The REAL New Age

11 April 2008

I’m reading a book at the moment titled The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities.
I picked it up reluctantly from the library because I have a friend who is convinced that the Mayan prophecy of planetary upheaval - said to be coming in the year 2012 - is going to be the end of life as we know it.

I’d never been interested in these kinds of predictions and prophecies, especially after the landmark years of 1984 and the new millennium year of 2000 (Y2K) came and went without an incident. I live intently in the beauty of Now. But flicking through the book, I noticed essays from quite a few people I’d come across in my literary spiritual travels: Gregg Braden, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee (Sufi), Peter Russell and many others.
They're all writing from different perspectives about the rapid changes occurring right now on our planet, a quickening into a new age unparalleled in human history.
Some of the writers have spent years researching the Mayan civilization and their prophesy of the great change culminating on 21st December 2012. Other writers offer their interpretation of what is currently happening on earth, how it could unfold between now and 2012 and what may be in store for all of us lucky people who’ve chosen to be here and be part of this extraordinary time.

Christine Page writes at the start of her essay:
“Congratulations – you are among a select group of souls who won the lottery to be here, on this planet, at this time! The prize not only ensures you a front-row seat but also the unique opportunity to cocreate the future of the human race. Your contribution, along with that of other awakened souls, will create a blue print, which will influence your ancestors and the next 26,000 years of human existence. This is what you have been working toward during your many incarnations; this is the moment you’ve been awaiting. This is a time to remember.”

But the essay that most caught my interest was one by Arjuna Ardagh.
He writes about awakening (enlightenment):
“In every culture and in every age, a few isolated individuals have broken free of this hallucination and have realized that the sense of a “separate me” is actually a fantasy. This is not a question of self-improvement, or working on yourself to make yourself into a more loving, conscious, better person. It is a sudden and radical shift from a preoccupation with “me” and “my story” to a realization of the space, the vastness, the eternity in which that story is occurring.
In the last two decades, there has been an explosion, all over the world, of people having direct realizations very similar to that which Buddha recognized under the Bodhi Tree – that what I truly am is not only Bill, or Cynthia, or Robert, but what I really am is budh: awareness, consciousness, presence. This realization may come as a snapshot out of time and then be overshadowed by the pressure to pay the rent. It may come as a more sustained opening. It may even become the very fabric of day-to-day life. But ultimately, it does not really matter. Once the truth has been seen, the game is up on the hallucination of separation. The undying allegiance to the seductive stories in the mind has been broken and something more sane, more present, and more stable has a chance to shine through the habits of personality.
I call people who have been transformed in this way “translucent”, which Webster’s dictionary defines as “letting light pass through, but not transparent”.
Translucent people also appear to glow from the inside. They have access to their deepest nature as peaceful, limitless, free, unchanging, and at the same time, they remain fully involved in the events of their personal lives. Thoughts, fears, and desires still come and go; life is still characterized by temporary trials, misfortunes and stress. But the personal story is not longer opaque: it is now capable of reflecting something deeper, more luminous and abiding that can shine through it.”

I’ll post some more of the excerpts that speak intimately to me as I read on further tonight….