Ac Tah's Mayan "Messages of Light"

Back in August, we were contacted by James and Mai Needham who live in Mexico and work with a Mayan spiritual teacher, wisdom keeper and direct descendant Maya, Ac Tah. He has been traveling throughout Mexico -- literally walking from village to village -- to share the indigenous wisdom from his ancestors and create community in preparation for the Great Awakening now underway.

We had a number of enjoyable in-depth several conversations with James and Mai and they forwarded a copy of Ac Tah's book The Night of the Last Katun. It's a modestly produced book but full of insights and deep spiritual wisdom. We found ourselves inspired and moved by the authenticity, generosity, and expansiveness of Ac Tah's "messages of light", the revisiting of the ancient wisdom of the Mayan people for this time. Because this resonated with our own spiritual explorations on the nature and meaning of this amazing phenomenon we call Shift, we're now working with James and Mai to help bring Ac Tah's message to a wider global audience.

The return of the ancient wisdom is one of the most important aspects of the Shift. Mayan elders such as Carlos Barrios and Hunbatz Men have stepped forth to share their wisdom but Ac Tah is the first Mayan messenger we are aware of to bring forth this wisdom directly to audiences in the US with a speaking tour. The inclusiveness of this message is very appealing and heartening. Ac Tah intends to do a 13 city US tour in early 2011 and we're honored to be a part of that effort. In his book Ac Tah begins to reveal the secrets of his Mayan wisdom with a gentle but clear sense of urgency often missing in some discussions about the Shift. Most importantly, he talks about how, using encoded Maya technology, we can activate our DNA and rise to a higher frequency in the process of awakening.

On December 7, we were honored to offer a special teleconference with Ac Tah called "The Sun: The Change of Consciousness and the Wisdom of the Maya" In it, Ac Tah shared his insights and wisdom. He talked about earth changes, noting that the center of the earth has been changing and the sun has started behaving in a different way specially over the last 20 years. He talked about changes in the magnetic field that protects us from the solar wind. He described the essence of the augmenting role of the pyramids in changing harmonic frequencies and the rebuilding effort now underway in Mexico. Finally he urged staying in alignment with higher human values and joy. He said our state of being is more important than knowledge but cautioned that "we need both the wisdom of ancestors and modern intelligence."

Another Argument for Syncretism

During the Shift, syncretism – the idea of appreciating the value of and commonality between many different spiritual traditions -- will become increasingly important especially as it relates to the idea of moving away from dualistic thinking. But sometimes syncretism is seen as a kind of spiritual mush, a feel-good amalgam of different spiritual traditions that radiates the idea that “it’s all good” but fails to make useful distinctions. Also sometimes we see critiques of its close cousin, so-called “cafeteria spirituality” which some see as either a kind of indulgence, a symptom of the inability to commit, or a kind of butterfly-hopping faddism.

But where can true syncretism take us? We’ve done a lot of work on this topic at the Emergence Project and Annette and I have studied and experimented with many different spiritual paths. One of my litmus tests for a worthy spiritual teacher has always been the degree to which they were willing to acknowledge the importance of other paths. The first guru I was associated with, Sri Chinmoy, had a strong message of syncretism and stressed the importance of honoring different paths. Paramahansa Yogananda is another great teacher falling into this category.

My own path started out with a practice involving Sri Chinmoy and Swami Rudrananda, the path of devotion and surrender and heart-practice. In a different phase of life, I began to study Buddhism through the work of the Tibetan master Chogyam Trungpa. Then as I began to take up the body-centered practice of Tai Chi, the focus shifted to Taoism. Today all three of these still remain very important aspects of my spiritual path. I think of them as three pillars in support of the unification of body (Taoism) heart (the Vedic tradition) and mind (Buddhism). I feel my spiritual practice would be greatly diminished if any one of them were not present.

The New Normal: Not in Kansas Anymore

We had a great event with spiritual teacher and sound healer Zacciah Blackburn back in July. Zacciah combined talks about 2012 emergence with deep guided meditations including one he calls Three Hearts Practice. Zacciah describes this as an alignment between ourselves, the Heart of the Cosmos, and the Heart of the Earth.

One of the passages in his talk particularly resonated for me. He is clear and straightforward about the nature of the changes that are taking place and the need to disengage from energies and life patterns that "no longer serve us". And he pointed out that this change must be embraced and accepted as the "new normal".

Going further, Zacciah observed that this change often doesn't feel normal at all. In other words, we're not in Kansas anymore. As he puts it: "Our reality is about to shift in ways most of us do not comprehend. Even many who think they know and tell us much about the new age and awakening do not yet understand the depth of what is occurring. Few of us truly get it. 'Normal' has left us and we shall not see it again"...

When this sinks in, it's easy to go into fear. But it's a bit like that first dive on a rollercoaster. The mind has a near-simultaneous double-edged response. One second it's thinking something like "what have I gotten myself into?" And the next, it segues into "hey this is quite an interesting experience." Recognizing that we're privileged to participate in the Great Awakening at this unique time in human history seems like a good thing to reflect on and feel. Looking at the disruptive events in our lives and on the world stage with a clear eye (i.e. not going into denial about the full human impact of what's happening with events like the Gulf Oil spill) and (somehow!) at the same time staying out of fear is one of the hardest but most important things to do in this journey.

The "Mechanization of Culture"

James O' Dea is the former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and we were fortunate to have him give a keynote presentation at our conference last year. In his talk, James spoke of the "mechanization of culture" , a term that immediately resonated with me. It's a great way of describing a kind of trap we've fallen into in terms of giving away bits and pieces of our lives.Part of this mechanization refers to deep cultural patterns related to Cartesian and Newtonian views of the universe as a mechanism. This is the foundation for a more sophisticated form of materialism that pervades the cultural and educational landscape today. But another aspect relates to the idea of living our lives mechanically, even robotically.

We see this today in an unfortunate tendency to outsource bits and pieces of simple tasks and life activities that used to be an integral, joyful part of life. We are increasingly tempted to function as mini-corporations, hiring people to take care of simple life tasks because we're too busy focusing on other things to do them. Prepared foods and a boom in takeout restaurant dining for example has become a huge business discouraging people from mindfully preparing their own food. Got a pet? Don't bother cleaning up the mess, outsource it to a "pet waste technician" (Yes there are companies that do this). The list goes on.

Reconnecting to the earth means a lot of things: walks in nature, supporting green energy and conservation and recycling. There is of course a large list. But it also means reconnecting with "earthiness". Taoism and Zen Buddhism offer us wonderful perspectives focused on enjoying the simplest tasks and appreciating their restorative power. When we reconnect with the simpler aspects of our physical existence, we also reconnect with nature in a very fundamental way.

The Shift: Remembering and Forgetting

Collective human cultural amnesia is the way of the world. We already know everything we need to know -- we’ve just forgotten much of it. In this extraordinary time, much of the rush of contemporary life seems to be also stampeding us into a kind of forgetfulness even as the incredible expansion of human knowledge continues. Perhaps the purpose of this emptying is to make way for a deeper, more lasting type of knowledge. Let's hope so.

In terms of our own personal spiritual journeys, the Russian mystic Gurdjieff often spoke of remembering as one of the most important aspects of the path to greater awareness. From that we can extrapolate a bit to our collective life from both a cultural and civilizational perspective. This process of remembering and going deep into the collective psyche becomes critically important in times of great stress and chaos such as what we are living through now.

As the information about the Shift surfaces in our collective consciousness from any number of sources (some surprising),this knowledge is coming into focus to help us through this extraordinary and at times extraordinarily difficult time. It represents a resurfacing of forgotten perennial wisdom at its deepest levels. This ancient wisdom is the most practical advice we can have to enhance the spiritual journey at this time.

Thoughts on the Gulf Oil Spill

The enormity and tragedy of the Gulf oil spill takes a while to sink in. I know it did with me. The array of emotions was palpable: sadness, disgust, anger, shock, among them. Heeding the advice of Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, I let the intensity of the feelings work through and did not shy away from allowing myself to really feel what was going on in mind and heart. Macy says that it’s important to feel the great tragedy of the destruction of our home planet in all its ramifications to avoid the danger of becoming numb.

And it’s so easy to become numb. I was watching a popular PBS political talk show called the McLaughlin Group recently and listening to the speakers rattle on about the spill as if it was something that didn’t really affect them, as if it was something outside themselves. They seemed only interested in calculating the political effects of this great human and environmental tragedy. What’s wrong with this picture?

The shift in consciousness will take place only when all of us “get it” and allow the enormity of earth changes to break through our carefully constructed wall of consensus reality. This means letting the import of these events seep through our natural psychological self defenses and barriers. Admittedly, this is not easy. Reflexively, we want everything to be “all right” and if it isn’t in the external world,there’s a tendency to try to make it so in our minds by denial or various forms of cognitive filtering(which are,in essence, lesser forms of denial).

All in all, the Gulf tragedy is a powerful metaphor for what we have already been doing to the planet for hundreds of years. It’s almost as if that process has been speeded up for us to see in dramatic fashion as the Shift intensifies, a form of karmic reckoning. It is also a strong message about the limits of technology and messing with things we don’t fully understand. The Icelandic Volcano, Hurricane Katrina, Nashville, Haiti, and now the Gulf spill are all potent but deeply saddening examples of shifting earth energies of the prophecies and underscore in dramatic fashion the need to change our view of our planetary home and the cosmos.

Returning to the Great Stillness

My new dachshund puppy is teaching me a lot about silence. Not that she's silent. Anything but. But I live in a rural area about an hour from Boston. There are at least six horse farms in the area, and a quintessential new England common with three white steepled churches that was once filmed in a movie to provide the backdrop for....well, a quintessential New England common. By most standards it would qualify as rural or quasi-rural. But as it turns out little black and tan Maggie is super-sensitive to noises and if she's out in the yard and hears a plane or a leaf blower, she freaks. This has in turn made me more sensitive to the noises she hears and has been a bit of a revelation. What surprises me is how much of it I hear in this supposedly rural realm. I call this ambient background noise that we are all immersed in The Great Noise. Some may want to include the ever present media barrage as a part of this as well.

I'm not sure exactly why there is so much noise in our lives these days. When did this happen? It seems to be a product of the hyper-accelerated times we're now living in and the tendency in our culture to engage in the business of busyness. Certainly fostering a 24/7 world has fostered the elimination of many sacred spaces in our lives or even just time to pause, reflect, or appreciate. But as the Shift progresses, the transparency of all this busyness which has become the ambient white noise of our lives becomes more obvious. We may be called to find what poet T.S. Eliot called the "still center of the turning world" and one of my own teachers, Taoist master Bruce Frantzis, calls the "great stillness". This is not just a personal endeavor however. Our society and culture also needs to return to the special places and spaces that marked a time for spirit to renew and soul to reconnect. In time I believe this will happen but in a pluralistic society such as ours, it becomes a more complicated process. In finding that sweet spot of stillness, we can remember who we are and what we are called to do in this special time.

Deep Cultural Transformation: Education

In the last few blogs I talked a little bit about the need for sacred activism in a 2012 context and how that practice might lend itself to many areas of life including education, health care, technology, and environmental development. In terms of education, the chaos currently pervading our institutions all the way from K-12 to the university level is well known and documented.

No amount of top down “programs”and testing approaches are going to provide some sort of quick fix for this. As in health care and other areas, a deep cultural transformation is needed. A precursor to this is a forthright admission of failure and recognition that the way we are doing things now is unbalanced and not a path that resonates with the spirit of New Earth. And after this, there is process of discovery that needs to take place to identify more specifically what needs to change.

In this context, I ran across an excellent article called Seven Sins of Our System of Forced Education written by Peter Gray, a Research Professor of Psychology at Boston College, published in his blog on the Psychology Today web site. It’s a great list of things that have not worked in our educational system. Here are the main points:

1. Denial of liberty on the basis of age.
2. Fostering of shame, on the one hand, and hubris, on the other.
3. Interference with the development of cooperation and nurturance.
4. Interference with the development of personal responsibility and self-direction.
5. Linking of learning with fear, loathing, and drudgery.
6. Inhibition of critical thinking.
7. Reduction in diversity of skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking.

Deep Cultural Transformation: Getting There from Here

Our educational institutions seem to be putting less emphasis these days on right brain activity. Art and music are getting sidelined and math and science elevated. But as we head into the new paradigm, creativity and imagination will become increasingly important. If there is a "New Earth" to be built, as Eckhart Tolle describes it, positive intent will be extremely important. But so will digging in and doing the work. Every area of life will beckon us towards a new way of thinking and being. As eco-poet Gary Snyder puts it: "Find your place on the planet, dig in and, take responsibility from there."

This is where sacred activism as described by teachers such as Andrew Harvey come into play. It could involve helping those caught in the dire exigencies of transition and economic dislocation. It could involve discernment, interpretation, teaching or truthtelling. It could also center on helping to create the new social and cultural modalities needed to support the New Earth paradigm. There are many other areas needing our collective and individual attention. Everyone has a role to play and something to contribute.

Cultural Transformation: Health Care

I’m old enough to remember when going to see a doctor was a simple person to person transaction. After a visit you would get a bill in the mail and pay it. Health care is a deeply personal issue and when I look at the heath care mess today it seems that we’ve moved from the notion of a simple person to person human transaction to a complex, technocratically constituted system. What’s wrong with this picture? An array of “middle men” now have assumed as much importance in this scheme (or in some cases more) than that of healer and patient.

Intervening between you and your doctor is a whole infobureaucracy of insurers, pharmaceutical industry minions, paper-pushers, and second guessers. In my book Digital Mythologies, I wrote about this larger social and cultural phenomenon a bit in an essay that described the rise of technologically-fostered mediated relationships. Author James O’Dea who spoke at our conference last year describes this state of affairs as “the mechanization of culture”. Its mind-bending complexity is not only rendering the very process of getting care dysfunctional, it makes the ability to establish holistic and healing relationships difficult. As the Shift dissolves energies that support it, there will be great opportunities for alternative and holistic practitioners to step in and help restore balance of human dignity and direct, caring relationships in health care settings. Cutting edge technology will still be an important capability but will need to assume a much less obtrusive role in the healing process.

Understanding the Earth Changes

Here’s a posting from Annette about that appeared in our recent newsletter:

“I remember my mother exclaiming that she could feel the weather in her bones whenever a storm was coming our way. She would shiver and sigh and sure enough like a living barometer and without listening to any weather forecast, the rains would start shortly after. I reflect on this as the earth changes seem to be escalating and notice how I seem to have become a walking breathing monitor and barometer for each impending earth change, storm or affliction upon the earth, sensing each shift, turn, bump and sway as if I have taken on the consciousness and the body of the earth during her transition. This experience brings to mind the spiritual truth "As above so below." Indigenous elder and 2012 interpreter Barbara Hand Clow suggests that this is a time to deepen our soul connections: "These great earth changes are awakening our connections to divine levels because our highest levels of emotions are spiritual; we need to be in touch with our souls during these challenging times." As we accelerate towards the 2012 window, earth energetic activity seems to have gone into overdrive ranging from devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile to landslides and cyclones in Europe, to odd weather patterns here in the US. It seems that not a day goes by when we don't hear about some violent earth happening. Are we awakening to our intuitive connection just as the earth is making this huge
change into the new earth energy?

No one is immune to what is going on. Everyone is feeling this shift on some level. But what is all this activity pointing to and what can we do individually and collectively to lessen the suffering and effects that these changes bring about? Haiti is a powerful example of ways in which to respond proactively with compassion and concrete help. But what is our energetic response? Are we acting as transducers and transformers for these changes and can we use our collective intent of love and peace to help the earth manage these pangs as she births a new earth? The challenge is to hold the space of intent for the highest possible outcome in our hearts and minds as the earth changes and the Shift continues. - Annette Farrington

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Is 2012 Moving into the Mainstream?

A lot has happened in a year. When the Emergence Project first started out working on our Boston conference and a number of special events, 2012 seemed to still be considered exotic territory, even in many groups involved in alternative spirituality . We found much unwarranted skepticism as many (thanks in part to media sensationalism) more or less automatically associated anything to do with 2012 with a kind of apocalyptic extremism. Fortunately, over time, it seems that understandings about the Shift have both accelerated and moderated a bit. Many are now curious and reasonably open to finding out more and good information is getting out there even if there’s a flood of disinformation that inevitably attaches to it.

Evidence of the Shift moving into the mainstream can be seen on a number of fronts. No less august an institution as National Geographic ran a televised special on 2012 some months ago (sorry NG, we were not impressed). In addition, a professional organization for archaeologists, the Archaeological Institute of America, ran an article on 2012 in their house publication, Archaeology called Apocalypse Soon? (although the piece offered a decidedly skeptical perspective ). More recently, Scientific-American took on the complexities of the Shift with an article enitled End of Days Danger (March 2010) which weaves together the Copenhagen Summit, 2012, and a controversial tweet from Sarah Palin. All in all, we’re encouraged by the fact that mainstream publications and organizations are beginning to think about a megatrend that will affect us all, profoundly, and soon.

Are We in the Age of the Kali Yuga?

In Vedic science, there are four world ages or Yugas: the Satya Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Dwapara Yuga and the Kali Yuga. Each of the four Yugas is characterized by the state of what might be called the quality of human knowledge. During the Kali Yuga, which is the darkest period, knowledge is occluded, muddied. Everything seems haywire, topsy turvy, like bizarro world in the old Superman comic books.

There is considerable debate about whether we are living in the age of the Kali Yuga currently. John Major Jenkins and Jay Weidner believe that this is the case. Sri Yukteswar, Yogananda’s teacher and guru, has been one of the more visible dissenters as outlined in his book the Holy Science. Yukteswar believes that the current age is the Dwapara Yuga also known as the Bronze age, a time characterized by mixed bag of positives and negatives.

While sometimes I tend to view these debates as “2012 theology”, it seems clear that, Kali Yuga or not, the current time – especially the last ten years – has been characterized by elements associated with this Yuga: surreal inversions of good and evil and the need to legislate morality and even at times basic human decency. The Vedic texts themselves say things like: “Rulers will no longer see it as their duty… to protect their subjects.. men will openly display animosity towards each other…cowards will have a reputation for bravery, and the brave will be enervated cowards.” This last item is reminiscent of a line in the Yeats poem “The Second Coming”: “the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity”

Whether or not what’s happening now is related to the Kali Yuga, at times of transition things can seem dire indeed. The old energies are manifesting still in powerful ways, a last final burst of expression, but the new energies have not fully manifested. The saying that “it’s always darkest before the dawn” springs to mind. In my own experience I find that thinking about this is one helpful way to stay out of fear during the chaos of transition.

2012: Living with Uncertainty

At a recent meeting, many people had definitive and passionately held opinions about what will happen in 2012. While it is easier in some ways to hold on to a pre-established belief, I believe that when it comes to matters 2012, we are well-advised to keep an open mind and a “high threshold for ambiguity”. Since intention and co-creation are very definitely in the mix, this is new and unprecedented territory. My opinion is that no one really knows what will happen on 12.21.12 (if that is indeed the date). And as Annette and I have pointed out in our talks and articles, the more important emphasis is that the Shift is happening now. The sage spiritual advice about living your life one day at a time seems to be more important than ever.

In terms of the challenge of living with uncertainty, I really like what Daniel Pinchbeck blogged on his Evolver site: “Recently, I have taken as my personal mantra the not very transcendent phrase, "I don't know." The list of things I feel unsure about seems to be steadily increasing… Something seems to be happening that is beyond my capacity to understand or articulate. I can only assume other people are feeling this way as well. We are witnessing the collapse of the old, rigidified structures, while the new hasn't come into realization yet -- that is, if there is going to be a new anything. A change seems to be happening at the level of logic, which is becoming less dualistic, less "either-or," and more binary, "both-and."

Multi-tasking and Meditation

"How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?" This was a goofy line from a very excellent Firesign Theater album back in the day. Yet it reminds me of a conundrum I’ve been trying to solve for some time. In my book Digital Mythologies I wrote about what might be called the spiritual implications of multi-tasking.

When I look at distracted multitaskers, not fully giving their attention to either one thing or the other, rightly or wrongly it always reminds me of the precise opposite of Zen mindfulness. In the book I talked about a Sprint commercial that urged us to “Be There Now” through the use of the Internet. The great irony of course is that phrase was ripped off and negatively transmuted from a well known Ram Dass book called “Be Here Now”.

I don’t claim to have the ultimate answer here just a lot of questions. For example, John Selby talks about how if you try and follow your breath during meditation, you get a certain result. But he also says (and I’ve tried this and concur) that if you focus on another element (it could be anything in the process), you effectively short circuit the mind and generating thoughts are close to impossible. How does this “two for one” activity compare to multitasking? Is multitasking somehow a function of a newer kind of consciousness or does it represent a step away from the mindfulness that’s necessary in these difficult times?

A Big Tent: 2012 and The Shift

One of the guiding principles of 2012 discernment is the notion of inclusiveness. With reference to other spiritual traditions, the Shift can serve as a unifying principle and a big tent that embrace the commonalities in what might be perceived as disparate spiritual practices rather than emphasizing the differences. In addition, we're seeing interesting trends developing where practitioners of traditional religions are combining them with other spiritual ideas and practices.

This trend has been around for a long time and is commonly known as "cafeteria style spirituality". But what's interesting, as reported in USA Today, is that the trend is accelerating. For example, "Of the 72% of Americans who attend religious services at least once a year...35% say they attend in multiple places, often hop-scotching across denominations."

This is called syncretism, defined as the "the combination of different forms of belief or practice". Syncretism is very consistent with the 2012/Shift mindset since it becomes important to respect the rich variety of spiritual sources that point to this unique time in history. There's a long list but they include Hopi and other indigenous prophecies, Mayan, Taoist, Tibetan Buddhist , Vedic, Christian, and Islamic traditions.

It's really a beautiful idea to think that so many spiritual paths are converging on the transformation of the Shift as common ground but there's still a lot of work to do to start seeing different spiritual practices as "many roads" instead of many walls. One of the changes that needs to take place, as Mayan interpreter Carl Johan Calleman points out, is to move beyond dualistic thinking. This means breaking down the artificial barriers between spiritual traditions that create disharmonies and in its most extreme expression hatred and intolerance. Our challenge now is to come to some consensus on the underlying basic truths and principles that run through many spiritual practices to get closer to the goal of acting in unity and as one voice for this truth to be manifest creatively in our inner and outer worlds.