2012: Nuts and Bolts

Scientifically-endowed people tell us that an observer is necessary to the quantum observer effect. But when you ask them how the quantum particle "knows" you are looking at it, and not looking out the window at the crows, they are forced back on to such slippery concepts as "nonlocality."

To my mind, this is just a backhanded way of suggesting that everything happens in the same place (and probably at the same time.) The salient point here is that the physical world appears to "know," at least at a quantum level, where our attention is directed.

One thing that this whole Mayan calendar thing has done is: it has directed the attention of many people toward contemplation of the galactic center. Does the galactic center "know" we are thinking about it? Strip away the usual connotations of "explaining away" an effect, and we may have the makings of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

My formative experiences with entheogens led, eventually, to an interest in Stanislov Grof's Holotropic Breathwork. His intellectually courageous assertion, that the study of planetary transits enables him to predict the thematic contents of breathwork sessions, led me to the work of, astrologer, Richard Tarnas. And it is largely his astrological perspective which informs my expectations.

Specifically, Tarnas suggests that the time a planet is discovered marks the point at which societies begin conscious and formal expression of that planetary energy. Thus, the discovery of Neptune, an energy which urges us toward transpersonal identification with the whole, marked the rise of institutionalized altruism as a shaping force on the world stage.

I have some reason to think that this may work on an individual level, as well. At least I imagine that my attention to current planetary positions, as they relate to my birth chart, has allowed me to express them a more conscious way. And I imagine that millions of people, the world over, contemplating the fact that we are riding a dust mote in a whirlwind might also lead toward a more-conscious perspective.

But to say it that way errs on the side of a faux-academic bloodlessness. Over the past five years I have experienced an unexpected arousal of kundalini activity. This has been accompanied by a heightened sensitivity and attention to things to which I was previously oblivious. But this new, subjective awareness comes with no instructions or explanations. On this subject, the net is a tower of blather and all of my ideas about it seem like yellowed fragments of last-century's newspapers.

Like a dog chasing its tail, and with full knowledge that it is probably a false-dichotomy, I have endlessly asked myself, "Is this something happening inside of me or everywhere around me?"

Wherever and whatever it may be, it feels good. I am softening to the idea that we really are undergoing a really, really momentous shift in human consciousness. Time and again I see people, in unlikely forums, abandoning the narrow and provincial for the expansive.

These days I pay a lot of attention to birds. I want to be outside, I want to know where they are, and I want to hear every sound they make. All of nature seems to be speaking to us, and I think people are really starting to listen.