Great Expectations: The Choice Is Ours

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

You say you’re disappointed that sparks didn’t shoot out yer — ummm — ears on 12/12? And you’re not so sure what the big deal is about 12/21, anyhow, although you’ve stocked up on candles and asked around about whether or not the world will just wink out, the big cosmic plug pulled by an Unseen Hand? Do you know people who are desperate to get right with God during these last days of this twelfth year of the century, pre-Apocalypse, or some that are partying hard with an “eat, drink, be merry” attitude, defiantly spitting in the eye of the fates? Are any of those people you?

I’d think that the relative calm with which the remaining Mayans are anticipating this juncture would comfort the inquisitive, but we just can’t deny that thrill-seeker reflex driving us, our love of danger threaded with fear and loathing that is both learned and instinctual. We really do court things that go bump in the night, even the thought of our own demise: we find it somehow compelling, mysterious, romantic. Even vaguely erotic. The master of suspense, director Alfred Hitchcock, reminded us that people ” … like to put their toe in the cold water of fear,” but those were less surrealistic times. Now, after a dozen years of stunning irrationality based on our dark imaginings, I think it’s time to pull our foot out and dry off.

On the last date to fall in sequence (12/12/12) for the next thousand years, people rushed to marry and women in labor rooms across the planet were urged to push that puppy out on so auspicious a day. NASA, still doing mysterious things we don’t pay much attention to, took a photo of Gaia at precisely 12 UTC, the big blue marble as lovely as ever, to commemorate the occasion. Spooky or spiritual topics rarely discussed on television, were; and on a personal note, my grandson celebrated a birthday and my telephone rang off the hook in celebration of a long-anticipated stargate.

Channelers were mostly in agreement that the day would bring an influx of vibratory change, if nothing else, and signal the beginning of a fertile period of self-discovery and enlightenment, bringing us into a new era as the Mayan calendar completes itself on solstice. As a global phenomenon, the prophecy has our collective attention, some of us high on the possibilities, some of us hiding under the bed. Indeed, bunkers have enjoyed a comeback world-wide, and freeze dried food is at a premium.

Those of us who wonder how people can take the Bible literally or fall prey to survivalist propaganda should ask ourselves what literal fears still sneak out of our own subconscious to plague us, creeping into our conversation and our nightmares. We might also examine the hopes that motivate us, coloring our outlook and authoring our daydreams. I have a hunch our experience of these next days will meet our expectation, not so much literally but figuratively. We will be in fear during this highly sensitized period or we will be in gratitude, choosing from moment to moment which will dominate our reality.

The mixed bag of heartbreak and heartburn we’re subjected to in the daily news seems to point up that choice. This was a week when politics ground to a standstill, demanding that decisions be made, and some were, like Susan Rice being axed as Hillary’s replacement, visions of Benghazi-scandal dancing like sugarplums in the heads of Pubs eager to exploit the Libyan incident. Some choices weren’t, like the high-stakes bargaining that doesn’t seem likely to resolve our budgetary problems on this side of the new year (although congressional leadership has put the vacationing legislative body on alert for the holiday season, just in case there is some break in negotiations.) It seemed — well, gosh — almost peaceful for a little while, and then:

On 12/11, a disgruntled young man in a Portland, Oregon suburb opened fire in a mall, killing two and wounding a teen. With such an event, we feel fear of all that seems senseless and random.

On 12/12, a major televised fund-raiser for those burdened by Hurricane Sandy ripped up evening programming, giving us a glimpse of the Stones, the Who, Bon Jovi, Springsteen, McCartney and Pink Floyd, to name but a few. We enjoyed an unexpected evening of rock ‘n roll nirvana (also featured) in the service of open-hearted charity* and encouragement for the residents of the devastated areas in New York and New Jersey. We experienced gratitude for a great show, and support for a worthwhile cause that touched us all.

On 12/13, Stephen Colbert wrapped up his 2012 season by contributing his remaining PAC money — over $700,000 — to Sandy charities, including Habitat for Humanity, along with a pair of political organizations working to get money out of government. Again, we felt gratitude in the consciousness of community service working within our entertainment industry.

On 12/14 twenty kindergartners and half a dozen adults were murdered in a Connecticut elementary school, engulfing our hearts in empathy and sorrow and pointing up our national neurosis over weapons and denial of the violence they make so effortless. Our president spoke to us in tears, and it seemed almost unbearable to our tattered emotions. Fear, fear, fear flooded us. Fear for our must vulnerable.

Not to minimize the heartbreak of this moment, but children are dying in similar acts of terror in the Middle East and Africa with regularity. We don’t attend them, here in the states, because we don’t consider them “ours.” We should. On this same day across the globe in China, a man with a knife injured twenty-two elementary school children, aged 6-11, and an adult before being captured (pointing up, it’s reported, China’s antiquated mental health system.) It was a dangerous day for little ones.

This business of ‘poster child’ events for all the ills of our culture, demanding our attention, illuminating with the scrutiny of a microscope — of purging the dark, trapped energies that have wrapped themselves around our dysfunctions by witnessing their eruption in acts of violence and destruction — sure ain’t for sissies, and it takes a bit of finesse to put the situation in perspective. Channeling in the 1990s warned that the increased vibration would make those who had done little spiritual ‘homework’ vulnerable to mental distress, with those unable to handle the escalation of energies — called the Third (spiritual) Wave — predisposed to explosive events.

It’s easy to go to war with terror; indeed, we still suffer that condition nationally, compromising our constitution and distorting our relationships with one another, at home and across the planet, sure we can kill that which threatens us. It’s harder to deal with and accept the challenges presented by the unbalanced (and well armed). We haven’t tried that yet, but we’d better, since there’s usually no one left to punish at the end of the shooter’s day.

And even though we may feel frustrated that so much seems out of our hands, we have choices. We have choices in attitude. I’m listening to FOX coverage as I write, and a pundit is explaining how evil is all around us, waiting to swallow us up, which is why ‘good’ citizens must band together and eliminate the ‘bad’ people who threaten, which — in my opinion — makes the pundit, himself, a poster child for all that’s simplistic and judgmental about old paradigm values. While I have serious objection to the sexism and patriarchy within the Amish community, I’m reminded that they, too, lost little ones to a crazy man with a gun and as a body, they forgave. Can we?

There is an important conversation about weapons, about mental health, law and public safety, to be had in this circumstance, synchronistically in the same week when it was proclaimed legal to carry a weapon in all 50 states. And when the President says we must do something about these kinds of tragedies “regardless of politics,” he touches on the humanity which begs to be served in some adult fashion. On CNN, Dr. Drew tells that this new level of mindless violence in our culture — where children can be murdered in schools, theaters invaded and people photographed being pushed in front of a train — can no longer be tolerated by thinking, feeling people.

Which brings us to our other option, in terms of creative response to the times at hand. We can take a deep breath and allow ourselves to feel. We cannot begin to heal until we do. The energies swirling around us demand that we no longer deny what impacts us, that we enter our heart chakra to fully experience not only what is wrong with our world, but all that is right. It is there where we’ll find our true desire for ourselves and one another. Until we begin to use our emotional faculty, we are destined to spin in and out of the choices at hand, never coming into balance. Taking responsibility for our wholeness requires us to bring all of our human attributes into play, to allow ourselves to be informed by the wisdom of our combined mental and emotional bodies. In short, to risk the pain of it.

My dear friend Christine DeLorey, who writes at Creative Numerology, puts it in form for the remaining days of 2012:

Emotion is pure feminine energy, which we all possess in abundance, regardless of gender. The feminine Will is an entity unto itself, with a consciousness all her own – as precious and sacred as the masculine Spirit. These two parts of ourselves are starting to come together now within the body. They are meeting in our physical hearts and, as a result, heart is being reborn in the physical world and is starting to replace the heartlessness that we were led to believe is just ‘life.’ Humanity is evolving in the direction of LOVE. We must try to remember this when things get tough or unforeseen events send us a shock.

One of the phone calls I received on Wednesday was from a dear old friend, reminding me that we had envisioned this period in a conversation back in 1973. We were students in an Edgar Cayce group, studying not only his health and Atlantean information, but his land-change predictions for the — then, far off — turn of the century. It was some time in the mid-80s when Cayce’s predictions began to fail, quickly superseded by the Harmonic Convergence which had picked up the thread of the narrative, putting the Mayan calendar firmly on our radar. That was called the Second Wave (the First being the volatile ’60s and the Flower Power movement.)

Forty years is a long time to anticipate an event, dearhearts, and I long ago lost my edge in terms of how this had to look, but never, ever, my investment in how it was going to feel. No terror, no sorrow, can make this juncture less powerful than it is. The darkness of this moment only makes the Light brighter.

So, with many of us looking for signs and portents — Jesus descending from the sky like Tink at Disneyland or the Mothership looming large over Washington, DC — 12/12 came and went with little fuss, those seeking a thrill ride missing the point. The point? This IS the thrill ride, the opportunity to express ourselves within each miracle-ready moment of life, the possibility of our quickly shifting awareness and discovery streaking the sky like a shooting star. In a world deeply flawed, darkly illustrated with all that’s wrong, can we imagine what is right? Can we celebrate our communal humanity, our hearts joined in empathy, our prayers affirming healing and tenderness for all that are wounded, Chiron-style?

Can we — shall we — just let our hearts break, now? Can we let them open to encompass all the unconditional love and innocence we’ve denied one another? As the world we’ve known dissolves around us, these shaky systems holding together the nation we love disintegrating, can we embrace the pain of this moment in order to defuse it? Can we bring some sense of purpose to all that seems senseless, beginning a transformation that will link hearts, determined to heal whatever they touch? Can each child — even the one holding the gun — expect our compassion and our understanding? Are we there yet? Are we ready?

Forty years ago, I knew this day was coming. I can’t begin to tell you how much has changed for the better, how much more open we are now than we were then. Even facing the repressions still being fought for, we are infinitely better off today. Have enough of us grown in consciousness to make the Shift? Surely we have what we need. This is that moment when glimmers of intuition can open into floods of profound knowing. We can move ahead into the future with surety, if that is our choice. We have some practice in how to stay in the moment, to tell ourselves the truth, use our power for the benefit of all. We can trust our intuition, validate what is loving and kind, what is creative and collaborative.

As Eric mentioned this week, quoting A Course In Miracles, our journey is not about finding love but about removing all the barriers that keep it from us. And as my old friend said on 12/12, her voice thick with tears, “This ain’t easy.” No, it’s not, but it is required that we stand in darkness and choose Light, increasing the vibration of Shift.

In this moment we have all the help we need to hear the whisper of our higher angels, bathe ourselves in that reservoir of unconditional love that we brought with us, no longer dependent on the world to provide it but rather the source of healing for one another. This is that moment when we begin again, if it is within our will to do. We each have a choice to make this week, because this is the moment waited for, and we’re the ones we were expecting.

*Those interested in contributing to the Hurricane Sandy 12/12/12 concert fund can find information at http://www.robinhood.org