©11-16-09 by Donna Cunningham, MSW
How many impossible things can YOU believe before breakfast? There are a vast panopoly of them out there on the circuit as people yearn for comfort and hope in these troubled times. This weekend I went to a workshop led by New Age icon. The small room at the metaphysical bookstore was filled to the rafters—60 devoted seekers in a space that the fire department probably only certified for 30.
At first I thought maybe we were going to have a sweat lodge. I tensed up and tried to remember my CPR training, but not a whiff of sage did I catch, so I relaxed a bit.
The icon’s husband got up first and started the two hour workshop with a 20 minute commercial for her many, many books, tapes, and DVDs. This gentle soul’s obvious pride in his wife’s accomplishments was endearing. After a bit, the fact that he was incoherent and rambling didn’t bother me all that much. I grew up around incoherent and rambling. Families like that are pretty much core curriculum for spiritual studies.
Enter the icon. The first th
ing I noticed—and the thing I focused on most often during the two hours of fidgeting and squirming on the tiny folding chair and wondering when it would end—was her lovely designer blouse, a rayon print that was a work of art. I coveted it. I used to have blouses like that when I was active on the lecture circuit. Before I retired.
She was okay and I eventually got to like her, but she was as unfocused as her husband. She covered 160 billion years of earth’s history, but not without moving constantly back and forth through geological epochs, seemingly at random. She used a multitude of arcane terms with very specific meanings that she would occasionally define. That she managed all this without a shred of pretentiousness won me over in the end.
The lecture supposedly was about time acceleration. That’s something I’ve wondered about—have you noticed it too? I’d signed up for the workshop, hoping for some clarity, but it was really about the Mayan Calendar. I hesitate to confess it, because it’s horrendously non-PC , but I don’t actually CARE about the Mayan Calendar. We have quite enough on our hands with the current transit. My focus is on finding ways we can all get through each day of this shit storm we’re in. Excuse my language.
Don’t get me wrong. She’s a good person and extremely intelligent—I came to respect her obvious skill as a healer—and by the end of the two hours, I had a basic orientation to the Mayan Calendar. I was relieved to learn that she, too, does not believe the world is going to end in 2012, and that she mistrusts the fear mongering as propaganda being used to control us.
What was much harder to believe was her conclusion about the end of the calendar—that it would usher in a huge evolutionary leap for humankind so that we’d suddenly become a much higher life form. A growing number of New Age folks cling to that belief for comfort in these really dark times.
I find this theory extremely difficult to swallow when I listen to the news and observe what vile things humans in massive numbers are d
oing to one another. Yes, there are many good people, many who have pursued spiritual disciplines avidly from the 1960s onward.
But it’s a time of extreme polarization unlike any I’ve ever seen. The more EVOLVED some of us become, the more an equal number of us DEVOLVE into despicable, cruel, dishonest and violent behavior. What was that old saying? For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Something like that
So, no, I don’t honestly buy that by the end of 2012 we’ll suddenly become a whole new species of Übermensch filled with loving kindness and divine wisdom. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. Meet me on New Year’s morning 2013, and we’ll compare notes over margaritas at brunch.
I do know what’s wrong with me, why I’ve got this jaundiced outlook. I’m getting older, and one’s abilities to believe 10 impossible things before breakfast atrophy with age. I’m a bit off my game nowadays, but when I first started on the spiritual path, in my 20s, I had the most remarkable capacity to embrace the impossible.
Back in the day, I could believe almost anybody right under the table. People were absolutely in awe of the number of impossible things I could accept on any given day. They were struck dumb by it—or possibly just flabbergasted by the teachings I swallowed whole.
No, no, I don’t want your pity at my loss of innocence. I’ve had my halcyon era of beautiful ideas to believe in and be awed and inspired by. I’m in my later 60s, as those of you who persist in sneaking a look at my birth chart online know.
I’m stuck with reality, like it or lump it, but there’s a certain satisfaction in having a bit of wisdom and hard-won common sense to use in facing today’s challenges. And I love writing what I’ve learned in all these years on this blog to share with you. I’m just saddened by all the suffering in the world around me.
WANT TO SEE AN UTTERLY HILARIOUS CARTOON THAT NONETHELESS IS A PERFECTLY RATIONAL EXPLANATION FOR THE MAYAN CALENDAR’S SUDDEN END? Click here: http://bizarrocomic.blogspot.com/2009/12/countdown-to-catastrophe.html. (Warning: you may be on that blog for a while, laughing uncontrollably.)
Enough with Pluto and Saturn for today! Here are some other posts on this blog you may or may not find funny, depending on whether your sense of humor is as weird and warped as mine:
- Clients Say the Darndest Things!
- Spotlight on Leo—a Tale of three Queens
- The Law of Progressive Annoyance—Mars or Jupiter?
- Hyperactive Jupiter Syndrome—The Down Side of an Upbeat Planet
- Beam Me Up? I don’t THINK so!!
Sign up for a subscription, and get a FREE EBOOKLET for Skywriter Subscribers Only: Mothers, Daughters, and the Moon, a 50-page excerpt from The Moon in your Life. Read more about it here: NEW: FREE BOOKLET FOR SKYWRITER SUBSCRIBERS! If you’re already a subscriber and want a copy, forward the most recent email post to me at moonmave@spiritone.com. To sign up for a subscription, go to the top right hand corner of the blog and click on “Subscribe.” Then send me an email with your subscription confirmation or an email post with a request for the booklet in the subject
Sky Writer 
i wanted you to know that you are not alone. As a matter of fact, I am perplexed and amazed at how much nonsense people will greedily believe; under the guise of religion, comradery, or making money.
and they never seem to learn either.
By: mimi on November 17, 2009
at 2:38 pm
It’s always a temptation to hope for a big dramatic deus ex machina to come along and solve all our problems for us. Alas, it seems we generally have to solve them ourselves, with a little help from our friends. But, so often, we do! (Even if not quite so fast or easily as we would like to.)
By: Margaret D. on November 17, 2009
at 5:18 pm
HI, folks–thanks for all your comments. It’s good to know that I’m not the only skeptic. I have to laugh at myself–I get so nervous when I post something non-PC like that, but I’ve sworn to be more self-revealing on this blog, so I swallow hard when I hit “publish,” and then keep myself from hitting “delete” right afterwards. Donna
By: Donna Cunningham on November 17, 2009
at 6:35 pm
Donna, Thank your for the chuckles. I’m still laughing as I write this! Would love to join you for a margarita anytime:) Your comments made me think of Redfield’s Celestine Prophecy. I read that in my 30s. Each chapter sucked me in deeper and deeper. I KNEW exactly what he was talking about because I had experienced first-hand many of the miracles of synchronicty he wrote about and the varioius New Age ideas. THEN I got to the chapter about folks just starting to disappear as they attained a higher vibration — and that’s where I had to stop. That’s where he lost me. ……It is interesting though the chain of events that connect the dots. Just last week I found myself on an interesting cyber trip following a customer’s web site and her subsequent links she recommended. Before I knew it, I was getting a crash course in child labor law development. Heartbreaking photos taken across America in 1908-1912 by one Lewis Hines helped set the stage for reform which was finally made into law in 1941!!!! No, I don’t buy any ‘overnight’ transformation. History and all the facts point to very slow and painstaking progress for humanity. Sad but true.
By: Trishia Jacobs on November 17, 2009
at 6:06 pm
Heard it all before. Dont see anyone ascending & have not met anyone with more evolved DNA……don’ t think my evolution is speeding up. I am with you, Donna. It is all we can do to keep up our strength and good intentions on a daily basis. Remember Y2K?
Molly
By: molly on November 17, 2009
at 8:14 pm
I’m glad you’re writing the way you are. Let me quote from a comment Deborah Steinberg (http://deborahsteinberg.com/) left on my blog:
“I refuse to fall into the tip-toeing writer trap.”
By: nray on November 18, 2009
at 6:33 am
Hi Donna, thanks for your jupiter/neptunian commentary, sprinkled with a healthy dose of saturn and mercury! i guess everyone wants ‘an answer’ to the perplexing problems we face and hence, the popularity of such gurus. i try to take their advice in the spirit of 12-step programs: ‘take what you need and leave the rest’.
the more i read philosophy, thanks to some colleagues with that interest, the more i see that what a lot of gurus discuss isn’t different than what was said hundreds of years ago. i still appreciate the insight, however, and sometimes the comedy.
as for me, i’ll take a mimosa with my 2013 brunch!
By: kristy on November 18, 2009
at 6:56 am
Thanks, Kristy, Neeti, Molly, and Trishia. Sometimes I feel like I’ve devolved into a crusty old cynic, and sometimes I think I’m slowly regaining my senses. I am a student of spiritual teachings since my Saturn return–from the first Saturn return, that is, up through the second Saturn return and a quarter cycle past that. That’s not going to change–I still love these studies. But the world has already ended about three times since I started them, and I’m tired of it ending, already.
I was a HUGE Y2Ker, but in my defense, I believe that what I and a great many prescient people were percieving was not the computer roll-over itself, but instead we were sensing the approach of 9/11. It was looming on the horizon even then, and it didn’t just spontaneously happen that day, the plans for it had to be underway for a considerable time beforehand–first the dream, the seed of it in the terrorists’ minds and then the stage by stage buildup to it. And it WAS The End of the World As we Know It. Life has changed vastly since then.
By: Donna Cunningham on November 18, 2009
at 7:28 am
I’ll take a Bloody Maria, please, and eggs benedict.
Remember Fox Mulder’s poster that read “I want to believe.” Oh, my goodness. I have wanted to believe so many things that I just can’t anymore. Maybe it’s because I was in the banking industry during Y2K and it was obvious that nothing was going to happen to anyone’s money. The reality far outweighed the hype. Or maybe it’s age, like you say. I do sometimes mourn the loss of innocence that allows us to believe, and I do hold on to the hope that there is still some mystery that can be described as nothing less than magical, but reality is starting to bite hard.
You’re not alone, Donna.
By: cjwright on November 18, 2009
at 9:07 am
Nice blog Donna, its interesting how our hopes ideals change with age. Compassion and creativity live on regardless in my view. Maybe thats Vesta on my midheaven and four other asteroids in Pisces and the tenth?
kingsley
By: kingsley on November 18, 2009
at 4:48 pm
The Mayans sacrificed people to appease the gods. That does not instill within me confidence that they possessed any special knowledge about December 2012.
By: Tammy on November 19, 2009
at 10:05 am
I’m with you there, Tammy. And it was apparently their priests–their holy people–who chose the victims, often among those they viewed as threats. thanks, Neeti. Donna
By: Donna Cunningham on November 19, 2009
at 10:26 am
“their priests–their holy people–who chose the victims”
Not what I would call the act of spiritually enlightened prophets.
Even if there is a “planet x” that their astronomers found, which I don’t believe, it would still be farther away than Mercury is.
By: Tammy on November 19, 2009
at 3:49 pm
Per Donna’s OK, I’d like to point out that she has added a link to a chat room I started called Planet Earth Gets Real. I’d like to invite everyone to join in.
http://chatroll.com/planet-earth-gets-real
Trishia
By: Trishia Jacobs on November 26, 2009
at 9:35 am
I think you have had to deal with some dark stuff. That’s all. Keep things in perspective. Didn’t the Aztecs offer blood sacrifice on their temples in the 10,000’s until the conquistadors put a stop to it? Didn’t the Roman circus have its day?
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/aztec-sacrifice.htm
We have now. It is what we have.
By: kathryn on June 18, 2010
at 7:53 pm
Donna – you need some cheering up. Taylor Mali is just for you.
Speaking with conviction….
By: kathryn on June 18, 2010
at 7:59 pm
Speaking with candor, you might identify with this: https://skywriter.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/hyperactive-jupiter-syndrome%e2%80%94the-down-side-of-an-upbeat-planet/
By: Donna Cunningham on June 19, 2010
at 3:33 am
Thanks Donna – it is a good article. I guess I have a lot of earth energy (Taurus, lots of Capricorn, and learning Virgo) and I am born the same year within a few months of Obama. I suppose I don’t have a lot of patience with people who think things were so much better in some other golden age that they cannot see with their own eyes the truth of now – and it just makes me nutty. Simple things like public health – you were likely to die in childbirth last century if you were a woman – and if you made it through childbirth your kid was more than likely to die before adult hood. Things like Polio took people down – german measles, measles. Plague wiped out half of Europe – ok – that said – I used to be a devote of the whole New Age thing – but I find it idealistic, hero worshiping, narcissitic and again not dealing with here and now as here an now does not fit some ideal.
However – all you have to do is look at the pictures the Hubble telescope takes to realize that the universe is truly a miraculous place.
I have pluto conjunct north node and I have learned the hard way to be suspicious of people and their power games, and I have gotten to where I see right through it. I find a lot of the new age types have a power game. A big one.
That said I have seen Aurus and I have had precognitive dreams – but i am not an avatar. I think this is a very normal natural human ability that we used to survive in the forests and savanahs. If someone is preaching that they know everything – they don’t – they are on some kind of power trip – and i found that a lot in the new age community – which is why I got out.
A nice sane voice for the empathic abilities I have is Dr. Judith Orloff – sane, reasonable and definantly not on a power trip.
http://www.drjudithorloff.com/
Disillustonment with that whole new age thing is healthy I think.
Thanks for sharing the article.
By: kathryn on June 19, 2010
at 4:20 am
Hi, Donna,
Remember the crop circle craze of the 1980s? Wow! Did I fall for that one! Cosmic energies brought to Earth, blah, blah, blah. I watched every news report and talk show about them. About a year or so after I began playing with this philosophical toy, it was revealed to be a hoax. Oh, I was P.O.’d at first because my cosmic toy had been taken away, but I came to be grateful for the lesson this experience taught me about my own gullibility and responsibilty for what I choose (operative word) to believe, including astrology, much as I love it. Which brings me to December 2012. My theory is this: All those artisans who were assigned the task of chiselling those symbols and hieroglyphs (sp?) may have gone on strike, put down their tools and left the #^*%^$# calendar to take care of itself! Yes, I’m kidding, but mundane things happened in the ancient world, too.
Best regards, all, Amy
By: Amy on July 14, 2010
at 11:38 am
I read a book a couple years ago, 2012: Quetzacoatl (or something like that) and it mentioned this collective heightened state of consciousness that we’ll all reach and while our technology is developing and improving at a rapid rate I think you’re spot on by bringing up how poor some people still act. I can see a few people with a heightened state of consciousness but NOT everyone. Thanks for the great, entertaining post. I’m subscribing!
By: All County Insurance - Brea, California on February 16, 2011
at 12:10 pm
Well, I happen to KNOW that this and all that follows is the fault of the damned shape shifting lizard (reptillians) people who live under the government buildings and have created a second sun and run the Illuminati and Bilderbergers.They caused both the earthquakes and global warming by coming out from under the earth and using HAARP signals.
Tongue firmly in bitten cheek, there, but gadzooks, I know someone who actually believes the above crap.
By: MEL810 on April 8, 2011
at 11:16 am