This comprises what Carl Jung called a synchronicity.  A term that get bandied about too loosely sometimes, a synchronicity is not simply a coincidence–it is a meaningful coincidence.

Synchronicities are, by their very nature, impossible to ignore.  They are unexpected coincidences that seem to hint at the existence of some hidden order to the universe, an acausal orderedness, as Jung and his colleague Wolgang Pauli labeled it.  It orders the world but not in the cause-and-effect way we are used to thinking.  They are meaningful coincidences because they link inner psychological-spiritual states to external physical events in such a way that something new is created–a new relationship between inner and outer realities, a new range of possibilities, a new sense of the Whole and our place in it.

THE ANCIENT FUTURE

That the Mayan Calendar ends on the Winter Solstice of 2012 is not held as a fact by all, however most interpreters of the calendar agree it falls within a range of a couple years, and in most cases, a few days, of that date.  The December 21, 2012 date is based on the correlation constant well-attested from the earliest days of the Spanish military conquest of Mexico.  The issue that most commentators forget in their passion to fix the precise date of the calendar’s end, however, is that such Mayan dates are symbolic, not historical.

This is clearly understood by looking at the origin date of the Mayan Calendar itself, which is generally held to begin on August 11, 3114 B.C.E.  This is a Founding Date, marking when time began again–when one period of 13 baktuns ended and another began with the gods creating this world of human beings.  This is the symbolic date that the Long Count calendar begins, the traditional founding of the calendar which, 5,125 years later, ends on December 21, 2012.  That it is a symbolic date is clear from the fact that it pre-dates the actual invention of the calendar by at least two thousand years.

The essential point, however, is that because tradition dictates that another 5,125 year calendar follow the one that is ending, this Winter Solstice of 2012 marks the Founding Date of a new age of creation.

The only known Long Count date to specify the December 21, 2012 date occurs as an inscription in stone on Monument 6 at Tortugero, which seems to state that a deity associated with endings and beginnings will appear on that date.  Deeply embedded in ancient Mesoamerican cultures was the concept of sequential Suns, or Ages, when cyclic time began anew. Such is the subject of the famous Aztec Calendar Sun Stone, which shows the four previous Suns that have come and gone–and shows this, the current Fifth Sun, the Age of Movement, which is to come to an end on the day 4 Ollin.  Just as each of the preceding four Ages gave way to a new one, this Fifth Sun is to give way to a new Age, the Sixth Sun.

In other words, endings are established in order to initiate times of Starting Over.  This is an important psychological and cultural need, marking the mature ability to recognize when mistakes have led us in the wrong direction and decisions must be corrected by making a radical and positive departure from the past.  This is simply the modern practice of making New Year’s resolutions embodied in a deeper order of psychological-spiritual complexity:  recognizing a dead end when we come to it, we exercise the only real choice we have and reverse course to look for a living road.  We do not engage in lemming behavior, following the most paranoid and panicked among us over the precipice of destruction–nor do we engage in apocalyptic thinking, secretly wishing for the world to end rather than accept the fact that it will go on without us.

The ancients formalized endings so that symbolic beginnings could renew the human spirit and restore social cohesion.

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE IS DEAD

Today, we are dying of history.  Our collective story is one of wrongs and revenge that cannot be forgotten or forgiven.  There is no going forward as a global civilization fully capable of creating a Golden Age for all humanity because we cannot stop going backward to justify our rage and violence and feuding.  We are imprisoned in a collective vision of pain and grieving for what we have lost when the prison cells have all been unlocked and the walls collapsed long ago:  the will to keep up the cycle of revenge and hatred is becoming more and more difficult to sustain when we see what we could be creating instead.

Whether the ancient Mayans intended it or not, the end of their calendar coincides with a profound turning point in human civilization.

The Spirit of the Age has been Reason–which has come to mean The Age of Materialism– and it is Reason that appears to be the focus of our present turning point.  The logic of the intellect has given us a scientific materialism full of technological wonders capable of large-scale harm to the environment and society both:  not only are species and their habitats disappearing at an alarming rate but people are alienated from nature and one another in ways unimaginable just a few generations ago.  Governments declare wars that people do not want, armies stockpile nuclear and biological weapons too horrible to contemplate, speculators ruin economies and people’s well-being, people are starving world-wide and lack potable water when neither is necessary, and basic health care is withheld by modern practitioners who simultaneously do everything in their power to discredit traditional forms of medicine.  Politics and religion simply polarize people instead of bringing them together and personal liberty increasingly comes under pressure from the demands for security.  This is not, in a word, the world any of us want to live in.

The intellect can justify anything, can rationalize any type of behavior, can explain away anything we are doing.

But it cannot make us happy.

Because human happiness occurs despite reason, despite the intellect’s unending parade of excuses to accept dwelling in misery.

And human happiness is an ideal that more and more people across cultures are holding dear.

LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

The 2012 meme really came into being with Jose Argeulles and subsequently Terence McKenna, both of whom lent their considerable intellectual and creative capacities to the envisioning of a more positive and harmonious world.  Arguelles was also responsible for organizing the first Earth Day, for example, and McKenna, who calculated the King Wen sequence of the I Ching to culminate on the 2012 date, was once introduced by Timothy Leary as one of the five or six most important people on the planet.  Both men were instrumental in bringing the 2012 date to public awareness and tying it to their own efforts to transform human consciousness and, thereby, civilization in a positive way.  For this reason, the 2012 meme became early on associated with the the New Age movement.

These ideas surfaced as the works of Carlos Castaneda were really taking hold in popular awareness, his tales of the Yaqui shaman Don Juan introducing Western readers to the lifeway of Native American shamanism in present-day Mexico.  Interest overall, in the U.S. and Europe both, increased in regard to Native American beliefs, especially regarding shamanism, drumming, sweat lodges, journeying, and soul retrieval.  The underlying worldview of animism–that all matter is imbued with spirit–began pervading popular thought just as the environmentalist movement began to blossom:  people began feeling their kinship with nature instead of merely thinking about it.  This formed a perfect confluence of great rivers of thought as the nature mysticism of ancient Taoism and Zen also captured hearts and imaginations.

The monotheistic religions that had held sway for so long began to lose their appeal as people began turning to more traditional earth-centered belief systems.  Esoteric traditions from the Old World were finding their way into popular culture, reviving wide-spread interest in Astrology, Tarot, the Cabala, Magic, and Wicca.  All this arose as the feminist movement gained ground, spurring interest in cultivating personal power instead of expending external force.  Tibetan Buddhism entered our consciousness in a very real way as monks escaping the Chinese invasion began actively teaching in the West.  The Dalai Lama embodied a new model of how someone titled His Holiness ought to think, believe, and act.

The West was rediscovering the Heart.

And the internet became the new community plaza, the new city park:  people began meeting and exchanging ideas and, eventually, goods.  Its own innovation spurred further innovation and the capacity for free speech that could be heard world-wide drove the idea of democracy home in a new and startling real way.  The democratization of voices changed the way we perceived leadership and what actions we should accept from our government.  Our lives were being effected positively by people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, not by the politicians who seemed only interested in getting elected.  And the betrayal by institutions people had trusted for their financial security drove the point home for folks who had never considered themselves outside the mainstream.

People across cultures began talking to one another via the immediacy of social networks.  Revolutions and demonstrations were coordinated using the new technology.  The idea of real democracy, not one nation’s copyrighted definition of democracy, has sunk in and is proving difficult to uproot:  in a world of peers, how can the disparity of wealth be justified?  when all cultures are created equal, can might really equal right?

Popular culture has changed.  What had seemed exotic had become natural, the new normal.  People form communities across vast distances, tied together by common ideals and purposes instead of physical proximity.  Invention, creativity, beauty, elegance, and spirituality have become ideals and purposes rather than self-interest, competition, nationalism, and religious zealotry.  People’s commonality has given rise to the Occupy Movement and the social networks have made it possible to coordinate those efforts across borders.

The momentum of change has intensified and its direction is away from empty promises and dead rituals and inhumane logic.

2012 AND THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

Whether the ancient Mayans intended it or not, the end of their calendar coincides with a profound turning point in human civilization.

The issue at hand is not whether the Mayan Calendar predicts anything.  There is no way to be certain of that:  there is no evidence, no fact, to make such a claim with absolute certainty.  There is no reason to think that its end was calculated to coincide with the alignment of the sun with the galactic center–what is important is that it does coincide with just such an event.  In the realm of synchronicity, things coincide as manifestations of an acausal orderedness underlying the ongoing creation of the universe.  The issue is not whether the ancient Mayans set their calendar to end on a year of greater than normal solar activity or weakening geomagnetic field–the issue is that it does coincide with such concerns.  These events don’t stand in direct cause-and-effect relationships:  they are part of the underlying harmony of reality that spontaneously produces things like whole numbers and the discontinuities of modern physics.  Some things simply are and the more of them that overlap in the same time-frame, the more impossible they are to ignore.  This kind of simultaneity of meaningful coincidences and the implication of their momentum has likewise been brought to view by more recent social commentators and activists like Daniel Pinchbeck.

Civilization is changing.  Instead of engaging in a culture war with the antiquated worldview of religious extremism and national militarism and fetishized capitalism, people worldwide are simply moving on with life.  Letting go of the past, forgiving the wrongs done them, hoping for forgiveness for the wrongs they have done, envisioning a better world rising from the mistakes of the Age of Reason–the worldview of the global counterculture is constructive and filled with goodwill toward all.  It is a counterculture well on its way to becoming the global culture.

The whole “world ends in the year 2000″ was simply too full of fundamentalist trappings to capture this culture’s thinking.  But the Mayan Calendar, filled as it is with mystery and mathematics, steeped in the Pre-columbian civilization of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico, expressed with such magnificent artwork!  This is an ending that excites and inspires the Spiritual Left to compassionate action, one that infuses animists and nature mystics with the promise of restoring the natural balance between humankind, nature and spirit, an umbilical cord tying the lifeway of indigenous peoples to the lifeway of modern peoples.

We steer into the Winter Solstice of 2012 with full sails.  The wind of change is at our back, the momentum for a profound and lasting transformation of civilization has built to this cresting point.  We need do nothing different than what we have begun:  trusting in the World Soul to call us forward on its sacred path, we just have to keep listening to the Great Mystery and following its loving intent.

The Winter Solstice of 2012 will pass, a symbolic milestone that initiates another 5,125 year period of human civilization.  The world will be a completely transformed place when next the 13 baktuns of the Mayan Calendar come to an end.  Be assured, people will celebrate that milestone, for the Mayan Calendar is one of the great achievements of the human spirit–what, if anything, of these days, of our deeds, will those people 5,000 years from now remember?

If the years leading up to this turning point are any indication, they will remember us for founding an age of peace and prospering for all.

Those attuned to the coming Spirit of the Age are themselves synchronicities.  Each is a meaningful coincidence, alive at this time because an unaccountable and unfathomable acausal orderedness has placed them here.  They are meaningful coincidences because they link inner psychological-spiritual states to external physical events in such a way that something new is created–a new relationship between inner and outer realities, a new range of possibilities, a new sense of the Whole and our place in it.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

 The Toltec I Ching,  by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden, is published by Larson Publications. It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams. Its subtitle, “64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World,” alludes to its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

Go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications for ordering the book.

Two companion volumes, The Five Emanations, and The Spiritual Basis of Good Fortune,  have recently been published that expand on carrying the practices forward in the modern world.

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This is the question addressed in a group divination at a three-day workshop on The Toltec I Ching in Southern Oregon, November, 2011. While six people threw the coins once each, the group as a whole concentrated on receiving the Oracle’s answer with open hearts and minds.

~

SUMMARY OF ORACLE’S REPLY

The principal hexagrams articulate a clear message of change moving from the present situation to the future.  The first step in establishing the right kind of ending to this time of darkness is the most decisive—it is what sets in motion the natural consequence of the future Restoring Wholeness.  This initial change that we are, even now, beginning to experience is titled Entering Service and explicitly describes the 180-degree re-polarization of our collective lifeway:  the profundity of this change of worldview away from self-interest and toward self-sacrifice cannot be exaggerated—so sudden and widespread as to resemble a positive virus, the desire to put the past behind us is itself the specific trigger that activates the new beginning of Restoring Wholeness.

The two transition points marked by line changes give voice to the specific bridges between the present and the future situations.  One warns against relying on precedents to move forward, indicating that past attitudes and behaviors must be set aside in favor of bold new forward-looking solutions.  The other alerts us to the fact that a last-hour attempt to maintain control will result in a clamping down on freedoms by authoritarian forces—rather than securing their position, however, this is the last nail in the coffin of authoritarianism:  oppression has the unintended consequence of reminding people of their own collective authority and power of self-governance.

The ancillary hexagrams point to a simultaneous deeper—but no less widespread—change going on within individual consciousness.  Like a forest fire, the heat of which ignites the tress in front of it before its flames touch them, a profound shift in awareness passes from person to person, building momentum as it grows:  the concurrence of all the ancillary hexagrams on this single focus indicates, in context of the question, that a cultural meme of metamorphosis itself spreads among peoples everywhere with a spontaneity and velocity impossible to imagine beforehand.  It is as though people everywhere simply tire of using the past as an excuse for continuing the inhumane treatment of human beings and the environment—the past is cast off, people share a common experience of exhilaration at finally breaking free of their imaginary limits, the combination of which triggers an authentic and lasting transformation of human nature.

The Oracle foresees, then, an opportunity for humanity to heal its long-standing wounds and restore itself, both on the collective and individual level, to original wholeness.  Hand-in-hand with this social transformation, individuals everywhere are gripped in a corresponding metamorphosis meme that transforms the human psyche in a way that makes it more adaptable to the future.  The two bridges that must be crossed if we are to authentically arrive on the far shore of this future are marked by the line changes:  throwing off the shackles of past thinking and throwing off the shackles of authoritarianism.

The Ending that the Oracle advises is that of self-interest above all else.  The Beginning that the Oracle envisions is one in which all apparent opposites are united in harmonious balance.  This opportunity appears to being triggered by the ancients’ intuition of the length of this age of darkness:  human nature must shift in predictable ways through predictable crises, which the ancient Mayans were able to calculate and mark symbolically with the end and new beginning of their calendar on the Winter Solstice 2012.

~

Each of the six Sections below provides the details of the text of the Oracle’s answer, followed by a Commentary analyzing its relevance to the question at hand.

Anyone wishing to expand upon these commentaries and interpretations is invited to add as much as they wish through the comments section.  I will respond to each and welcome the widest possible discussion among participants.

~

THE ORACLE’S REPLY

~

SECTION I.  THE PRESENT HEXAGRAM—

The primary hexagram determined from the six throws of the coins, which represents the way the Oracle views the present situation:  Hexagram 20, Entering Service.

Image:  An old man steps onto a long road that winds up a mountain, at the summit of which a plant grows.  He carries everything he needs for a long journey.  Under his arm, he carries a painted book of healing plants, opened to a plant matching the one on the summit before him.  His walking stick is in the form of a serpent.

Interpretation:  The old man represents wisdom gained through experience and means you are more concerned with bringing benefit to others than you are with receiving recognition for your efforts.  The plant at the mountain’s summit represents a distant goal and the long road winding up to it symbolizes the many twists and turns facing you on your lengthy journey.  That he carries everything he needs for a long journey means that you have anticipated hardship and prepared for it ahead of time.  The painted book of medicinal plants symbolizes the knowledge of the ancestors that is as relevant in the present as it was in the past.  That the book is opened to a painting matching the plant living atop the summit means that your goal is part of the living tradition of the old ones.  The walking stick in the form of a serpent symbolizes a helping spirit who knows the way on this winding and convoluted path.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you initiate a new and fuller realization of your potential by materially helping others obtain what they most need.

Action:  The masculine half of the spirit warrior undertakes an arduous journey in order to alleviate the need of others.  The quest to find benefit is a noble calling but one to be undertaken only when we are willing to accept the trials by which we acquire practical knowledge and ready to accept the tribulations by which we learn self-sacrifice.  Because experience has taught you that serving others is a nobler pursuit than serving yourself, you do not hesitate to take up this next leg of your journey.  Because it will be a long and difficult endeavor, you set your determination to see matters through to the end.  Because you cannot always count on others to make the hard parts of the journey easier, you make yourself self-reliant, flexible, and strong.  Because others lack consistency of vision and become periodically fascinated by new ideas, you study on your own and incorporate time-proven methods into your approach.  Because you strive to realize the highest vision, you pay close and constant attention to your spirit guide, who steers you clear of the pitfalls on the road of service.

Intent:  Observe those who profess to be pursuing a goal similar to your own.  Distinguish between those motivated by selflessness and those motivated by self-interest, between those content to fulfill their duty to others and those striving for advancement and recognition.  Learn from the ambitious that ulterior motives poison benefit. Learn from the selfless that pure intentions nourish benefit.  By weeding out unnatural feelings of being taken advantage of, you cultivate your innate garden of sincerity, devotion, and generosity.  By observing those who habitually exhibit cynicism and self-righteous indignation, you learn that poison eventually poisons the one who produces it.  By observing the incorruptible benevolence of your helping spirit, you learn that enduring noble-heartedness is itself the road by which you yourself become benefit.  Sow your seeds of intent in the timeless that others might receive benefit in time.

Summary:  Do not forget that you have undertaken a difficult road in order to benefit others.  Watch your reactions carefully, making sure that you harbor neither resentment toward those you serve nor distrust of those with whom you serve.  Continue to focus on the ideal of your goal, allow your journey to ennoble you.  Do not listen to voices that sow dissension or dissatisfaction in your heart.

ORACLE COMMENTARY:  THE PRESENT

The elder masculine figure here refers to the wise part of the purpose-driven half of human nature, sending it on  a quest to find the secret cure to the crises we collectively face.  This means the faction of humanity that seeks power and progress for their own sake need to voluntarily place their resources and energy into solving real-life problems without creating new difficulties in the future.  Real medicine is curative and restorative and does not produce negative side-effects.  This authentic caring and sincere concern inspire others to collaborate for the common good.  This willingness to set self-interest aside in order to address the common need pulls people together in an atmosphere of unity and mutuality.

What kind of Ending will produce the best Beginning for the Coming 2012 Age?

The Oracle is specifically condemning the immature adolescent masculine force of humanity, answering the question by indicating the kind of strength and resolve needed to end this current Age in the best manner:

turn away from the headstrong pursuit of dominating others in any form and every level;
embody the archetype of the wise medicine man who has dedicated his entire life to service of the Whole; and,
prepare all concerned for a prolonged, arduous and heroic adventure ahead.

~

SECTION II.  THE LINE CHANGES—

There are two line changes in the present hexagram that indicate the specific transition points by which the present trends develop into the future:

Second:  Just because the rule worked once doesn’t mean it will work again—conditions have changed and you must change with them.  You are being too cautious and acting as if you had no confidence.  Envision how this partnership fits with your long-range goals and then act.

Sixth:  People are malleable but cannot be oppressed indefinitely—clamping down too tight makes them question authority.  Once they begin looking into their own authority, their spirits can no longer be molded to another’s  will.  Step forward to meet their material needs and you will win their loyalty.

ORACLE COMMENTARY:  TRANSITION POINTS

The second line change warns that basing actions and attitudes on past precedents is foolish and self-defeating.  The past ways of dealing with people and nature has all been based on short-term solutions that have created new and even more complex problems.  Harmonious cooperation between all is inevitable:  the time demands bold and decisive action that leads to universal amnesty and reconciliation.

The sixth line change warns that ignoring the Oracle’s guidance leads to a time of widespread anti-authoritarianism.  This grassroots movement arises as a reaction to the misuse of power that subjects people to increasing oppression and diminishing freedom.  As people collaborate in their effort to build something new, they find unexpected strength in their collective vision.  The old is overthrown by new because all differences between spiritual traditions are set aside in the collective effort to meet all material needs in the emerging age of peace and prospering for all.

~

SECTION III.  THE HIDDEN HEXAGRAM—

When the second line changes and the sixth line has not yet changed, the hidden hexagram is formed.  It speaks to the attitude and behavior needed to bring the future into being:  Hexagram 9, Uprooting Fear.

Image:  A male warrior, wearing war paint and a jaguar headdress, stands at the mouth of a cave and utters a battle cry that sounds like a jaguar’s roar.  In one hand he holds the power of the lightning and its thunder and fire.  His other arm is clenched, forming a shield of obsidian knives.  The flight of arrows is broken and stopped in flight.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the indomitable intent of those who will not be overcome by fear or insecurity.  The male warrior symbolizes the way of testing and training human nature that increases its versatility and fortitude.  His war paint and battle cry mean that you do not hesitate to show your resolve through direct speech and direct action.  The cavern and jaguar headdress, both symbols of the feminine half of the spirit warrior, mean that you do not hesitate to conceal your deeper intentions within the feints and stratagems of indirect action.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you withstand every inner and outer test of nerves the way a mountain withstands every individual raindrop.  Wielding the lightning’s fire and thunder means that you can concentrate the energy of the creative forces and direct it toward making matters known, using the power of fire to illuminate and the power of thunder to resound.  Forming a shield of obsidian knives means that you invoke the law of equal action and reaction, defending yourself solely by adopting the patient strength of those who no longer try to keep destructive people from destroying themselves.  Stopping the arrows in flight means that the spiritual protection you cultivate succeeds in making you impervious to harm.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you have prepared well for this battle and have nothing to fear.

Action:  The masculine half of the spirit warrior protects the feminine half from physical, emotional, and spiritual harm.  Only a whole-hearted commitment to the proper course of action will stand you in good stead—only through clarity of vision, firmness of will, and consistency of action will you be able to act with the courage and conviction needed to prevail against those in the wrong.  When we can no longer make excuses for oppression and coercion, then we find what it is that is worth fighting for:  it is at just such a juncture that we commit to a course of action that improves our lives, refines our character, and broadens our compassion.  This is a time for hardening your heart against even the slightest of fears and closing your mind to even the remotest possibilities of failure.  Take up the symbols of this hexagram and make yourself like this spirit warrior and you will not only pass through the trial unscathed, but you will bring benefit to others in ways impossible to imagine at present.  Because your motive is pure and your reasoning sound, you act without doubt or hesitation.

Intent:  By pulling out the weeds of fear and indecision when they first appear, you will acquire the inner power to break up stagnation and free up benefit so that it might fulfill its corresponding need once again.  In such a time, it is necessary to coordinate your forces in response to events.  When you must confront matters, do so unemotionally, speaking the truth without exaggeration or distortion.  When you are attacked, defend your spirit in private without responding to taunts or intimidation in public.  Act with the daring of one who has gambled everything on a single throw of the dice, advancing when you are expected to withdraw and withdrawing when you are expected to advance.  Do not hesitate to make allies of those within the opponent’s camp, thereby allowing doubt and fear to take root among those who sought to sow it.

Summary:  Your path takes you into unknown lands without any clear sense of where you are being led.  You are fully committed to this course now and there is no turning back.  Set your will firmly on the goal and banish all worrying and second thoughts from your mind.  All this is meant to be, so proceed with unshakeable confidence and optimism.  Move like a jaguar among rabbits.

ORACLE COMMENTARY:  HIDDEN HEXAGRAM

Those who seek the path of Entering Service confront the institutionalized forces with vested interest in the status quo.  Here, the Oracle is unequivocal in its call to action:  uproot all fear, don’t let any doubt creep in, move as if you have already won.  No effort to establish a new beginning brings about worthwhile and lasting results if the endeavor is carried out only halfway due to uncertainty or timidity.  To end things well under these circumstances means having the fearlessness to bring self-destructive lifeways to an end once and for all.

~

SECTION IV.  THE FUTURE HEXAGRAM—

After the line changes have taken effect, they develop the future situation:  Hexagram 5, Restoring Wholeness.

Image:  An old woman heals a young male warrior, who wears an arrowhead necklace.  While she chants an ancient curing song, she places a lizard on his shoulder and administers purifying herbs and water.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts great benefit fulfilling great need.  The old woman personifies the great-great-great-grandmother, the feminine force of profound wisdom and nurturing, the inner healing force within all, the aged and loving medicine woman.  The male warrior personifies the strength and vitality of youth, the great potential of the young, the idealism and insensitivity of the inexperienced, the impatient and reactive nature of the untrained passions.  Taken together, they symbolize the exchange of forces needed to heal your old wounds and enable you to bring benefit to all around you.  The herbs symbolize the feminine medicines of compassion and the understanding of relationships.  The arrowhead represents the masculine medicines of single-mindedness and the pursuit of new experiences.  Taken together, they depict the exchange of energies whereby the new must be refined by the old and the old must periodically be revitalized by the new.  For this reason, the hexagram shows that the young warrior is both a patient and an apprentice of the medicine woman, learning firsthand the ways of restoring natural and original wholeness and, thereby, bringing much needed energy to the feminine half that has been giving to others for so long.  The lizard, the one who grows back its tail, represents the spiritual medicine of regeneration whereby the original state of wholeness is restored.  The medicinal herbs and water together represent the purifying and cleansing away of the useless, the wasteful, and that which only confuses and drags down the original energy of body, mind, and spirit.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you reclaim your spiritual birthright of indivisible wholeness.

Action:  The masculine and feminine halves of the spirit warrior replenish one another.  It is a time for seeking new experiences that will broaden your vistas and deepen your joy of life.  Your innate wisdom and compassion do not have their source in thought but, rather, in life—they are not replenished by good intentions but, rather, by meaningful experiences.  In order for a well to bring benefit to others, it must tap into the unseen river of benefit flowing beneath the surface of the world of the senses.  Take no comfort in your accomplishments or knowledge now.  Instead, look to your need and pursue new interests that hold the possibility of discovering more meaningful joy in this lifetime.  Take a more playful and spontaneous approach to matters for a while, confident that what you find will reinvigorate your more serious efforts to nurture others.  It is not necessary to know ahead of time what new interest will prove meaningful—just as following a butterfly might accidentally lead you to a treasure, simply follow whatever captures your attention at present, confident that the creative forces will lead you to the proper goal.  Unsettling the beneficial feminine force in this way breaks up routines of thought, feeling, and memory, forcing you to reach a more effective balance between giving and having enough to give.  Because you make yourself whole again, you succeed in bringing benefit to others likewise seeking to restore their own wholeness.

Intent:  When people’s reactions are out of proportion to events, it is a clear signal that an old wound has not fully healed and is being reactivated by present circumstances.  Such reactions barely disguise the fact that something in the present is provoking an individual or group to relive the emotions of an old injury.  But disguise it they do, for the impact of many injuries is either long-forgotten or unrecognized.  Whether you find this imbalance in yourself or others, the nurturing-medicine of the wise feminine force must be augmented by the directing-medicine of the single-minded masculine force:  while it is essential that the wounded warrior be healed through reassurance and loving-kindness, it is just as necessary that the wounded warrior take up the discipline of recognizing that the new is not the old.  At the first sign of distress, the wounded warrior must immediately name the present and not allow the past wound to be re-opened.  Using the beneficial masculine force in this way allows you to keep the past from infecting the present.

Summary:  A forgotten part of you returns and takes the lead in establishing a new sense of inner unity and purpose.  Welcome the idealism and vitality of the young masculine warrior back into yourself and then act on your newfound vision of your future.  Over-confidence is preferable to timidity at this time.  Balance your roles and responsibilities with the new and the exciting and the daring.

ORACLE COMMENTARY:  THE FUTURE

Here, the Oracle points to the restorative tendency of homeostatic living systems to right themselves and return to a harmonious balance.  The Oracle balances the present time of Entering Service with the future time of Restoring Wholeness by illuminating the actual transformation of human nature taking place.  Here, in this future time, the immature masculine force within humanity voluntarily submits to the teachings of the elder feminine wisdom and compassion.  The strength and vitality of the purpose-driven masculine element is not, in and of itself, problematic.  It is only when it has no purpose above its own need to achieve that it becomes pointlessly overactive and carelessly short-sighted.  This greater purpose to which strength and vitality must be turned is the regenerative principle itself:  not only is the immature masculine force being instructed in this future hexagram but it is being healed as well—the teachings are themselves the medicine that restores people and nature to their original wholeness.  The purpose-driven masculine half of human nature becomes truly regenerative when it places itself in service to the relation-driven feminine half of human nature.

It should be noted that the entire thrust of the Oracle’s message in these first three hexagrams has been the positive and meaningful transformation of the masculine half of human nature.  In Entering Service, we are reminded that there is a positive, wise and selfless archetype of the masculine nature.  From the text, however, it should be clear that this does not refer to the gender of individuals:  the ancient wisdom traditions teach that each individual—and, indeed, humanity itself—has its feminine and masculine halves.  These are cosmological Creative Forces, Yin and Yang, whose union creates and sustains everything from within:  in the wrong measure, this union results in imbalances in nature and human nature, just as the right measure restores all imbalances to their original wholeness.

What kind of Ending will produce the best Beginning for the Coming 2012 Age?

The Oracle is unequivocal in its vision of the path forward:  there will be a re-polarization of the human psyche, one that brings it back into accord with the World Soul by setting the relation-driven life above the purpose-driven life.  This worldview of the relation-driven heart-mind places the needs of all life—the global civilization and the global environment—ahead of the wants of any special  interests.  In this sense, the meaning of the reading is very clear:  collectively, we set aside self-interest and enter into service of the Whole, uprooting all fear of the as-yet-unforeseeable way forward, resolute in our faith that the original wholeness of life, land, and spirit is being restored.  From this perspective, the living balance will not only be restored but this kind of ending will establish the foundation for the Golden Age of Humanity ahead.

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THE ANCILLARY HEXAGRAMS

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SECTION V.  THE NUCLEAR HEXAGRAM—

The structural core of the hexagram provides us with a glimpse into the essential nature of the transformation carrying us from the present into the future:  Hexagram 14, Unlocking Evolution.

Image:  Ancient spirits, part human and part butterfly, emerge from cocoons that hang from the branches of a tree.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts the passage into a new and more ennobling stage of life.  The human form symbolizes the body and its potential.  The butterfly symbolizes the soul and its potential.  The cocoon symbolizes a period of self-imposed isolation during which one undergoes transformation.  The tree symbolizes continuity of the vision passing from the spirit ancestors to their living descendants.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you turn inward to fulfill the timeless ideal of the evolving immortal.  Of the features of the butterfly, the antennas symbolize senses beyond the five senses, the compound eyes symbolize looking at things from many different points of view, the proboscis symbolizes nourishing oneself only on the nectar of life, and the wings symbolize the capacity to rise above limitations.  That many of these ancient spirits emerge from their cocoons at the same time means that you find spiritual companions on your journey.  Taken together, these symbols mean that your own invisible progress is essential to the forging of the invisible community of spirit.

Action:  The masculine and feminine halves of the spirit warrior—the human and butterfly forms, respectively—unite to form a more versatile and charismatic person.  This is a time in which powerful forces, long dammed up within you, are finally released and allowed to come to expression.  The higher potential you have long sensed approaching now falls within your reach.  Remove yourself from your daily routines where you can and spend time by yourself in communion with nature and spirit.  Turn your will inward, direct all your inner resources toward destroying every influence of the past that seeks to destroy your joy of life and sense of confidence.  Consider the obstacles that have held you back, look at them from the perspective of the grandeur of the universe, reflect on their importance in the scheme of eternity:  sense the immortality of that which is beyond the senses, feel yourself an intrinsic part of the indivisible whole, see the world through the eyes of the ancestors’ hopes and dreams for your life.  Taking up the view that every lifetime is of the utmost consequence, you cease to act out of self-interest and rededicate yourself to another lifetime of bringing benefit to others.  Allowing your heart to be touched by the ancestors’ wishes for your happiness and well-being, you cease to be influenced by misfortunes and injustices and attempts to break your spirit.  Taking wing amid the field of immortal spirit warriors, you learn to meet need with benefit everywhere it exists.

Intent:  The longer that beneficial intent is held in check by coercive and oppressive forces, the more momentous its release—when dark forces predominate, they eventually reveal their malicious intent, thereby creating among otherwise compliant people a constructive backlash.  In this way, individuals who do not think of themselves as daring find themselves thrown forward into the very vanguard of change.  Resist wrong-doing without doing wrong:  without attacking or defending, do not give an inch.  This is a battle of wills whereby you will be transformed into a stronger and wiser warrior.  This is an especially auspicious time to take up the discipline of creating yourself as you have always wished to be, rather than allowing others to define you.  It is going to be exciting to the degree that you seek to take wing into the future—but unnerving to the degree that you seek the safety and security of the past.  Above all, avoid becoming either restless or paralyzed by the pace of change:  have faith in the beneficial intent of metamorphosis going on within the cocoon.  If you step back into your shadow-half and gaze unblinking upon the countenance of your light-half, this is a time in which all your inner obstacles are spontaneously changed into their opposites.

Summary:  You are entering a time of profound transformation.  In order to advance, give up something in the past that has been holding you back.  In order to give up something in the past, see yourself in the future.  Consider what you will be like when your inner obstacles are no more.  It is best to fashion a period of solitude in which you can crystalize your vision and solidify your intent.

ORACLE COMMENTARY:  NUCLEAR HEXAGRAM

Two points in particular articulate the Essence of this reading—

• This is a time in which powerful forces, long dammed up within you, are finally released and allowed to come to expression
• The longer that beneficial intent is held in check by coercive and oppressive forces, the more momentous its release

We activate our true potential when we have no other choice.  Repression, both internal and external, is creating a backlash of freedom that threatens to overwhelm the status quo at any moment.  Those who do not believe that profound and global change can occur overnight simply do not understand the mechanics of reversal:  when the dam breaks, all the water escapes at the same time.

Hexagram 14, Unlocking Evolution describes the invisible forces at work beneath the play of appearances.  It shows that the metamorphosis, though given expression through individuals, is a communal transformation, each individual’s release triggering the next individual’s.  We unlock our own unimaginable evolutionary traits when our adaptive traits are no longer compatible with our environment:  we take the evolutionary leap only when backed up against the abyss of extinction.

The past we have inherited from our common ancestors is a chrysalis.  It is a kind of protective encapsulation, keeping us one step removed from a real and intimate communion with both humanity and nature as a whole.  It is a kind of myopia, keeping vision to the nearby and decision-making to the short-range.  And it is a kind of numbness, keeping us from feeling the full brunt of emotions stemming from the harm our actions cause our peers and our environment.  The past is a chrysalis ready to burst and release into the wider reality of full responsibility:  it has protected us while we grew as a species and now we have outgrown it.  The ancient Mayans, in their remarkable insight into human nature, set their calendar of 5, 125 years to end and begin again on the Winter Solstice, 2012, to mark this dramatic and universal shift away from self-destruction.

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It should also be noted that this Nuclear Hexagram has, besides Hexagram 20, Entering Service, three other hexagrams derived from its core structure.  Those are:  Hexagram 8, Harmonizing Duality; Hexagram 48, Moving Source; and, Hexagram 57, Defying Uncertainty.  And, while Unlocking Evolution is the Nuclear Hexagram of Entering Service, it can also be a matter of interest to consider the Nuclear Hexagram of the future hexagram, Restoring Wholeness:  that Nuclear Hexagram is Hexagram 38 Dissolving Artifice, which also includes Hexagram 9 Uprooting Fear, Hexagram 60 Changing Alliances, and Hexagram 61 Strengthening Integrity among its derived hexagrams.

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SECTION VI.  THE UNDERLYING DYNAMICS—

Advanced studies provide a further methodology for deeper analysis and interpretation of the Oracle’s reply.  The following sequence of hexagrams mirrors the predictive sequence formed by the coin throws but brings to light the deeper forces at work.

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ORACLE COMMENTARY:  UNDERLYING DYNAMICS

The hexagrams illuminating the hidden direction and momentum of generative energy (qi) that manifests as the predictive hexagrams (#20 to #9 to #5) are these:  Hexagram 45, Casting Off; Hexagram 43, Going Beyond; and, Hexagram 14, Unlocking Evolution.

The first item of note about this sequence is the startling unanimity with which it speaks of metamorphosis—#45 in terms of a plumed serpent metamorphosing from the shed skin of an ordinary serpent, #43 in terms of an ordinary mortal metamorphosing into an immortal on the road of transcendence, and #14 in terms of ordinary humanity taking the evolutionary leap of metamorphosing into a new life form.  Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that all three represent the conquest of gravity:  #45 and #14 both explicitly illustrate winged flight, whereas #43 shows the Road of Stars, the Milky Way, the path of transcendence whereby we reunite with our immortal allies.

The second item of note about this sequence is the startling presence here of the Nuclear Hexagram, Hexagram 14, Unlocking Evolution, the repetition of which reinforces the importance of the chrysalis symbol in the reading.  From this standpoint, then, these hexagrams amplify the meaning of the Nuclear Hexagram, establishing Unlocking Evolution as the central motif of the Oracle’s message.

What kind of Ending will produce the best Beginning for the Coming 2012 Age?

Underlying the principal message of the divination (Entering Service to Uprooting Fear to Restoring Wholeness), we find a consistent undertone of personal metamorphosis.  From this, we can surmise that the driving force behind the social changes leading to Restoring Wholeness is a shared personal experience of a higher awareness that transcends ordinary consciousness.  The mechanics of this relationship, which can be thought of as external-social and internal-personal, are hinted at when we view the two sequences as a series of pairs:

• #20 Entering Service and #45 Casting Off
• #9 Uprooting Fear and #43 Going Beyond
• #5 Restoring Wholeness and #14 Unlocking Evolution

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A Final Note—

Diviners interested in pursuing the advanced work further can investigate Hexagram 6, Fostering Self-Sacrifice, which should be considered an esoteric step backward on the path of returning to the One.  The relevance to Hexagram 20, Entering Service and the overall shift of attention away from self-interest and self-gratification for the sake of something greater than oneself is, at the end, elegantly reinforced.  This ought to be seen as the need to maintain both tracks consciously:  the social changes (toward idealism and altruism) and personal changes (toward transcendent awareness) will have to be the two wings of the phoenix rising forever from the smoke of the past.

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William Douglas Horden is co-author of The Toltec I Ching and author of two companion volumes, The Five Emanations and The Spiritual Basis of Good Fortune.

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Across the imaginary distance of culture and borders, I honor your contribution to the Beginning Times.

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A dying oak tree, its trunk split and branches breaking, does not in any way resemble an acorn.

The new beginning—despite growing directly out of the remains of the old—does not resemble what it replaces.

While it is imperative to recognize endings before they arrive, it is self-defeating to dwell on them:  Endings serve to direct our attention to the new beginning already starting to unfold.  The Book of Changes is not simply about the art of avoiding misfortune—its deeper intent is to instruct us in the art of arriving ahead of time at the meeting place of good fortune.

An acorn, bright and gleaming in the palm of a hand, does not in any way resemble the giant oak tree dominating the forest clearing hundreds of years later.  And this is a critical lesson of the I Ching—one of context and chance and perseverance.  For, the same acorn that falls in a level fertile field and grows to great height and prominence will grow stunted and gnarled should it fall among rocks on the crags of a cliff face.  The same acorn.

Everyone recognizes that the old is ending.  Everyone.  Worldwide.  The question of concern is, What kind of ground are we preparing for this seed of the new?

The ancients had an accurate sense of the length of time that the pendulum of change takes to swing out to its extreme and reverse the passions of human nature.  Across numerous cultures, the ancients accurately foresaw that this time, the historical epoch in which we are living, would be the turning point for civilization to realize the dream of a Golden Age of peace and prospering for all.

That these are The Beginning Times.

Among those prophesies is the Mayan calendar, whose 5,000-year Long Count of 13 baktuns comes to an end on the Winter Solstice of 2012.  Because the Mesoamerican calendar itself was not in use 5,000 years ago (it is perhaps 3,000 years old, imaginably 4,000 years old), it means that the Maya chose a symbolic starting date for their calendar that would end on a specific date.

A specific symbolic date. 

A date that would get our attention.

This accomplishment of the ancients, to accurately set their calendar to end on the Winter Solstice several thousand years in the future, is a testament to their care and concern for the future.  It is like a message in a bottle washing up on the shore of our island of the present, reminding us of the dreams that our common ancestors carried in their hearts for the coming generations.

It is a symbolic date, not one to be taken literally.  As the old saying goes, Don’t look at the finger pointing at the moon—look at the moon.  It is meant to get our attention, not to become the object of our attention.  As I have noted previously, the actual turning point began to first show itself in 1998.  The reversal of direction that the Mayan calendar points to is this space of time, wherein the old regime of conflict and competition withers and falls, collapsing under its own weight, no longer supported by the beliefs or actions of those it subjugates.  This reversal of direction is predictable because the seasons of human nature are knowable—it is not the direction of outer conditions that the 2012 date points to but, rather, the reversal of beliefs and values within human nature.  When the collective conscience of humanity can no longer be cowed into accepting the desecration of its own nature, then what emerges from the ashes of its old beliefs and values is a united humanity bent on no longer desecrating its relationship with nature and spirit.

Those who cannot believe that sudden and rapid change can, nearly overnight, reverse the course of whole nations simply do not understand the unconscious longings of the human heart.  The longer that people’s true desires are repressed by force and intimidation, the more sudden and more profound the reversal of beliefs and actions.  The dying giant is split and cracking—but what we need to focus on is finding the common ground within which to plant and nurture civilization’s new beginning.

2012 Metamorphosis

As I write here on my little hilltop in Southern Oregon, the Winter Solstice of 2010 has arrived.  It is an auspicious event because it is the first Winter Solstice in centuries to coincide with a lunar eclipse.  For those who have been trained to sense the Qi of the world, the extreme of yin is sinking to its utmost depths, just on the cusp of the turning point back toward yang.  At the apogee of the eclipse, the earth’s shadow moves on and the full moon’s light begins to wax again.  At the height of Winter’s cold and dark, Spring’s warmth and light is born.

A full season ago, on the Autumnal Equinox, I consulted the Oracle, asking this question:  What can humanity expect with the approach of 2012? In the Oracle’s answer, the events around the 2012 turning point predict a time of growing authoritarianism that, once transcended, will usher in a prolonged period of global reconciliation.

More specifically, it points to a crisis that we, as humanity, have confronted before and failed to resolve in a beneficial way for all.  With the approach of 2012, we have the opportunity to face that collective dilemma again.  Although the official reaction will reflexively try to repeat the same mistake as before, a groundswell of enlightened goodwill that transcends borders will unite people everywhere in a positive and constructive response—one that overrides the authoritarianism of religions and governments and sets in motion those metamorphic forces of nonviolence and noninterference that give rise to the harmonious and creative civilization our collective ancestors dreamed for us.

In my ongoing effort to expand on this message and present its ramifications as transparently as possible, I have executed the classic transformation of the reading’s hexagrams into their nuclear hexagrams.  This transformation produces a new pair of hexagrams that represent the underlying forces at work beneath the surface of events.  The hidden motivations, the unconscious currents, the dreams demanding expression.

The primary hexagram of the 2012 reading is #54 Repeating Test.  Its nuclear hexagram is #63 Awakening Self-Sufficiency.

This is interesting because this same hexagram appeared as the future outcome in my June 2009 reading as the answer to my question, At what crossroads does our global civilization stand now—and in what direction does good fortune lie?

For those not yet familiar with the Toltec spirit warrior, it is defined as a woman or man who trains to defeat their own enemy-within (which is in turn defined as their self-defeating habits of thought, emotion and memory).  We can see that there is a growing movement of individuals worldwide who have taken up such training—which appears under different names—in order to restore humaneness to our collective life.  It is this metamorphosis of individuals that is striking the spark to the kindling-nest so that the phoenix might arise more glorious from its ashes.

As a nuclear hexagram, #63 speaks to the unconscious desire to free ourselves from those baser instincts that divide us as a people from ourselves, nature and the sacred.  As its text illustrates, this hexagram seeks autonomy from that which trivializes human nature by seeking to restore its full creative power.  It is a nuclear hexagram that overcomes outer conflict by understanding that the instincts dividing us are universal to all people and, so, constitute the very source of our inevitable unity.

Image:  A great feathered serpent hatches out of the earth as if from an egg.  Its feathers are adorned with conch shells and it senses its surroundings with its bifurcated tongue.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the great forces released by the accumulated efforts of spirit warriors over the ages.  The feathered serpent symbolizes the collective intent and vision shared by spirit warriors in every time and every place.  That it hatches from the earth as if from an egg means that the community of spirit incubating within the material world emerges as a living, dynamic force of creation.  The conches adorning its feathers symbolize the call for all to join the community of spirit.  Its bifurcated tongue symbolizes the duality that is one.  That it uses its bifurcated tongue to sense its surroundings means that you are attuned to the universal presence of the masculine and feminine creative forces.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you align yourself with those whose only need is to bring benefit to their surroundings.

Action:  The spirit warrior reverses the flow of power, channeling it inside instead of outside:  by storing up power internally rather than expending it externally, we are able to both free ourselves of habits and gain control over our actions.  This inner autonomy also extricates us from social influences that strive to mold us into obedient marionettes even as it allows us to be more tolerant of the deeper motives of those social influences.  From the spirit warrior’s perspective, the original intent of religion is to awaken the higher soul to its potential freedom while purifying the lower soul of fear, greed, envy, and hate—just as the original intent of government is to awaken the higher soul to its responsibility to others while instilling in the lower soul the capacity for self-control.  From this perspective, the fact that religion and government acquire ulterior motives over time and begin to act in their own self-interest merely demonstrates that they are managed by human beings and must be viewed accordingly.  Similarly, the fact that all religions and governments strive to awaken the higher soul and purify the lower soul—even when they have forgotten how and why—simply demonstrates that the quest for metamorphosis is a universal and irresistible force.  Just as our inner autonomy releases us from the trap of depending on social influences for our sense of self, in other words, it also releases us from the trap of not seeing how those social influences contribute, however unintentionally, to the gradual unification of humanity.  Reversing the flow of power, we gain inner autonomy and, paradoxically, become one with the universal civilizing force.

Intent:  The wise become independent even from what they revere.  Like children who are grown up and independent of the parents they love and admire, spirit warriors take their place among the community of spiritual equals.  Because you use this lifetime to bring the most benefit to others, you incubate the higher soul that is preparing to hatch from the lower soul:  joining in the collective labor shared by spirit warriors in every time and every place, you contribute directly to both the fulfillment of humanity’s destiny and the creator’s vision.  Becoming part of the universal civilizing spirit, you contribute directly to the founding of a free and harmonious world of equals right here within this world.

Summary:  Only the body marks the passage of time—for the soul, there is only this everlasting moment of growing.  Let five rivers of energy come in through the senses, let them run together into a sea of growing power.  Do not expend it on petty thoughts, moods, or goals.  Send forth your rain clouds only to water the valuable.  Condense intent into actions that foster peace and prosperity for all.  Your success is inevitable.

The derived hexagram that appears in the 2012 reading is #2 Sensing Creation.  Its nuclear hexagram is #39 Reviving Tradition.  As the future outcome, #2 Sensing Creation is profoundly inspirational.  It presages a time of worldwide reconciliation and heartfelt collaboration towards an emerging vision of what civilization might become.

As its nuclear hexagram, #39 Reviving Tradition reminds us that our common ancestors lived closer to the time of creation than we do.  It shows that the underlying forces of #2 Sensing Creation are part of the emerging reversion to values and beliefs grounded in a more traditional—and meaningful—lifeway.  This could have evolved into a time in which the reversion to traditional values and beliefs led to greater conflict and confrontation, but the movement into #2 assures us that the mistakes we have made in the past will no longer be repeated.  This is because the general amnesty and forgiveness of past wrongs is based not upon the surface differences between traditions but, rather, upon their shared foundation in the sacredness of everything.

Image:  The ancient spirit of fire takes the form of a male warrior, who is made part of the land by the roots growing like veins through his body and the earth.  His arm is raised, greeting the long line of people in shadow that approach him.  Another line of people, their torches rekindled, depart in light.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts the ancestors’ inheritance passing from individual to individual and from generation to generation.  The ancient spirit of fire symbolizes the universal tradition of fire-making, whose timeless ritual unites all people in a common heritage.  The male warrior symbolizes the self-discipline and training needed to stand against greed, ambition, and materialism.  That he is made part of the land means that you find your spiritual home in the site of your own lifetime.  The long line of people in shadow is a symbol of those seeking to find their way back to a balanced and harmonious way of life.  The line of people departing with torches rekindled is a symbol of those who find the light of the ancestors inside their own hearts and carry it through the darkness of their own time.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you resist spiritual erosion the way a mountain of righteousness stands against the wind of corruption and the rain of meaninglessness.

Action:  The masculine half of the spirit warrior views everything as a buried treasure left behind by the spiritual ancestors for their descendants.  It is a time for holding fast to what lasts rather than getting distracted by the novel or overwhelmed by the fleeting.  Avoid participating in the fads and fashions of the day, seeking instead to uphold the values and world view of a more spiritual time.  This means, first and foremost, respecting and honoring all that is not human:  when matter is seen as devoid of spirit, then nature can be desecrated without a second thought; when one form of nature is seen as devoid of spirit, then all forms of life can be desecrated without a second thought; when one form of life is seen as devoid of spirit, then human beings can desecrate one another without a second thought.  For this reason, the spirit warrior sees the world as the divine homeland shared by the living and the dead and those not yet born.  Recognizing that meaningfulness is hidden from those who attack it, you look into the secret heart of things and see the One Spirit of creation everywhere you look.  Recognizing that meaningfulness is an open secret to all but the greedy, ambitious, and materialistic, you bury the treasure again in your own turn so that your descendants will find their secret heart.

Intent:  Even though you feel out of step with the wounded spirit of the time, you are actively involved in healing it:  recognizing that its illness is meaninglessness, you feed it the medicine of meaningfulness day and night throughout your life.  Just as the fire of light and warmth must be fed wood and air to continue burning, the spirit of the time must be fed the joy and insights born of meaningfulness if it is to continue living:  without the tradition of meaningful consecration to feed it, the spirit of the time will eventually die and be replaced by that of meaningless desecration.  For this reason, the spirit warrior keeps alive the ancient tradition of training every thought and feeling to reflect the hidden sacredness of every moment.

Summary:  The more you put the world view of the ancients into practice, the more you have to offer others.  Be generous with what you have learned but do not stop learning:  just as people depend on a well for their water, the well depends on the invisible river below ground for its water.  Assume that you will understand matters better in the future and act with a corresponding degree of humility.

The 2012 reading, with all its associated meanings, reminds us to reject utterly the paranoiac heart-mind of this wounded age that would have us dwell in the irrational belief that unseen forces are conspiring to do us ill.  Rather, it reminds us to keep in mind the definition of the word Pronoia:  the irrational belief that unseen forces are conspiring to do us good.  It is irrational only in the sense that spirit warriors do not confine their efforts to the rational world.

It is two years exactly now until the Winter Solstice of 2012 arrives.  Priest-diviners everywhere are focusing the generative energy of their intent on plowing the field of the World Soul to receive the rain of spirit seeds already falling and taking root in the open heart of human nature.

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Across the imaginary distance of culture and borders, I honor your contribution to the Beginning Times.

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The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams.  Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

Click here to go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications for ordering the book.

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The cycle of change carries matter, energy, and spirit along its course of natural unfolding.  Time is spatial:  autumn follows summer just as a time of consolidation follows a time of expansion.  The Current, the Way, the Tao, is organic in the way it develops, moving the individual and civilization both according to the seasons of generative energy.

The Seasons of Generative Energy

The Oracle can speak to the way present trends are developing into future situations because it gives voice to the principles underlying all change.  The seeds of winter are sown at the Summer Solstice, just as the seeds of summer are planted at the Winter solstice.  Because they are seeds of generative energy, however, and not phenomena directly perceptible to our senses, their sowing and fruition generally occur long before—or sometimes after—we imagine.

The structure of the hexagram’s six lines is traditionally divided into three levels, of old called, Heaven, Man, and Earth.

Three Dimensions of the Hexagram

The top two lines represent heaven, or spirit.  The lower two lines represent earth, or matter.  The middle two lines represent mankind, or human awareness.  Humankind, embodying so perfectly the conjunction of spirit and matter, is thought of as the bridge connecting the sacred and the mundane, the invisible and the visible, the formless and form.

The Oracle is able to communicate with us because we bring human awareness into the divinatory moment, bridging the physical mechanism of divination (such as coins, yarrow stalks, cards, dice, random number generator) and the oracular awareness permeating time and space.  The Oracle gives voice to the One based on the relationship it has sustained with human beings for many thousands of years now.  The divinatory moment, then, is the very embodiment of the ancient saying:  Just as there is only One Mind, so is there only One Body.

Three Dimensions of the Divinatory Moment

Is this not the same Oracle that takes different forms in ancient cultures throughout the world?  Will we continue to hold ourselves apart from nature and spirit by relying on a crippling kind of reason that does not recognize its own limitations, even as the Great Mystery stares it in the face every moment?  Will we continue to believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that materialistic reason and religious zealotry are the only two poles of human participation in the world?  Will we dare to return to the ancients’ worldview of everyday unity with the Living Whole?  Can we abandon our histories of wrongs and establish a time of amnesty in which we might address our common problems?  Will we find our way back to a lifeway of nature mysticism that bequeaths to our descendants a civilization in harmony with itself and nature and the sacred?

With the above in mind, I take up the coins this morning of the seasons’ pivot and throw my question into the Beyond—

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What Can Humanity Expect with the Approach of 2012?

The divinations I have cast on the subject of 2012 have been unanimously positive in the long run but have hinted at obstacles to be overcome in the short run.  The Oracle I received on the Autumnal Equinox 2010, regarding the events swirling around the turning point of the Winter Solstice of 2012, is the most detailed yet about the storm we will have to pass through before we achieve the calm of the New Dynasty of peace and prospering for all.

The first hexagram, representing the near-term events, is called Repeating Test.  Following is its illustration and interpretation—

Image:  A male warrior wearing the emblem of the smoking mirror pauses in his tracks.  The true road runs straight ahead but the warrior’s footprints show that he has doubled back on himself, circling around a pool of water.  The day sky overhead is filled with sunlight but the pool reflects the full moon in the night sky, indicating that the warrior made that past part of his journey in the dark of night.  As he prepares to undertake this leg of his journey for the second time, the warrior must face the additional danger of a jaguar who now crouches beside the pool.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts someone facing a dilemma for the second time.  The male warrior symbolizes the challenges and self-discipline that make us stronger and more adaptable than we imagined.  The smoking mirror symbolizes the penetrating insight, introspection, and self-knowledge required if we are to achieve a vision of the true self.  That he pauses in his tracks means that you take the opportunity to slow down your decisions in order to consider your circumstances carefully and discern how they resemble a past experience you have long wished to rectify.  That he has stepped off the true road to circle around the pool means that your true destiny must wait while you return to a previous stage in order to complete its task.  That it is light now but the pool reflects the night sky means that you are more aware and capable now than you were when you first encountered this test.  That this part of the journey is complicated by the additional danger of a jaguar lying in wait means that you clearly perceive this to be a new situation even as you use it to change your spiritual history.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you heal wounds left from a past stage of development.

Action:  The masculine half of the spirit warrior gazes into the smoking mirror of the true self without blinking.  It is a time for exhibiting the character traits you believe you should have exhibited when facing a similar dilemma in the past:  because you take advantage of this second chance to prove yourself to yourself, you erase past regrets and reveal your true self to the unseen forces.  By turning our perception upon ourselves, we are able to sense the lessons we have learned from past mistakes.  Until we have had the opportunity to act on those lessons and put them into effect, however, part of us remains frozen at that stage of our development.  For that reason, there are few more fortuitous times than those in which we can prove we are stronger and wiser than in the past:  by discerning our own patterns of behavior that run consistently beneath the surface of appearances, we are able to stop repeating past mistakes and emerge victorious over our own self-defeating attitudes and behaviors.  Because you intuitively know that turning points periodically return until they are finally resolved, you are fully prepared to act when the time comes:  because you wait vigilantly for the opportunity to revisit a period of darkness, you do not fail to use the present turning point to extend the continuity of your light further back into the past.

Intent:  Now is the time to strengthen the ladder of your evolution by descending it in order to repair a lower rung.  Actions and decisions that have haunted us must be laid to rest if we are to advance further toward our rightful destiny.  Within the inner landscape of our soul there are hurdles we failed to clear, pitfalls we failed to avoid, on our first encounter—where we first reacted with weakness we can now react with strength, where we first acted naively we can now act wisely, where we first reacted with fear we can now react with confidence, where we first acted selfishly we can now act lovingly.  Because you do not allow this opportunity to correct the past to slip through your hands, you break the chains holding you and your allies back from ascending to the next rung of success.

Summary:  Don’t make the same mistake again.  Some fears are false fears, some hopes are false hopes:  stop and consider how you are reverting to a way of thinking, feeling, and acting that did not work before.  You are stronger and wiser now—act as you wish you had acted the first time.  Seize this opportunity to heal the past and you will create the future you long for.

The Oracle appears to be saying that we—humanity—are going to have to pass through a crisis with all the dynamics of one we mismanaged the first time.  The exact nature of this crisis remains veiled by time, of course, but the transformation of our collective response is mapped out in the lines of change.

In other words, the specific transition points between the short-term and long-term are marked out by the line changes that produce a second hexagram out of the first.  In the present case, it is the first, second, and sixth lines that change.

Line Changes—

1st:  Many are in denial of the growing trend toward oppression—all you can do is join with those of like mind and prepare for what lies ahead.  Avoid controversial positions and don’t call attention to your efforts.  Make yourselves useful but anonymous.

2nd:  Many cannot get past the first hurdle—all you can do is appreciate the cunning of those above and go along with it for now.  There will be time to fight for principles later but the priority now must be just surviving this time.  Do not provoke envy or resentment by flaunting your little success.

6th:  The dam breaks—the last vestiges of oppression dissolve, the will of its leadership broken, and the waters of free-thinking and creativity rush forward again.  Celebrate with those around you.  Spend your time training the next generation, for without continuity of principles it will all happen again.

From the above we can surmise that our collective response to the first crisis was a knee-jerk reaction toward the use of force and intimidation—and that our first tendency in the second crisis is to revert to our previous response.

The first line change points out the insidious nature of fear that is generated by shock:  it is easy to convince people that the worst has only begun and that they must protect themselves by taking up a defensive posture that makes life more miserable everywhere.  This kind of lashing out against enemies real and imagined, internal and external, can be masked as necessary for only so long—eventually, there is a growing recognition that no amount of rationalization or justification changes the fact that irrational oppression is irrational oppression.

The second line change points out that there are many who remain fixed in a fear and aggression specifically propagated by those in power.  This is the most difficult time, when the fever is at it pitch.  It can be a dangerous time for those who dissent, one in which it is necessary to avoid attracting the attention of those with the power to crush dissent in the name of the greater good.  At the same time, this line change reminds those who manage to thrive during this time not to distance themselves from those less fortunate.

And finally, in the sixth line change, we see that the fever has broken.  The mass delusion passes like a nightmare evaporating with the dawn.  Even those perpetuating the self-destruction lose the will to go on.  People of good will and innovative solutions to the crisis come to the fore.  It is a time of widespread celebration and an overwhelming sense of relief.  Most of all, however, it is a time of establishing the new worldview for the next generations, because the forces of self-destruction are forever like a seed ready to sprout even in the loveliest garden.

~

The second hexagram, which grows out of the first by virtue of these three line changes, represents the long-term repercussions of the events associated with 2012.  Titled Sensing Creation, its image and interpretation follows—

Image:  A female warrior is naked, immersed in water and surrounded by flowers.  A wellspring of water rises from between her hands.  The water drops are drawn as beads of jade in order to portray the precious nature of that which sustains life.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the great courage essential to creating a meaningful life.  The female warrior symbolizes the way of nurturing and encouraging human nature that increases its sensitivity and loving-kindness.  Being naked means that nothing stands between you and the world.  Being immersed in water means that you plunge whole-heartedly into the spirit of that which nurtures all.  Being surrounded by flowers means that you perceive the perfection of the world as it truly is:  each moment blossoms perfect and whole, then passes like a fading flower—each perfection born into the world must die.  The wellspring of water symbolizes the inexhaustible source of courage that allows you to use your awareness of mortality to more profoundly experience the joy and sorrow inherent within every encounter.  In this sense, the flowers and the water signify not only the wisdom attained through experience, but the aesthetic sensibilities to be moved by a beauty and truth not always apparent to others.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you open your spirit to the overwhelming perfection of the world and share your vision with all you touch.

Action:  The feminine half of the spirit warrior collects the movement and energy of the unseen forces, calming them and bringing them together in harmony, making a place for them to gather strength and then making that source of benefit open and available to all.  Where past injustices and resentments survive to poison the well of benefit, true need goes unmet and people suffer unnecessarily:  the spirit warrior fosters a climate of forgiveness and reconciliation, reuniting those whose hearts have become estranged and dissolving the tensions and insecurities that have prevented people from coexisting in harmony and mutual understanding.  Before action, the passions breeding distrust and discord appear too strong and too deeply entrenched to be overcome.  After action, the benefit you help cultivate results in a greater union of good will, hope, and creativity.  You succeed where others fail because you rely on the warrior’s refined sensibilities to guide you rather than past experiences.  You succeed where others fail because you reflect generosity in every thought, word, and deed rather than demanding that others first prove their worth.  You succeed where others fail because you cleanse yourself of all ill will rather than harboring any spiritual intent that might poison the well of benefit that you are become.

Intent:  Whether the struggle is internal or external, work to increase your sensitivity to the realms of nature, human nature, and spirit.  Because people differ only in the degree of their sensitivity to the One Spirit, continue to open your perceptions to more and more sublime thoughts, feelings, memories, and sensations.  By recognizing that you are filled with the source of nurturance, you can calmly let all your adaptations arise from it.  By giving form to the source of nurturance, you can respond to things with dignity, patience, joy, and appreciation.  Because your sensitivity to the world is your strength, you can find the way to restore harmony and progress where others find only opposition and antagonism.  Make the well-being of others your goal right now and you can build a coalition of allies to undertake even greater endeavors in the future.  Avoid taking sides, work to bring them together.  Cultivate trust in the early stages of discord, rely on your lack of self-interest in its later stages.  You succeed because you bring future benefit to those separated by the past.

Summary:  The beauty and loving-kindness you seek are within your reach.  Let go of obsolete opinions and dogma handed down to you from others.  Find that which allows you to share happiness with others and you will achieve greater freedom and creativity.  Focus on the healing of old wounds, promote the forgiving of old wrongs.  Set aside personal ambition, act for the common good.

Surely one of the most beautiful and promising of times, Sensing Creation is the opening up of forgiveness and reconciliation.  It is a time of universal trust and mutual goodwill.  Past differences dissolve in an atmosphere of shared hope and a collective vision of a greater future for all.

With this, the Oracle appears to reiterate its prognosis for the era beginning with the changes surrounding the 2012 landmark:  following a period in which the self-destructive forces in humanity start to reassert their authority, a new wave of humaneness emerges to guide us into the Golden Age of Humanity.

The Oracle sees, in sum, a tempestuous storm before the long calm.

What shall we build together?

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams.  Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

Click here to go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications for ordering the book.

~

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As Chuang Tzu points out, perhaps we ought to simply seek out its shade and be grateful for a place to rest or even admire the uniqueness of its form and beauty—perhaps we ought, in other words, to seek its true usefulness instead of pressing our own wants on it.

He goes further, however, to point out that the tree is ancient—and indeed, will continue to go on as it is—precisely because it cannot be exploited.  It remains true to its nature, so its life is not cut short by the whims of others.  Because it cannot be exploited, it lives on to fulfill its destiny of inspiring all who value the sublimely useless.

Objects of inspiration capture our attention because they defy our attempts to categorize them or domesticate them or explain them away.  They are troublesome in the sense that they speak to an older part of us, one that longs for symbolic communication, authenticating our own symbolic self.  And they can be particularly troublesome when their symbolic utterances precede actual events, as if there exists an underlying order to the world that synchronizes its happenings in a way that is completely invisible to our human senses.

Like the Useless Tree, they root alongside the road, offering us a place to rest and seek inspiration but oblivious to all who pass oblivious to their antiquity.  Such objects of inspiration are sublimely useless, beyond the exploitation of our own wants, precisely because they themselves are inspired.  Emerging out of the mists of prehistory, like great pyramids suddenly revealed by evaporating fog, they speak the language of our common ancestors.  They speak the language of our common soul.

The I Ching of ancient China is one such monument.  The Mayan Calendar of ancient Mesoamerica is another.  Both are divinatory systems that have survived now for more than three thousand years.  Both will still be standing, offering respite and inspiration, three thousand years from now.  They will outlive us as they have outlived all those other generations.

Troublesome indeed.  They beg so many questions.  Like the great pyramids, we wonder at how they were built in the first place, who conceived of their form and symmetry, what was the original source of their own inspiration.  But unlike pyramids that are built stone-by-stone, the I Ching had to emerge full-blown as a flower blooming overnight—what mind grasped the whole of its system all at once?  And unlike pyramids that are built stone-by-stone, the Sacred Calendar had to emerge full-blown as a flower blooming overnight—what mind grasped the whole of its system all at once?  Troublesome indeed.

Particularly now.  Because it is now that the Mayan Calendar completes its 5,128-year cycle.

On December 21st, 2012, the Winter Solstice, the Long Count of the ancient Mayans will arrive at the last day of its journey through the 13 Baktuns that comprise the Grand Cycle of 1,872,000 days.  Yes, that is correct:  the Mayan Calendar, originating among some of the world’s greatest astronomers and mathematicians of antiquity, comes to an end after nearly two million days, precisely on the Winter Solstice of 2012.

Troublesome indeed.  What are we to make of this strange coincidence?  Certainly it has now become a cultural meme of the first magnitude, propagated by an apocalyptic movie, dozens of knowledgeable books, and thousands of concerned websites.  The noise, for those tuning into the conversation, is an escalating crescendo of mixed messages and contradictory predictions.

What are we to make of this strange coincidence?  Here we are, alive at the time that the Mayan Calendar completes its Grand Cycle.  The stirring of voices around us grows louder with warnings, alarm, and scientific debunkings.  The media has jumped into the fray with both feet now and its ratings-driven programming requires as sensational an approach as possible.

I have written elsewhere in these blog postings about the actual mechanics and meanings of the Sacred Calendar, as well as the tendencies of groups to move unconsciously as a herd, so I am not going to cover that ground again here.  At the suggestion of Paul Cash of Larson Publications, I have consulted the Oracle of The Toltec I Ching regarding the meaning of this strange coincidence and what changes this 2012 cultural meme augurs.

With all this in mind, I cast the Oracle on November 14, 2009, and received an answer of Hexagram #5, Restoring Wholeness.  The result contained no line changes, indicating a relatively lengthy period—at least two years long—of similar change.  In other words, there may be fluctuations in the degree of change but not in kind.  The clearest way to think of this is that each Hexagram represents a season:  although every day in summer may bring some changes, they are within the context of summer and do not partake of the spirit of another season until that one passes.  We are entering the situation of Restoring Wholeness and there are no prevailing trends within in it signaling a move into another situation any time in the near future.

The term Restoring Wholeness, of course, indicates first and foremost that the situation we are coming out of is one of division, conflict, and alienation—a not-too-far-off description of the past few years of our collective, even global, experience.  Since the 2012 cultural meme has expanded beyond any borders in particular and is considered significant in nearly every country in the world, the present reading should address the global human situation as well as possible.

Image:  An old woman heals a young male warrior, who wears an arrowhead necklace.  While she chants an ancient curing song, she places a lizard on his shoulder and administers purifying herbs and water.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts great benefit fulfilling great need.  The old woman personifies the great-great-great-grandmother, the feminine force of profound wisdom and nurturing, the inner healing force within all, the aged and loving medicine woman.  The male warrior personifies the strength and vitality of youth, the great potential of the young, the idealism and insensitivity of the inexperienced, the impatient and reactive nature of the untrained passions.  Taken together, they symbolize the exchange of forces needed to heal old wounds and enable you to bring benefit to all around you.  The herbs symbolize the feminine medicines of compassion and the understanding of relationships.  The arrowhead represents the masculine medicines of single-mindedness and the pursuit of new experiences.  Taken together, they depict the exchange of energies whereby the new must be refined by the old and the old must periodically be revitalized by the new.  For this reason, the hexagram shows that the young warrior is both a patient and an apprentice of the medicine woman, learning firsthand the ways of restoring natural and original wholeness and, thereby, bringing much needed energy to the feminine half that has been giving to others for so long.  The lizard, the one who grows back its tail, represents the spiritual medicine of regeneration whereby the original state of wholeness is restored.  The medicinal herbs and water together represent the purifying and cleansing away of the useless, the wasteful, and that which only confuses and drags down the original energy of body, mind, and spirit.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you reclaim your spiritual birthright of indivisible wholeness.

The most obvious aspects of this hexagram are the discrepancies between the healer and the warrior.  She is aged, wise and benevolent.  He is young, inexperienced and independent.  She is the ancient healer, whose vitality is no longer that of the young.  He is the youthful warrior, whose vitality is not yet that of the aged.  In terms of the global rift whose wholeness requires restoration, she symbolizes the older naturalistic worldview of heart-based spirituality, while he symbolizes the newer technological worldview of head-based scientific materialism.  She is the nature mystic, attuned to and immersed in the sacredness of everything.  He is the manipulator of nature, the controller bending dead matter and insentient life to his will.

Interpreting the Oracle’s answer in terms of these two worldviews is dictated by the context of the question, which seeks to uncover the meaning behind the confluence of the ending of the Mayan Calendar and the way the modern mind is reacting to it.

These worldviews are no longer confined to ethnic cultures or geographical regions, of course.  Now entire sub-cultures of people living in the technological culture, for example, have abandoned the worldview of matter as dead and insentient, taking up a lifeway of revering the sacred in every form.  This movement back towards the animistic—or what is often thought of as the shamanistic—worldview can be seen as the vanguard of the coming widespread restoration of humanity’s ruptured wholeness.  It is not necessary to recapitulate all the elements of that rupture.  Everyone in the world knows that things cannot continue in this way. We have entered the time of Restoring Wholeness.

This Hexagram says that nature and people will no longer be treated as disposable resources.  Heartless greed and cold intellectualism will no longer make policy for the whole of nature and humanity.  The head is a good adviser but a heartless tyrant when allowed to rule.  The newer worldview of technological hubris will voluntarily step out of the leadership position and take up a power-sharing stance with the older worldview of openhearted reverence for all of nature and humanity.  The head is gradually realizing it is part of this relationship between spirit and matter.

Knowledge is not wisdom.  Knowing how to wreak havoc is not the same as having the wisdom not to do so.  Knowing how to harm ourselves is not the same as having the wisdom not to do so.  The young warrior in this hexagram knows how to produce vast technological changes but not how to reverse their unintended consequences.  The old healer in this hexagram knows how to avoid creating unintended consequences by sustaining a more simplified, if less materially extravagant, lifeway.

The warrior’s arrowhead symbolizes the directness of his approach to matters.  The drawback to this strategy is that different circumstances require different approaches—the approach cannot always be direct and purposeful action.  Such a one-sided focus on doing creates tremendous stress on the body.  Those brought up in a worldview of doing are constantly frustrated by the fact that they cannot act yet, or that they missed the opportunity to act, or that increasing competition among other actors conflicts with their own actions.  Those brought up learning how to change things do not learn how to accept things that do not need changing.  This fundamental level of chronic stress upsets the body’s natural response to life, causing poor sleep, an impaired immune system, a heightened sense of alarm, anxiety, and impaired judgment.  Impaired judgment—not the best resource for people bent on doing at every turn.

Awareness is.  Will does.

The healer’s medicine, the power to restore wholeness, is based on the ability to be with things.  This is not nearly as nebulous as it sounds to the modern mind, which generally translates being with things as not doing anything.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Or closer.

Being with things means being a part of things, feeling ourselves a part of things, sensing the world around us—indeed, the entire universe—as the larger body of which we are an integral part.  So not doing anything does not describe the active process of psychologically merging with the one body of creation.  It requires dropping away boundaries of the self-other duality and feeling ourselves fully immersed in the Whole, just as each of our cells is fully immersed in our bodies and each fish is part of the sea.   On the other hand, not doing anything does precisely describe the ancient worldview, since it is the world itself that is doing and any active striving on our part to exert our own will on things inevitably results in unintended consequences. The ability to move along with the flow of change, making sure that all people and animals and plants are living in peace and shared prospering, is an ancient art and one built on the wisdom of sustaining a lifeway that is in harmony and balance with the entire world.  Of what good is progress, in other words, if it leaves the majority of people in the world behind and drives other species into extinction and sows the seeds of our own destruction in the environment?

Wisdom is.  Knowledge does.

By answering with this hexagram, the Oracle is saying to us all, the solution is not coming from outside you:  you must commit to an extended period of healing this immature warrior mentality—only then will you have the sense of belonging together that you need to move forward as an entire world.

Action:  The masculine and feminine halves of the spirit warrior replenish one another.  It is a time for seeking new experiences that will broaden your vistas and deepen your joy of life.  Your innate wisdom and compassion do not have their source in thought but, rather, in life—they are not replenished by good intentions but, rather, by meaningful experiences.  In order for a well to bring benefit to others, it must tap into the unseen river of benefit flowing beneath the surface of the world of the senses.  Take no comfort in your accomplishments or knowledge now.  Instead, look to your need and pursue new interests that hold the possibility of discovering more meaningful joy in this lifetime. Because you make yourself whole again, you succeed in bringing benefit to others likewise seeking to restore their own wholeness.

Restoring wholeness with the world is an essential step.  But real wisdom knows when to open the heart to compassion and forgiveness.  Old enemies will find the profoundest source of relief and joy as they put away arms and forget old wrongs.  Difficult as it is to imagine before it has happened, this will feel like the most natural and foreordained of events once it has occurred.  The worldview of the nature mystic fosters not just mutual respect among all but reverence, love and adoration.  Life cannot hate life.  Life cannot hold one life more sacred than another.  The change that is coming is one of universal reverence—we will be One again once we hold the sacredness of all things in our hearts, we will be Whole again once we feel nothing but benevolence and good will toward all.  The lost art of regeneration is a soul art:  it is the forgotten practice of dissolving guilt, anger, hatred, revenge, and hostility with the open heart of joyous gratitude.  It is the lost soul art of dropping every expectation that joy is going to come from outside and setting forth to spend every moment producing joy regardless of circumstances.

Intent:  When people’s reactions are out of proportion to events, it is a clear signal that an old wound has not fully healed and is being reactivated by present circumstances.  Such reactions barely disguise the fact that something in the present is provoking an individual or group to relive the emotions of an old injury.  But disguise it they do, for the impact of many injuries is either long-forgotten or unrecognized.  Whether you find this imbalance in yourself or others, the nurturing-medicine of the wise feminine force must be augmented by the directing-medicine of the single-minded masculine force:  while it is essential that the wounded warrior be healed through reassurance and loving-kindness, it is just as necessary that the wounded warrior take up the discipline of recognizing that the new is not the old.  At the first sign of distress, the wounded warrior must immediately name the present and not allow the past wound to be re-opened.  Using the beneficial masculine force in this way allows you to keep the past from infecting the present.

The Oracle closes with these final words regarding the intent we need to carry forth with us into the coming time of Restoring Wholeness.  The day-to-day practice involves constantly reminding ourselves that this is not the past.  We must all be willing to start over, recognizing that there is more than enough blame to go around on all sides and that the old worldview of forever keeping old animosities alive by constantly recounting the wrongs of history needs to be replaced with a worldview of universal amnesty and goodwill.  The past is dead, long live the present.

Everyone in the world knows that things cannot go on like this any longer.

The Oracle says everyone in the world is on the verge of acquiring the wisdom to act on that knowledge.

The Golden Age of Humanity is within our grasp if we will but dare reach out our hand.

.

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just been released by Larson Publications.  It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams.  Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

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Cyclical in the sense that history is divided into a series of Ages (sometimes called Suns), each of which led to a better, more humane, world.

Spiritually potent in the sense that the creative forces governing certain time periods (sometimes called gods in Western thinking) have sacrificed and invested themselves in the creation and sustaining of the world.

We moderns tend to view time as linear, forgetting that, as one Taoist sage put it, Everything we know about spirit we learn by analogy from nature.  The seasons of the year correspond to the times of day, both of which correlate to the four directions of the compass in what has been termed the Spatializaton Of Time—

The Map of Inner Change

By analogy, we know that Spring symbolizes the sowing of seeds, that Summer symbolizes the cultivation and care of what we are growing, that Autumn symbolizes the gathering in and harvesting of our efforts, that Winter symbolizes the resting and saving up of energy for the next creative effort.  This is the cyclical aspect of time:  starting something new, nurturing and developing it, sharing the benefit with others, and consolidating resources for the next endeavor.

But the spiritually potent aspect.  That is something else.  It requires that we sensitize ourselves to the Livingness of Space.  It means leaving behind the view of matter as dead and directly experiencing stone and tree and animal and weather and the sun and stars as Alive and Aware, with no less a spiritual half of their body than ours possesses.  It means standing in Spring and feeling the mood and intention of the creative force governing that season.  It requires, in a word, returning to the world view of indigenous people everywhere who hold every thing in creation as sacred persons, each with a lifetime and heart-mind of its own.  It is only our lack of sensitivity to the mood and intention of the creative forces invested in, and emanating out of, each thing that keeps us bound up in isolation and alienation from the loving embrace of Spirit-Nature.

It will seem strange to some to think of a stone as a sacred person.  But then again, have they ever thought of themselves as a sacred person?  They may know that indigenous people ask the plant for permission to take its leaves or ask the stone for permission to carve it but do they understand that the plant or stone are being treated as a sacred person?  One thing we can see as utter fact is the equality with which the universe treats all things:  the eagle may take the hare, but it dies touching the high-voltage wires around its nest, dooming the rabbits offspring as well as its own.  Any hierarchy we imagine to exist is leveled by death and accident.  The electrons making up my body come from stone and tree and sun and stars and, when this body disintegrates, its electrons will fly off into billions of directions to help constitute other persons, many of whom will not be human beings.  The webwork of subatomic particles forming the space-time continuum has no “holes”.  It is simply one unbroken interwoven Livingness of Space.

Every practical person in the world knows that things cannot go on like they have been any longer.  Only blindfolded ideologues and self-serving demagogues continue to push civilization closer and closer to self-destruction.  The rest of us know—or are rapidly coming to recognize—that we cannot simply go on propagating the same old dead worldview that allows the most brutish among us to continue desecrating Nature and Humanity.

The ancient Mayans and their counterparts throughout ancient Mesoamerica—as well as other indigenous peoples around the world, such as the visionaries who constructed the ancient Chinese oracle, the I Ching—were well aware of the patterns of human behavior, both individual and collective.  Intrinsic to such worldviews is the concept of a universal duality that makes up the universal unity of the world.  While this has many cosmological significances in term of the creation and sustaining of the world, it plays itself out in the patterning of human perception and behavior through the rule of action and backlash.

The future, in other words, becomes predictable simply by understanding that sooner or later, everything changes into its opposite.  The art of such predictions lies in being able to recognize when things are getting to be either “too much” or “too little”, states which call forth their opposites.  This requires a sensitivity to the underlying mood and intent of things, which manifests itself as a keen sense of timing.  The greater the historical shifts from one opposite to another, the longer the time frame.

December 21, 2012 marks the end of a 5,128-year cyle.  The Mayan Long Count calendar is established as beginning on a purely mythological date of August 11, 3114 BC in order that its end date would occur in our time.  The Mayan mathematicians went so far as to drop the date directly on a Winter Solstice, just to get our attention.  Aware of the patterns of human perception and behavior, the Mayan priest-scribes foresaw this time, our time, as the one in which the dead worldview would give way to the Living Worldview.

Let us honor their sensitivity to the changing Ages of human nature and their keen sense of timing.

Let us honor our own sacred nature by ending this Dark Age of inhumanity and joyfully advancing in the next, more humane, Golden Age of Humanity.

.

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just been released by Larson Publications.  It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams.  Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

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By way of example, a Mayan tribal elder is quoted recently as saying that the idea of the calendar predicting a catastrophic doomsday springs from Western ideas and not Mayan.  This has been followed up even more recently by a Washington Post article approaching the matter from a scientific perspective, in which the astronomical basis of the movie 2012 is viewed as sensationalizing for profit.  That article does not take Sony Pictures to task strongly enough for its setting up a phony (and very hi-tech) website called Institute for Human Continuity, whose goal is Ensuring the end is just the beginning and where you can vote for who ought to lead humanity in the post-2012 era.  Sane and caring people everywhere ought to boycott this film just to protest this kind of commercial exploitation.

Think none of this matters?  Think everyone knows its entertainment?

According to the Post article, David Morrison, the author of an online feature called Ask an Astrobiologist, has “gotten nearly 1,000 e-mails from people who think something dire is about to befall the planet. One teenager wrote to Morrison that he’d rather commit suicide than see the world destroyed.”

An even more recent Los Angeles Times article entitled, Scientists try to calm ’2012′ hysteria, notes:

Morrison says it’s hard to know whether the people who have written to him with their fears represent a fringe or a larger cross-section of Americans who, distrustful of traditional sources of information and the authorities behind them, are falling victim to the Internet’s snake-oil salesmen.

In such an environment, the viral marketing campaign for the movie “2012,” which encourages people to “Vote for the Leader of the Post-2012 World,” can seem like confirmation of the apocalypse, rather than of an upcoming 90-minute entertainment vehicle.

A spokesman for Sony Pictures, Steve Elzer, said: “We believe consumers understand that the advertising is promoting a fictional film.”

Morrison said the movie’s distributors are feeding the “panic” by creating some of the fake science websites. Most of the sites, Morrison said, are full of misinformation and speculation, often by people who have written books they are trying to sell.

But scientific and ethical considerations aside for the moment, let’s return to the source of the 2012 phenomenon, the ending of a 5,128-year cycle of time as marked by the Mayan Calendar.

Drawn away from purely academic writings for the moment, David Stuart, arguably the foremost expert on Mayan glyphs in the world,  spoke his own words of reassurance for informed lay readers, in which he clarified his previous statements regarding the now-famous Monument Six of Tortugero, one of the few surviving Mayan texts that actually seem to predict events—and that specifically mentions the December 21, 2012 date.

Or does it?  Stuart references an article by his colleague Stephen Houston, who points out greater ambiguity in the reading of Monument Six than previously recognized.  The date may not reference any objective date but rather be ceremonial, having to do with the consecration of a particularly sacred building.

Great pains are being taken by such noted experts and the Mayans themselves to point out that the misconceptions about the world ending simply because the Mayan calendar turns over and begins another 5,128-year cycle are based on exaggerations and decidedly Western apocalyptic myth-making.  Why?  Well, obviously, the release of the special effects extravaganza 2012 may push already-anxious men, women and children into fear overdrive.

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