"The Promised Land has nothing to do with real estate."
Joseph Campbell
Remember that poor old evangelist who promised his flock that the world would end soon? He had a lot riding on that prediction, so I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him when it apparently didn't happen, like he said it would. It didn't happen like he said it would, but I wonder if it would make him feel any better if he knew that it did happen. In Dr. J.C. Calleman's interpretation of the Mayan calendar, the world (as we've known it) "ended" with the end of the Universal Underworld in October of 2011; cul-minating in a state of Trust (or Faith); and an Ethical Era. He was right about that too.
May I be the first to make the announcement right here right now? Despite whatever evidence to the contrary, The World, as we have known it, did end in 2011.
This crazy old world has seen the "end of time," and "the end of the world" so many times now, it seems like it'll never end, and it won't. Of course, it's never actually the end of the world. As George Carlin (the patron saint of cynical enlightenment) said: "It's not the end of the world, it's the end of people. The world will still be here." I expect that at this point of his own spiritual evolution, floating around in another dimension, Saint George knows that even that isn't true. Everything, including people, keeps going along just fine...at least right now.
What "The End of the World" has always been describing is a psycho-logical end; the re-framing of a new reality brought about by a singular coalescence of transcendent consciousness; a singularity after which old ways of thinking and doing are in a instant rendered obsolete – like what's happened around here in the last few years. It fits quite nicely into Calleman's Mayan theory, that at some point just after 2011, the Earth be-gan to resonate with a level of consciousness that simultaneously informed it's occupants that a major change was taking place. Then Spring came early in the Mid East. The "occupiers" showed up. Fraudulent elections be-came unacceptably obvious. War became obsolete.
Everywhere you go now, people know that the Earth's endless potential is being mismanaged by a criminally unconscious minority (God bless 'em). It's global knowledge that great swaths of humanity are intensely wasteful, while even greater ones are subject to unnecessary deprivation. That our extreme economic disparities are selfishly foolish. The occupants in every small town know about the "elite class" of super-wealthy, extraordinarily fearful (suffering) people, who feel they need to control the world's re-sources and media, who put "Big Boxes" on the edge of every town. We can see their mess on TV everyday (God bless 'em), and increasingly we live in it, too. The real occupants are aware of what the miraculous potential of the Earth actually can be.
Naturally it's all happened before, when these literally medieval dis-parities bring us to a spiritual renaissance. It suddenly dawns on us that our need to identify ourselves with the insistent demands of materialism, like "your class," "what you deserve," and "how your way is right," is a form of destructive insanity, forcing us to live the totally inauthentic lives so many of us are all too familiar with. The death of that inauthentic self becomes inevitable. Nothing can ever be the same after that.
Everyone deserves to be who they are. Everyone deserves to be reborn into a fulfilling, authentic life – and they can be, but there almost always seems to be a kind of "Dark Age" first, where "faith is not always a well-lit place." I can't say exactly where we are, at the start of that dark age, in the middle, or towards the end of it, but I do know one thing for certain re-garding The End of the World:
Humanity is currently experiencing a mass metaphysical impulse to transcend the delusion of separateness. It's the collective death of an illusion, and it's spreading quickly. The resurrection is arising in Christians; the "Ethical Era" is settling upon the followers of the Mayan Calendar pro-phecy; it's the closing bell of the Kali Yuga to Hindus.
As a global entity, we all recognize the unfathomable mystery that everything comes from somewhere and goes somewhere, to a kind of ultimate ground of being that we're becoming aware of through quantum physics, cyber-consciousness, and verifiable sixth-sensory perception. We know that mysterious ground of being transcends this form we're in; that this "radiance of the eternal" penetrates everything and everybody, and in-tuitively informs a graceful and responsible way to live that's possible for everyone, and that everyone in this world deserves as their birthright.
That "radiance," that understanding we all share illuminates the dark place where we find trust in ourselves and each other – our Faith. That is the light we can shine now to penetrate our media, our destructive mass-ego, our "One Percent," to penetrate through back to the mystery. Now we can stand our ethical ground with an unassailable authority; the boundaries protecting humanity simply can no longer be contested; and if you stop for a moment, and just listen...you can own it.
The best and easiest way to make all this happen is to simply show up for life with this knowledge in our hearts, and try our best to live our authentic lives – where the inspiration for our actions comes from the inside, not the outside. That's a nice metaphysical impulse, isn't it?
It's even mystical...
Here's the good news: The world has ended. Welcome to the new world.
"It will not come by watching for it. No one will be saying, Look, here it is!
Or, Look, there it is! The Kingdom [of the Father] is spread out over the whole earth, and people do not see it."
Logion 113, The Gospel of Thomas
The book: How to Survive Life (and Death), A Guide To Happiness In This World and Beyond, based on lessons (learned the hard way) by a three time near death survivor is now available everywhere – but ask for it it at your local bookstore!
What an amazing article about the times we live in! So many of your words rang true. I am helping to facilitate a large gathering of spiritually minded people for 7 days of yoga, meditation, teachings, and music. What better way to transcend the delusion of separateness! Blessings. http://spiritualwoodstock.com/spiritual-awakening/
ReplyDeleteThank You, Melissa...the event looks like it will be wonderful!
DeleteBlessings
RK