Me, at the Temple of Kukulkan in Chichen Itza, Mexico 2006
Yesterday was December 21, 2012, the end of the Great Cycle of the Mayan Long Count calendar. Unsurprisingly, the world did not go down in flames- nor was there a global higher consciousness shift.
Although I've tried to understand & admire the Mayan awareness of cosmic order, I've also always been skeptical of claims of some kind of drastic event or catastrophe happening on that date. I'm glad that it wasn't Doomsday, because I've got alot going on this weekend & I'm tying to celebrate Christmas!
Basically, all that happened was the passing of an artificial measure of time, created by the Maya of Mexico. The astronomers & mathematicians of the Mayan culture were brilliant. It's a tragedy that so much of their knowledge has been lost to human memory.
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The hype about prophecies & doomsday predictions overshadows the amazing ideas they had about the natural cycles of the universe. Their conception of time, and therefore their calendar, involve the cosmic scales that cosmologists & theoreticians grapple with today. Only the Maya didn't have integrated circuit computers or data analysis software. They had generations of observation, calculations, and meticulous record-keeping, all wiped out when the Church & conquistadors subjugated Central America.
I was fortunate to travel with my family to Mexico in 2006 & experience an amazing week. I have told many great stories about the week in the Yucatan, & I"ll never forget it. The highlight for me was visiting the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza. Walking into the main plaza, I was awestruck by the site of the famous Temple of Kukulkan. This classic pyramid is known for the staircase, which forms a shadow of a serpent down the pyramid, which ends at the bottom with a sculpted head of the feathered serpent. This only happens during the solstice, and to further align itself to the Sun, the total number of steps + the platform = 365, as in the solar year. Like the Egyptians, they encoded their cosmic wisdom into their monumental architecture.
So... we start a new cycle in that calendar, but Time is not bound by a man-made conception of it. Despite or memories of the past & mental models of the future, we are ever-present in the continuous flow of NOW.
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