Emails 2

In answer to a question about '2012'...

Ah, I think I get it! You're talking about the New Age, right? And these 'special times' we're living in, what with the Mayan calendar ending, 2012, the Aquarian age of enlightenment, and then everyone becoming a Messiah? Well...

To be honest, I wouldn't ever talk about those things with Shawn. He doesn't really care much for spiritual chit- chat, and neither do I. Haven't for a number of years, really. What's more, I don't really buy into all those ideas, I just think it's a load of new-age nonsense. One good thing about being at university and studying religion was finding out the origins of a lot of these new-age ideas. It's amazing how you can trace them back to maybe one or two people, and then see how they've evolved. Even ideas about things that are supposed to lead back thousands of years, and which I used to accept as truth, can sometimes be found to originate with the 'early new-agers' in the 19th and 20th century (people like Madame Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, and the spiritualists). It's amazing, really.

I think new-agers and western spiritual practitioners have really bought into this idea that we're living in special times, and that something wonderful is going to happen to them. It's not unlike the armageddon beliefs of the Christians, which people have believed were "just around the corner" for thousands of years. (And even the idea of an armageddon, or end-of- world-cycle can be traced back to the Persians; before that it was just kind of endless, really). I suppose in a way it's comforting to believe that we are somehow special, and to have a hope for the near future, but, to me, it's a hope not really based in much other than some ideas floated out by some strange and interesting people a few hudred years ago, which were then taken up by other writers and thinkers and spread as 'ancient wisdom and truth', the origins long forgotten. Even I was amazed to learn that the first mention of 'Atlantis' comes from Plato, in a made-up story. Before that, there's nothing - and yet it's become a part of the folklore. But folklore, fairy tales, and make-believe is what I think a lot of this is. Maybe that's a sad thought to some - taking away the hope of that glorious future in 2012 - but, to me, I find it quite liberating to live without these beliefs, satisfied with the present, and with the thought of a life that will go on for some fifty or sixty years mostly unchanged, on a planet that will remain mostly unchanged (give or take a little adjustment in the climate and pollution levels, etc), and then I'll die, and maybe be reborn, while my children and their children continue the wonderful mad game forever. Or until the sun burns out/explodes...

I think Mother Meera sums it up very well in Answers, when someone I imagine to be your typical Mayan-calendar-believing new ager asks, "what is my purpose in these special times?" and she replies, to paraphrase, "same as it ever was, remember the divine." You can almost hear the hope in the question, the hope that we're here for some special purpose, singled out as teachers, healers, lightworkers, etc - and it all falls apart in the simple light of reality. That's where I'm coming from.

But, I wonder, does that answer your question? :-)

With regards,
Rory