2012 - Event Horizon
Gayle Clayton, MA
©AWS Media LLC 2012
Published by AWS Media LLC Publishing at Smashwords
2012 - Event Horizon
Introduction to Time
Bring out the noise makers; throw the confetti. The year 2012 is here. Later we will look back and wonder what all the hoopla was for. Most of the hype is derived from the interpretation from the ancient Mayan calendar that does not extend past what equates to be the winter solstice of our year 2012.
The date is not nearly as important as the galactic alignment it portends. Every 25,800 years, our solar system directly aligns to the center of our galaxy. Also, since the tilt of earth's axis allows the tip to trace an ellipse in the heavens, we will enter into a new age. This procession on December 21, 2012 means that we move from one great cycle into a new precession.
Although many have waited expectantly for the calendar to roll over to 2012, the modern calendar truly does not depict the event in time. There are scales of time that defy modern attempts to pin events to specific measurements. Yet, there is a marker that portends a time of great change. Here on the precipice of the grand year, there is a building anxiety. Yet, is the date written in stone? Are we destined to a universal or global destiny?
While the New Age groupies of the 1990's proposed the marker of 2012 as a date of ascension, a global disaster, and/or the moment of global destruction, the modern calendar does not agree with the cyclic understanding of the Mayan and other cultures marking the passage of time. Time is one dimension that humanity has yet to fully understand.
While atomic clocks and calendars are made to accurately mark Time's passage, what is time? One doesn't have to be a philosopher or physicist to understand time, but it may help. When contemplating a new idea or concept, people tend to revert to the sea of the known – that is, to their own understanding and reference systems.
My spiritual teacher Ron always noted when I was initiated to higher realms of reality that I reverted to basic physics to attempt to convey concepts in other dimensions. Other students used different modalities-dance, drawing, music, and writing. These insights in dimensionality are transitory – they defy the existence of time.
One of the practical reasons to revert back to science and mathematics is their beautiful precision and symmetry. Yet, if one pursues advanced understanding and delves deeper into complex matters, the system breaks down. Whether it is partial differential calculus, Newtonian physics, or Euclidean geometry, the understanding is based on certain precise boundaries where these laws work. Only when one moves outside the box does quantum physics, non-Euclidean geometry and other advanced and even imaginary work emerge.
So, as the alignments begin for the 2012 solstice, we look at what that means. Our earth's place in the solar system is moving to point to the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which is a black hole in space. Science, philosophy and religion are not separate fields of study but are simply different paths to the same truth. Each field has its own language, its own strengths and its own limitations.
Ron, one of my spiritual teachers, often commented that the only limit to science was its ability to measure things. In an age of the Hubble telescope and particle accelerators, his theory seems accurate as our ability to measure larger and smaller things has increased exponentially. The more we can measure, the more we realize how much more is out there.
In fact, many things we cannot measure directly can be detected by its presence on other known objects. An exceptionally potent result of this ability to measure is the emergence of the understanding of dark matter. An understanding of cosmology, big-bang creation theory and quantum physics are useful known structures for the understanding of what 2012 potentially means to all of us.
In this work, the language of science and mysticism combine to present two different perspectives to the same event. There will be a change in 2012 – whether it is in perception, the encounter of oneness with everything happening at once, or a huge cosmic eraser of karma, the acts of cause and effect. To go forward, there must be a way to understand the Euclidean box we live in, see its quirks that allow us to break free to a new cosmic consciousness.
In science, the black hole consumes everything that encounters it. In meditation, one may not enter the highest vibratory levels without going through a metaphysical black hole that consumes what one holds as personal ego. The black hole is the transforming mechanism; the event horizon is the irrevocable entry into a new realm of being.
Similarly, there is the accepted theory that dark matter comprises a large part of the universe's mass despite no direct measurement of it. Dark matter neither emits nor scatters light or other electromagnetic radiation rendering it dark or invisible to telescopes. Astrophysicists theorized the existence of dark matter due to discrepancies between the mass of large astronomical objects determined from their gravitational effects, and mass calculated from the luminous matter such as stars, gas and dust. Their theory of the existence of dark matter filled a gap in understanding.
The human search for meaning means that we strive to understand or even commune with new encounters. Just as scientists attempt to fill gaps in their rational structures, good spiritual students attempt to hold onto new truths or awareness by fitting them into their own systems of belief or intellectual constructs. Among these new understandings is not only the relativity of time but the motivation for its existence. The marker of 2012 may indicate that no longer do we measure time, but we encounter it directly.
The Nature of Time
In the beginning...so most creation stories begin. The basic concept defies all logic. From out of nothing arises something. The ancient Egyptians religion states that the world emerged from an infinite, lifeless sea as the sun rose for the first time in a distant period known as zep tepi, or the first occasion. There was no time until there was a separation in space.
To comprehend the significance of the marker of the Mayan calendar is to understand the concept of time in its non-linearity. Time, as most of us measure it, is to separate events. Without contemplation, we immediately know what past, present and future mean.
However, if a friend asks us to define the present, we may find ourselves tongue tied. Is it the moment we become aware of the question, or the moment we form an answer? Is the question in the present or is it in the past? As the mind races forward to project an answer to the predicted next question, is it in the future?
Is the key to time in the body? Is aging the way we mark time – through the physical decay of the body and mind? Perhaps it is the mind that selects the realm of reality we inhabit. Yet with only a few questions, our understanding of time breaks down.
Sitting in the airport the other day during a long layover, the multiple levels of existence revealed themselves. The weary passengers searched the concourse for an electrical plug for their devices in one operating realm. The gate agents made delay announcements as crews were arriving late operating in their sphere of influence. Outside the maintenance crews checked planes while handlers moved luggage from point to point. Everyone had their own role and function. Musing in the recharging batteries corner, I wondered why any of us needed to be going anywhere.
Part of the shift in the 2012 transition is to end the separation between realms of experiences. Our use of time has been to sequence events. In fact, reality may be compared to music where the scale (time measurement) marks the durations of notes (events), the intervals or lengths they are played, and the space between them. There are also markers of rates of change– time is also relative and not a constant. Just put you hand on a hot stove for a second and see how long it feels. Then kiss a loved one goodbye for a second and see how long it feels. Our perception of time varies.
There is no simple understanding of time. Philosophy, engineering, religion, and science all struggle to find a universally accepted definition. Even as scientists use the measurement of time in defining other quantities such as velocity, cycles, and repetitions, time is what is measured.
However, time may be a fundamental structure within our universe. Events are spread out like frames of a film strip whether that is part of our intellectual structure or felt by all living creatures is debatable. Or as Ray Cummings, science fiction writer wrote last century, “Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.”
So while the focus for the year 2012 has been based on the Mayan calendar, it is important to understand that the remaining Mayan codices yielded a series of dates and markers in various calendars. Researchers discovered that the Mayan tracked many astronomical events: the phases of the moon, scheduled eclipses and the movements of Venus since they viewed it as a harbinger of war. Their meticulous calendars enabled predictions of future astronomical events with great accuracy.
The Mayan Calendar Round was based on a 52 year life cycle, close to the average life span of that age, and easily compared to the events and life passages. For events that spanned more than one lifetime, the Mayans used the Long Count calendar. The Long Count begins with a creation date corresponding to August 11, 3114 BCE. Again, though, be cautious in linear comparisons of the Mayan or any calendar to the Gregorian or modern calendar.
Yet, the Mayan calendar does have a beginning and an end as well as a cyclical nature. The Mayan beliefs are written in the Popol Vuh, an account of their creation story. According to that story, humanity is living in the fourth world. The first three were failures. There are other native traditions that also mention that humanity is in the fourth world. The Navajo people, the Diné, passed through three different worlds before emerging into the Fourth or Glittering World. The Diné also believe there are two types of beings: the Earth People and the Holy People.
So if there are markers of time that span over lifetimes and world cycles, then the significance of the Mayan Long Count comes to the present. Accepting that there have been previous creations, then the last one ended at the start of the 14th baktun. A baktun is 20 katun cycles or 144,000 days. This equates to approximately 394 tropical years. It is in these cycles that that the Mayan pointer to winter solstice arises.
The current or 13th baktun completes on December 21, 2012. On that data is also the beginning of the 14th baktun. In this cyclic understanding of the calendar, the world doesn't end, but experiences re-creation by Heart of Sky. Mayan inscriptions elsewhere reference dates that lie beyond the solstice of 2012 as well. The solstice of 2012 indicates a massive change, but not necessarily the end of life or earth.
The final date on the Mayan Codex has been interpreted as the reset of the long count cycle. The ancient Maya would honor this time as one of great change. Indeed, it may well be the emergence of the Age of Aquarius completing a great year. A great year, the precession of the equinoxes or as some refer to it as the Long Life is the time it takes for the axis of the earth to trace an ellipse on the backdrop of the stars - approximately 25,800 years.
On the winter solstice in 2012, at the completion of the procession of the equinoxes’ cycle, the sun aligns with the heart of the Milky Way. Astronomers for some time have predicted the empirical existence of a black hole in the heart of the Milky Way. This direct alignment to the galactic center will bring in energy of unknown qualities. Some claim that this will be the return of the shining ones or the angels or gods depending on one's beliefs.
Yet, pinning an instantaneous change upon the solstice date may be foolhardy. The changes while rapid and huge on a galactic scale will be slowly transforming the earth in solar time. The massive shifts with earthquakes in areas that seldom have them, tornadoes in destructive superpower form, and sunspots rapidly affecting the atmosphere and communications on this planet seem not to have occurred overnight, but over a short span of years in our lifetimes. Even as the magnetic fields are shifting, the seasons seem to be sliding as well. Daffodils that used to bloom in March are blooming in January. There are many markers of the huge shift foretold of the solstice of 2012.
Even as we mark the global cycles, there are other markers in different scales of time. Solar cycles are marked in cycles of twelve years, the great precession of the earth's axis in cycles of 25,800 years as the tilted axis traces an ellipse in space, and galactic time as the sun rotates around the black hole that exists in the center of the Milky Way. Time is something that we measure, but as Einstein taught last century it is relative. All events are relative according to the point of observance. What is static and unchanging after all? The more we learn, the more there is to learn.