I may as well confess that one of the reasons I've made a commitment to keep writing this blog is a profound fear of death.
I'm not quite as unhinged as when Tennyson undertook the mammoth 17-year task of writing In Memoriam A. H. H to come to grips with the passing of a very dear friend of his - and to keep from going mad from grief - but the sheer, animal fear on the bad days, and the duller-but-still-persistent existential malaise at the thought of annihilation, has fallen like a shockingly effective sound blanket - heh, couldn't resist the filmmaker allusion - on the buzz and hum that was my former drive for living.
It's rather hard to live well and to feel strong enough to tap whatever wit, passion or courage for adventure and growth one has if one is busy struggling, every day, with the idea that time is running out.
And it seems to be running out very quickly. And I go back and forth on this doom-laden stance, sometimes retreating to a more hopeful position, other times swinging back to preparing for the end.
But how did all this begin? Well, some months ago, I had finally signed up for a correspondence course on Astrology. The problem is, the course is offered by a mystery school whose founder and supporters are, as I write this, preparing for a cataclysmic disaster the like of which will render 90 percent of life on the planet dead. To wit: they're preparing for pole shift - as in the shifting of the earth's axis, not to be confused with a shift of the planet's magnetic poles - and are warning those who visit the site and are open to the thought of the end of life as we know it, to resettle in latitudes greater than 65 degrees North.
Effectively, that means within the present Arctic circle.
As I have understood it, this planetary event is meant to occur on December 21, 2012, at the end of the Mayan long count or 'calendar', after which 'life' will continue, but only those evolved enough to survive the energy shift - which is apparently the true cause of the pole shift - and who, presumably, have relocated to the Arctic circle in time - will be around to experience it. The rest of sentient life will physically perish and be reincarnated into other worlds of a lower energy vibration - suited to their level of spiritual evolution.
In this scenario, what I fear most is dying of fear or somehow surviving to find people closest to me dead and a new stone age beginning.
Now, there are other sites in the New Age blogosphere that argue the labours of 'lightworkers' of every kind from around the world has 'ameliorated' the prophesied changes to the lesser (though still deadly to many) natural disasters we are currently dealing with, and that the earth's changes are a mirror of the true transition - the heightening in spiritual consciousness - that all of life - including humankind - is experiencing.
Some also argue that the material world is not what we think it is, but a common dream/illusion we are choosing to participate in.
Still others believe we are living in the 'end times' apparently foretold in the sacred writings of several religions and faith traditions, not least those of indigenous peoples, the Bible, and those who claim to be in touch with the earth's spiritual masters - the mysterious Heirarchy.
This camp believes that, on December 21, 2012, those who are evolved enough to endure living in the fifth dimension - or, at any rate, on some sort of multidimensional plane where linear time no longer exists - will be taken up to other levels of existence, some versions have the process aided by far more evolved aliens in spacecraft (the New Age version of the Biblical 'rapture') - while the rest of humanity will undergo the dreaded Tribulation mentioned in the Bible's Book of Revelations - which apparently entails physical phenomena such as land masses disappearing (eg. much of Southern California and New York) extreme volcanicity, earthquakes and ultra-powerful winds. Meanwhile, the moon will disappear temporarily and all will be pitch darkness.
After the end of these terrors - which in some versions last about a week, but the timing is sketchy - those fortunate few who 'ascended' before the calamity will be returned to rebuild the earth and usher in a new golden age.
Now, ordinarily, a sceptic like myself would have rejoiced at the mention of aliens - not because I don't believe there aren't other inhabited worlds out there - but because my mind just sort of shuts down at such a quasi-comical, Sci-Fi B-movie-plot-sounding scenario.
I might also have taken heart from all the New Age blogs writing about the apparent new generations of spiritually-evolved and highly-gifted kids (the Indigo, Crystal and Rainbow children) being born to assist this incredibly powerful transition to a new Earth and new spiritual plane.
And then there's the fact that several discount the idea of the Mayan long count being an actual numerical calendar - arguing that it was meant to be symbolic, and not actually chronologically linear, not to mention that many such folks also believe the 'true' Mayan count comes to an end on October 28, 2011.
However.
Somehow, deep, deep within, I fear our collective annihilation just the same. It could be just that I am supremely sensitive to suppressed Collective fears (actually, I am - no doubt about it) and that we're all experiencing the despair borne of the enormously impulsive, savage, fundamentalist and commercially greedy era of Pluto (bringer of death and transformation) in the sign of Sagittarius (the Higher Mind, religion, Truth with a capital 'T', philosophy, higher learning, restless travelling and reckless optimism).
It could be all of the above and the fact that I have desperate-for-security Saturn in Cancer, which has also recently been rattled by the transit of Mars in Cancer (currently retrograde and heading back into Gemini) opposing Pluto at the end of Sadge and about to enter Capricorn towards the end of January 2008 AND the fact that my growing interest in Baha'i has led me to learn of Abdu'l-Baha's prediction of a calamity such as "to make the limbs of men quake" that must be endured before a new age of unity and peace can begin.
At any rate, even if we're not going to be wiped out by pole shift in 2012, as of now, we're sure as hell plunged up to the neck in crisis with the mounting danger of climate change and the potential collapse of civilisation as we know it, given the increasing demand on shrinking resources. Can we all work together to stop the grim countdown that the eco-crisis seems to portend?
I don't know.
What I do know is that I have to find a way of breaking through the sheer paralysis from fear when I contemplate famines, droughts, heightened earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes, savage wars over life-sustaining territory and a million different ways to die - or survive on a planet that could prove hostile in ways unimaginable to someone born and raised in the privileges of the Developed World.
At any rate, if this really is a countdown to some catastrophe from which few shall escape with their lives, I pray I may be used to help and heal people and be as creative as I can. I had great hopes for my life, but of late I have had to entertain, more and more, the idea that I am truly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. 'I' have, more and more, ceased to exist. At least the old me, that used to want fame and a successful film career and professional respect.
How can I be important when innocent babies are born to the torment of life in a Darfuri refugee camp or the open air concentration camp that is beseiged Gaza or the ravaged, war-torn Iraq or Afghanistan or a million other places where people live in poverty, anguish, hunger, suffering and despair.
I should rejoice in the knowledge, then, that I am truly insignificant. And yet, there is a part of me that wants to live. To live expressing my highest, most wise, most compassionate, most creative self, for however long or brief that might be. May I choose wisely as time thunders to 2012, and may I be receptive to being used by God in service to others, however it best pleases the Universe.
Funnily enough, having mulled over these thoughts as I took my walk today, Christmas day in the West, once at home, I stumbled on a poem I apparently wrote October 22, 1999, and had completely forgotten about. It's rather rough - a sonnet of all things (Petrarchan for those who care, though it slips up in the sestet to rhyme cdcdcc for some reason...) that I must have intended to return to and refine, but put out of my mind instead. A strange synchronicity, given that it reads:
Stopped Time
There are those words that are far better stored
within the heart than uttered by the tongue.
And if such occult hymns are muted sung
impatient ears must hearken to the bawd,
whose music both offends and pleases, poured
brazen from more wanton lips. For naught, young-
er and less experienced notes softly hang
in unrequited hush, to be ignored.
I may grow lean, grey-pallored, dull of eye,
abbreviate my steps, speak slower yet,
but age, which brings me greater wit, will play
not winter on these pipes. Still green, bereft
of voice, I wither on and on, to be
love’s stoppered vial, in dumb eternity.
If, beyond 2012, I am alive, I will have been reborn, indeed. Become 'immortal' one might say, since, as far I can make out, you can only die once in any given incarnation! Either way, it will be a very interesting countdown to my 37th year - particularly as Pluto inches towards my natal Moon in Capricorn.
A profound death and resurrection awaits.
