2013 is the new 2012: Looking Back and Looking Forward

After the year 2012, many of us had to take stock of our belief systems about the shift. No surprise there, expectations in a matter this "earth-shaking" are not usually the same as the reality that unfolds. Like many others I went through the necessary process of adjusting my core beliefs and expectations. Here is short list of the key beliefs I came away with:

1. The shift continues to take place. Big time. December 21, 2012 was a gateway into the acceleration of the shift and 2013 is beginning to look more like what many of us expected to happen in the year 2012. A difference of a year is not surprising when the time spans we are talking about involve 5000 years or possibly much more.

2. We continue to be in the midst of a planetary crisis that will take all of our collective wisdom and effort to address. A kind of slow-motion eco-catastrophe is well underway. A profound awakening and awareness is needed to grasp its significance and recognize the need for change although many will continue to cling fiercely to the the old patterns that provide an unsustainable and illusory sense of comfort.

3. Solar activity has been increasing and will continue to increase in 2013. Solar flares and CMEs are having profound effects on human consciousness and accelerating many earth changes. The two are inextricably linked.

4. As the Emergence Project has been emphasizing since we began offering conferences back in 2008, daily spiritual practice and meditation continue to be very important as a means to manage the chaos and instability continuing throughout the shift.

5. No one knows exactly what's going to happen in the next few years. For all their wisdom on such matters, not even the ancient Mayans knew exactly how this process would unfold. Channelings and other sources of wisdom still remain as fallible and subject to intepretation as any other human activity and, as always, heavy doses of discernment need to be applied. It's helpful to triangulate sources. In the last analysis, judge for yourself what's true, resonant, untrue or subtly deceptive.

6. Humanity's ultimate fate is in humanity's hands and not subject to any other external forces that can determine its outcome. This is simply the law of free will applied on a large scale. We have the technology and the tools to solve many of the problems currently facing us. The obstacles lie within our own mass consciousness -- the "mind-forged manacles" as William Blake called them -- that collectively and individually keep us from acting mindfully and creating the kind of world that most of us in our heart of hearts wish to live in.

7. We are experiencing the shift on many levels. At the level of inner being, the changes are profound. But in the outer world, sometimes it seems, disturbingly, that business as usual predominates. This sense of a kind of mundane and banal momentum of old patterns is in part fostered by the mainstream media which seems intent on offering the perspective that our cultural environment is still surpassingly "normal".Getting beyond this cognitive dissonance tests our faith in the deep spiritual realities now being experienced.

8. Take heart, many unique and positive changes are taking place on a planetary scale. However, much of it remains hidden beneath the multiplying layers of confusion and turmoil that characterize contemporary life.