Transforming our World

The Mayan Calendar: The World will Not End

Carlos Barrios was born into a Spanish family on El Altiplano, the highlands of Guatemala. His home was in Huehuetenango, also the dwelling place of the Maya Mam tribe. With other Maya and other indigenous tradition keepers, the Mam carry part of the old ways on Turtle Island (North America). They are keepers of time, authorities on remarkable calendars that are ancient, elegant and relevant.

Mr. Barrios is an historian, an anthropologist and investigator. After studying with traditional elders for 25 years, since the age of 19, he has also become a Mayan Ajq'ij, a ceremonial priest and spiritual guide, Eagle Clan.

Years ago, along with his brother, Gerardo, Carlos initiated an investigation into the different Mayan calendars. He studied with many teachers. He says his brother Gerardo interviewed nearly 600 traditional Mayan elders to widen their scope of knowledge.

"Anthropologists visit the temple sites," Mr. Barrios says, "and read the stelas and inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. It's just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say that the world will end in December2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. THE WORLD WILL NOT END.....IT WILL BE TRANSFORMED! The indigenous have the calendars, and know how to accurately interpret them, not others."

The Calendars

Mayan comprehension of time, seasons, and cycles has proven itself to be vast and sophisticated. The Maya understand 17 different calendars, some of them charting time accurately over a span of more than ten million years. The calendar that has steadily drawn global attention since 1987 is called the Tzolk'in or Cholq'ij. Devised ages ago and based on the cycle of the Pleiades, it is still held as sacred. With the indigenous calendars, native people have kept track of important turning points in history. For example, the day keepers who study the calendars identified an important day in the year One Reed, Ce Acatal, as it was called by the Mexicans. That was the day when an important ancestor was prophesied to return, "coming like a butterfly."

In the western calendar, the One Reed date correlates to Easter Sunday, April 21, 1519 the day that Hernando Cortez and his fleet of 11 Spanish galleons arrived from the East at what is today called Vera Cruz, Mexico. When the Spanish ships came toward shore, native people were waiting and watching to see how it would go. The billowing sails of the ships did indeed remind the scouts of butterflies skimming the ocean surface.

In this manner was a new era initiated, an era they had anticipated through their calendars. The Maya termed the new era the Nine Bolomtikus, or nine Hells of 52 years each. As the nine cycles unfolded, land and freedom were taken from the native people. Disease and disrespect dominated. What began with the arrival of Cortez, lasted until August 16, 1987 - a date many people recall as Harmonic Convergence. Millions of people took advantage of that date to make ceremony in sacred sites, praying for a smooth transition to a new era, the World of the Fifth Sun.

From that 1987 date until now, Mr. Barrios says, we have been in a time when the right arm of the materialistic world is disappearing, slowly but inexorably. We are at the cusp of the era when peace begins, and people live in harmony with Mother Earth. We are no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun, but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun. This is the time in-between, the time of transition.

As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth changes. All this, Mr. Barrios says, was foreseen via the simple, mathematics of the Mayan calendars. "It will change," Mr. Barrios observes.

"Everything will change." He said Mayan Daykeepers view the Dec. 21, 2012 date as a rebirth, the start of the World of the Fifth Sun. It will be the start of a new era resulting from, and signified by, the solar meridian crossing the galactic equator, and the earth aligning itself with the center of the galaxy.

At sunrise on December 21, 2012 for the first time in 26,000 years the Sun rises to conjunct the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. This cosmic cross is considered to be an embodiment of the Sacred Tree, The Tree of Life a tree remembered in all the world's spiritual traditions. Some observers say this alignment with the heart of the galaxy in 2012 will open a channel for cosmic energy to flow through the earth, cleansing it and all that dwells upon it, raising all to a higher level of vibration.

This process has already begun, Mr. Barrios suggested. "Change is accelerating now, and it will continue to accelerate." If the people of the earth can get to this 2012 date in good shape, without having destroyed too much of the Earth, Mr. Barrios said, we will rise to a new, higher level. But to get there we must transform enormously powerful forces that seek to block the way.

A Picture of the Road Ahead

From his understanding of the Mayan tradition and the calendars, Mr. Barrios offered a picture of where we are at and what may lie on the road ahead:

The date specified in the calendar: Winter Solstice in the year 2012 does not mark the end of the world. Many outside people writing about the Mayan calendar sensationalize this date, but they do not know. The ones who know are the indigenous elders who are entrusted with keeping the tradition "Humanity will continue," he contends, "but in a different way. Material structures will change. From this we will have the opportunity to be more human."

We are living in the most important era of the Mayan calendars and prophecies. All the prophecies of the world, all the traditions, are converging now. There is no time for games. The spiritual ideal of this era is action. Many powerful souls have reincarnated in this era, with a lot of power. This is true on both sides, the light and the dark. High magic is at work on both sides.

Things will change, but it is up to the people how difficult or easy it is for the changes to come about. The economy now is a fiction. The first five-year stretch of transition from August 1987 to August 1992 was the beginning of the destruction of the material world. We have progressed ten years deeper into the transition phase by now, and many of the so-called sources of financial stability are in fact hollow.

The banks are weak. This is a delicate moment for them. They could crash globally if we don't pay attention. One critical period is October and November 2002. If the banks crash in these months then we will be forced to rely on the land and our skills. The monetary systems will be in chaos, and we must then rely on our direct relationship with the Earth for our food and shelter. The North and South Poles are both breaking up. The level of the water in the oceans is going to rise. But at the same time land in the ocean, especially near Cuba, is also going to rise.

A Call for Fusion

As he met with audiences in Santa Fe, Mr. Barrios told a story about the most recent Mayan New Year ceremonies in Guatemala. He said that one respected Mayan elder, who lives all year in a solitary mountain cave, journeyed to Chichicastenango to speak with the people at the ceremony. The elder delivered a simple, direct message. He called for human beings to come together in support of life and light. Right now each person and group is going his or her own way. The elder of the mountains said there is hope if the people of the light can come together and unite in some way. Reflecting on this, Mr. Barrios explained: "We live in a world of polarity: day and night, man and woman, positive and negative. Light and darkness need each other. They are a balance. Just now the dark side is very strong, and very clear about what they want. They have their vision and their priorities clearly held, and also their hierarchy. They are working in many ways so that we will be unable to connect with the spiral Fifth World in 2012."

"On the light side everyone thinks they are the most important, that their own understandings, or their group's understandings, are the key. There's a diversity of cultures and opinions, so there is competition, diffusion, and no single focus."

As Mr. Barrios sees it, the dark side works to block fusion through denial and materialism. It also works to destroy those who are working with the light to get the Earth to a higher level. They
like the energy of the old, declining Fourth World, the materialism. They do not want it to change. They do not want fusion. They want to stay at this level, and are afraid of the next level.

****The dark power of the declining Fourth World cannot be destroyed or overpowered. It's too strong and clear for that, and that is the wrong strategy. The dark can only be transformed when confronted with simplicity and open-heartedness. This is what leads to fusion, a key concept for the World of the Fifth Sun.****

Mr. Barrios said the emerging era of the Fifth Sun will call attention to a much-overlooked element. Whereas the four traditional elements of earth, air, fire and water have dominated various epochs in the past, there will be a fifth element to reckon with in the time of the Fifth Sun: ether. The dictionary defines ether as the rarefied element of the Heavens. Ether is a medium. It permeates all space and transmits waves of energy in a wide range of frequencies, from cell phones to human auras. What is "ethereal" is related to the regions beyond earth: the heavens.

Ether the element of the Fifth Sun is celestial and lacking in material substance, but is no less real than wood, stone or flesh. "Within the context of ether there can be a fusion of the polarities," Mr. Barrios said. "No more darkness or light in the people, but an uplifted fusion. But right now the realm of darkness is not interested in this. They are organized to block it. They seek to unbalance the Earth and its environment so we will be unready for the alignment in 2012. We need to work together for peace, and balance with the other side. We need to take care of the Earth that feeds and shelters us. We need to put our entire mind and heart into pursuing unity and fusion now, to confront the other side and preserve life."

To be Ready for this Moment in History

Mr. Barrios told his audiences in Santa Fe that we are at a critical moment of world history. "We are disturbed," he said. "We can't play anymore. Our planet can be renewed or ravaged. Now is the time to awaken and take action." "Everyone is needed. You are not here for no reason. Everyone who is here now has an important purpose. This is a hard, but a special time. We have the opportunity for growth, but we must be ready for this moment in history."

Mr. Barrios offered a number of suggestions to help people walk in balance through the years ahead. "The prophesied changes are going to happen," he said "but our attitude and actions determine how harsh or mild they are."

We need to act, to make changes, and to elect people to represent us who understand and who will take political action to respect the earth. Meditation and spiritual practice are good, but also action. It's very important to be clear about who you are, and also about your relation to the Earth.

Develop yourself according to your own tradition and the call of your heart. But remember to respect differences, and strive for unity. Eat wisely. A lot of food is corrupt in either subtle or gross ways. Pay attention to what you are taking into your body. Learn to preserve food, and to conserve energy. Learn some good breathing techniques, so you have mastery of your breath.

Be clear. Follow a tradition with great roots. It is not important what tradition, your heart will tell you, but it must have great roots. We live in a world of energy. An important task at this time is to learn to sense or see the energy of everyone and everything: people, plants, animals. This becomes increasingly important as we draw close to the World of the Fifth Sun, for it is associated with the element ether -- the realm where energy lives and weaves.

Go to the sacred places of the earth to pray for peace and respect for the Earth which gives us our food, clothing, and shelter. We need to reactivate the energy of these sacred places. That is our work.

****According to Mr. Barrios' reading of the Mayan calendar, if war happens in November 2002 or after, then it's bad, but not catastrophic. But if it happens between April and November 2003, it
will be catastrophic. Really bad. It could eventually result in the death of two-thirds of humanity. "So stay active," he said. "If we are active, we can transform the planet. The elders watch to see what happens."****

Many Mayan elders and knowledge keepers may be eliminated in the next few years. For the first half of the current Katun (20-year period) the dark side has a lot of power. But that will pass 3 to 4 years from now. The tide can turn. Amazing things are going to happen.

****One simple but effective prayer technique is to light a white or baby-blue colored candle. Think a moment in peace. Speak your intention to the flame and send the light of it on to the leaders who have the power to make war or peace.****

We Have Work to Do

According to Mr. Barrios this is a crucially important moment for humanity, and for earth. Each person is important. If you have incarnated into this era, you have spiritual work to do balancing
the planet. He said the elders have opened the doors so that other races can come to the Mayan world to receive the tradition. The Maya have long appreciated and respected that there are other colors, other races, and other spiritual systems. "They know," he said, "that the destiny of the Mayan world is related to the destiny of the whole world."

"The greatest wisdom is in simplicity," Mr. Barrios advised before leaving Santa Fe. "Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness. It's not complex or elaborate. The real knowledge is free. It's encoded in your DNA. All you need is within you. Great teachers have said that from the beginning. Find your heart, and you will find your way."

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“God speaks to everyone all the time"

Tijn Touber

Author of the international bestseller Conversations with God, Neale Donald Walsch reflects upon God’s role in our lives and what we can do to make a better world.

One dark night back in 1992, Neale Donald Walsch sat down and wrote a letter full of self-pity to God. He never expected to get an answer. But he did get them—books full. His Conversations with God series has since been translated into 34 languages and has given millions around the world a fresh perspective on spirituality and religion. Walsch’s God is not an inaccessible, distant, wrathful being who looks down at us from heaven, but an intelligent, involved and humourous observer of life on Earth. Moreover, God has a plan to deliver humanity from its self-imposed suffering. And you can be a part of it.

Walsch clearly remembers that dark night when his conversations with God began. He was 49, burned out, unemployed. His wife had just left him. Things couldn’t get worse. Walsch couldn’t sleep and he thought: “What kind of God would tolerate so much suffering? What’s the point of all this? And why isn’t my life working?” He decided to write an angry letter to God. Walsch says, “To my surprise, when I had written the last of my bitter, unanswered questions and was just about to put my pen down, my hand continued to hang above the paper. Suddenly the pen started writing as if it were self-propelled. What appeared on the paper was: ‘Do you really want an answer to all these questions or are you just pouring out your heart?’ Before I knew it, I had started a dialogue.”

Four years later, the result of his nightly communications appeared in book form: Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue. The book was a bestseller in no time, thanks not only to God’s original answers but the way the conversation between God and Walsch unfolded. In an informal way, Walsch asked precisely those questions many people have been wanting answers to for ages. Moreover, his light, humourous writing style makes this heavy material palatable.

Walsch’s message is familiar to many because he speaks from experience and uses numerous events from his own life to make his point. For example, he says, “I was raised as a strict Catholic and one of the rules I learned was that I couldn’t eat meat on Fridays. Otherwise, the priest said, you would be sent to limbo in hell. Although no one new exactly what that was, it sounded serious. But one Good Friday I accidentally ate some meat. When I found out, I panicked. I ran home, but even my sweet, understanding mother couldn’t console me.”

Many years later a papal decree declared that eating meat on Fridays was no longer a sin. Walsch wonders, “What should God tell all those poor people who ate meat and are now in hell’s limbo?” He imitates God, looking down with a slightly embarrassed look and says with a heavy voice: “Sorry, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

It’s really quite something to claim that God is giving you direct answers to your questions. Walsch is thoroughly aware of that. In the introduction to his first book he writes, “My life would probably be much easier if I had kept all this quiet. But whatever inconveniences the book may cause me, such as being called a blasphemer, a fraud or hypocrite, or—perhaps worse—a holy man, it is not possible for me to stop the process now.”

Ten years after his first book was published, Walsch is taking stock. He has, indeed, been denounced and accused of sacrilege. But an overwhelming majority of the readers express deep gratitude. Walsch says, “Millions of people have read these books, and the reaction that I have received from them has been overwhelmingly positive. Of course, I am not naive enough to assume that there is no disagreement with what has been written here. Some people who have read the books disagree completely, and some disagree without even having read the material, based on what they have heard from others. But this is as it should be.”

With his beard, shoulder-length hair, refined features and the fatherly glint in his eye, Walsch looks a little like the God that Renaissance painters like Leonardo da Vinci tried to emulate. In any case, he in no way resembles the stressed-out man he was in 1992. His eyes no longer burn with anger. At most, there’s a hint of holy fire—a passion to convey God’s message to humanity and to give shape to a new spirituality on Earth.

But how can Walsch be so sure he’s actually talking to God? Walsch replies, “How can anyone be sure of anything? It is my felt experience. The information I have received includes statements, concepts and ideas that I have never heard anywhere else, never read anywhere else, never encountered in my life—and that ran against my own belief system at the time. So I am at least clear on one thing: This is not something that I ‘made up.’”
He raises an eyebrow: “What is the process of creation anyway? Where does anyone receive inspiration for anything? Who inspired Mozart? Michelangelo? Thomas Jefferson? I believe if these people could speak today, they would say that they were inspired by God. So then we get down to simple semantics. ‘Inspired’ by God or ‘conversing’ with God—what is the difference?”

It is this type of clear statement that has inspired millions of Walsch’s readers to rethink their relationships with God and creation. Walsch’s impact is so big because he makes skilful use of modern communication tools. The former radio reporter and amateur actor knows that it is not only the content of a message that is important, but the presentation.

Walsch doesn’t make any effort to convince people he’s right. In fact, he doesn’t consider it terribly relevant whether God is or is not speaking to him directly: “The only real issue with regard to this material is not ‘Where did it come from?’ but ‘Does it have any value?’ That’s the issue. That’s the question. Read the messages and see if they have any value to you.”
And Walsch doesn’t claim God only speaks through him. On the contrary, he continually emphasizes that God speaks to everyone all the time. “The question is not ‘To whom does God speak?’ The question is ‘Who listens?’”
Walsch admits that learning to listen was none too easy, particularly in the early days when God first revealed himself to Walsch. “Sometimes months went by before there were two paragraphs on paper. I only understood later that it wasn’t because of God, but me.”

Like many of his readers, Walsch has greatly changed as a result of delving into probing lessons, such as “There are two basic emotions that rule the universe—fear and love—and every person can always choose.” Or that “God doesn’t judge you; at most you do it yourself.” Or “Life is not a school of learning; it’s a creative process.” Of course these insights are not all new. Past messengers presented similar words of wisdom in the name of God. Which is precisely the message from Walsch’s God. In Conversations, God says: “I have given you so many signs, but you don’t listen. This book is one more sign.”

Could this really be the same God who once revealed himself to Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and others? “Yes,” he responds. “I believe that God tells the same thing to each and every messenger—which is why so many of the major underpinnings of human theology are identical from religion to religion. I believe that the difference in opinion that we see from messenger to messenger with regard to God can be attributed to the fact that each messenger brings the wisdom of God through the filter of the culture, traditions, background and understandings of their time.”

Does this mean we can add Neale Donald Walsch to the select group of prophets who have brought a direct message to humanity from God? Walsch believes that the idea that there are only a handful of exclusive messengers is outdated: “There are no ‘exclusive messengers.’ All the doctrines of all the religions which claim that their messenger is the ‘exclusive’ messenger of God are in error. They are mistaken. You are a messenger of God. Every one of you. Your life, lived, is your message. If you don’t like the message you are sending, then send another one. Change your mind about yourself, change your mind about life, change your mind about God, and you will change your world.

“The whole point of the Conversations with God books is that all of us are having a conversation with God all of the time; we just don’t know it. We have been culturalized away from acknowledging God as the source of our inspirations. So we call them ‘serendipity,’ or ‘women’s intuition,’ or ‘a stroke of genius,’ or ‘coincidence’ or whatever else we can get away with in a society which increasingly removes itself from any mention of a direct connection with God.”

Walsch explains that we’ve forgotten how to listen to God: “The major religions say something like this: God spoke a couple of thousand years ago to his Son, the Prophet, Krishna. Since then He has been silent.

“The irony of all this is that it is often religions themselves which tell us that we do not and cannot have a direct connection with God. They must tell us this, or they cannot in any way attract or command our allegiance. We must believe that these religions are our doorway to God. Otherwise we would abandon them. Given the way many of them are acting, we are ready to abandon them anyway.”

Walsch believes that most of our problems are in fact due to religious ideas: “Our religious systems have led to death and violence, social injustice and widespread poverty as well as an increasing gap between rich and poor. They have created ruthless competition, caused children to die of starvation, women to be mistreated and raped and have oppressed societies. Religion has brought us more grief than happiness, more war than peace and more hate than love for our fellow man than we’d like to admit.

“Religions,” he continues, “have taught us that there is an absolute system of separation and superiority whereby God is the highest authority and the lowest echelons are populated by those who don’t want to accept God as God wishes. Moreover, religions have convinced us that there is a whole system of revenge that makes quick work of those who refuse to accept God’s will when it comes to these issues. Nearly all institutionalized religions based on exclusion speak repeatedly of an angry, jealous and harsh God who uses violence and death, and who forgives the use of violence and death as a means of solving religious conflicts. If you think this is tough language, simply consult the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, the Book of Mormon or the texts of other major religions. According to the Bible alone, over a million people were destroyed by the hand of God or on His authority.”

Walsch sees his sharp criticism of religions as an attempt to help find real solutions to the planet’s problems: “As long as we disagree about the reasons behind human dysfunction, all our efforts to put an end to it will lead to nothing. This is also the reason why we continue to try and solve our problems along political, economic or even military lines. But this is not a solution because the problems facing our world are of a spiritual nature. They have to do with what we believe.”

The image humans have of God is particularly ripe for an overhaul. “The image that has been formed and developed throughout the ages by many religious institutions has affected us deeply. What if this image is wrong? What if it is a faulty version of a faulty vision? What I want to ask the institutionalized religions is whether they would be willing to thoroughly examine their doctrines to see if a few of them might not be urging us towards war, not peace.”

That question is not as radical as it seems. It goes without saying that in every other area of society, people test and substantiate their assertions—especially when they label these assertions “reality,” Walsch points out, “Imagine that scientists thought along the same lines as religious leaders and one day they declared, ‘OK people, we have all the information. The final words have been spoken. Starting now we won’t think for ourselves anymore, we won’t ask any complicated questions and we’ll rely on just one source.’ We would consider that absurd! It’s high time we reassessed our primary assumptions about ourselves, God and life.”

Of all the concepts about God, Walsch believes one in particular is the most damaging: “One of the most serious misconceptions is the idea that God is inaccessible, that God is separated from us. This divisive way of thinking has alienated us from ourselves and from creation. It has also led to a divisive economy and divisive politics, a divisive sociology and divisive religion. But we are all One, there is no separation between us and God, between us and life or between us and each other. This is a freeing, rather than a constricting, theology, freeing humanity from the oppression of its beliefs in a righteous, jealous, angry, demanding, exclusive, vindictive, vengeful and violent God, and offering people the freedom to follow their natural impulse to seek and experience the Divine.”

According to Walsch, the transition to this inclusive way of thinking will be the most difficult humanity has faced. “We’ve become accustomed to allowing God to do our dirty work and doing the most horrible things in His name: ‘God wants me to drop bombs on Baghdad, God wants me to bring down the Twin Towers.’ But imagine, for a moment, that God doesn’t want anything at all from us?”

He lets the question hang in the air for a moment, then adds: “My message is the message of a God who wants and requires nothing from the human race, but whose purpose is simply and gloriously to empower humanity to recreate itself anew in each moment in the next grandest version of the greatest vision we ever held about who we are.”

If God wants nothing from us, then the responsibility for happiness and sadness, poverty and wealth, pollution or sustainability—in short: heaven and hell—rests firmly where it belongs: with us. If God wants nothing from us, then it really is up to us to take on those responsibilities. How? “It is high time we reinvented ourselves,” Walsch counsels, “ to no longer see God as a separate entity but as an all-embracing reality.”

Neale Donald Walsch is optimistic that this can take place: “Shift happens.”

Neale Donald Walsch has written the following books, among others: Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue (Penguin Group, 1996), Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 2 (Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 1997) and Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 3 (Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 1998).

Ode Magazine

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