mayan calendar and are able to see this difficult period as part of a process designed to lead to a new world. I am however convinced that the upcoming Universal Underworld will bring a new unity consciousness carrying a bliss of just being and love and compassion for all things just the way they are. Thus, things may not become “better” in the sense they were spoken of in the old economy, but life will be more enjoyable because of a new level of consciousness in which things are perceived in another way. Thus, in the years ahead we are in for a confusing mixture of seemingly conflicting developments. A critical aspect of preparation for this is the knowledge that the evidence-based Mayan calendar ends October 28, 2011, which at least gives people a benchmark for the rhythms with which things will evolve even though it will take a certain time for things to settle also after this.

The vision that is emerging for the time ahead is thus neither that “the world is going to an end,” nor that “we will all be happily flying” at a certain preset date in the future. Instead, we see a fairly complex scenario based on the best evidence that we have for an understanding of the future. It has much in common with the difficult birth scenario for the “New Jerusalem” as this is presented in the Book of Revelation. As this book points out this is however not a world for everyone and it is a scenario that almost certainly will require spiritual strength and integrity to endure. I do not want to add any religious overtones to this discussion, but it seems clear that everyone who is aspiring to enter this new world must sincerely seek the truth and avoid simplistic explanations.

Even if the Mayan calendar thus is universal and fundamentally connected to the Book of Revelation it is nonetheless important to know how the contemporary Maya see their end date. Naturally, some of them are happy that their calendar has received worldwide attention and may just believe what the archeologists have been telling them, which is December 21, 2012 (The actual Long Count upon which this date is based went out of use among the Maya a long time ago and so this date has been forwarded to them by modern archeologists). But more authoritative sources such as Don Alejandro Oxlaj of the Council of Elders are not just jumping on the bandwagon. As anyone who has seen the interview I made with him two years ago (available on DVD from Mayan Majix) he rejects the December 21, 2012 date as a miscalculation (Something that at the time was actually a surprise to me). He also carries the prophecy of the Thirteen Baktuns and 13 Ahau, consistent with the October 28, 2011 date (which is 13 Ahau). Unlike myself he however does not specify an end date, even though we do agree that the last katun shift (beginning of the last 7200 day prophetic period) took place in 1992. Around this katun shift at February 10, 1992 we can also very clearly see that major events, a quantum shift, shaping the whole world took place: The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union (December 25, 1991), the institution of the European Union, (February 7, 1992) and the launching of the World Wide Web (August 1991). By the time of the katun shift advocated by the December 21, 2012 people (John Jenkins says April 1993 in the “Doomsday” documentary on History Channel) the new world was thus already established. Also in the future the people embracing this end date will thus always be in the backwater of what is really happening in the world. This demonstrates the utmost importance of the end date and that those who want to be consciously part of the coming quantum shifts ahead and surf on the waves of creation that these generate will miss that opportunity if they reject the evidence based Mayan calendar with its end date of October 28, 2011. If you ignore the evidence and listen to the December 21, 2012 “alignment”*** prophets this is likely to have very serious direct consequences for your own life and how you approach the future. With the acceleration of time in the Galactic Underworld the difference of 420 days between the two end dates is literally as big as that between day and night.