Dear Planetary Family

It has been said that if you are living on this planet at this historic time, your Soul chose to be here to participate in the Great Shift of the Ages. Indigenous Maya, Hopi, Iroquois, Vedic and Mongolian traditions of wisdom (to name just a few) share the same perspective: that the closing of the 26,000 year Mayan Calendar Cycle on December 21, 2012 assists us to leave behind the Old Paradigm of exploitive power.

A profound choice point has arrived. What is happening with this process of the Great Shift of the Ages as we journey into 2013?

As humanity struggles with the consequences of millennia of self-serving love of power, we are collectively making the Great Turning. Individually and collectively, we are grappling with the New Paradigm, that of oneness– one planetary family. We are realizing that All Life is interconnected. We are each unique expressions of the One Life.

The new Mayan Calendar count has begun. The Maya and other Indigenous cultures are continuing to track the next 26,000 year astronomical cycle of five Long Counts as they continue to interpret how the cosmic forces of Creation are influencing human evolution towards higher consciousness.

The newly arriving Cosmic and Solar energies are seen by many Indigenous Elders as empowering our return to unity. The impressive Galactic Alignment that occurred December 21- 22, 2012 is seen as delivering to Earth unprecedented cosmic support for us to shift into a New Earth consciousness: the power of Love. ♥ Unprecedented Cosmic Support

When Ac Tah, Mayan spiritual teacher from the Yucatan, was in Pittsburgh at the end of 2012, he spoke about this Galactic Alignment: The Earth, our Moon and our Sun aligned with the Dark Rift (the Dark Hole) our Milky Way Galaxy. Such an alignment is known by the Maya to occur only at the closing of each 26,000 year cycle that their Calendars track. Ac Tah described this alignment as functioning like a great Cosmic mirror, harnessing and magnifying all these synchronized frequencies of Oneness and beaming them, laser-like, to Earth.

I was astonished to personally discover an even more profound planetary line-up than I had been prepared for. When I viewed the cosmic event in real time, on my “Planet Finder” smart-phone “app,” in addition to the Earth-Moon-Sun-Dark Rift alignment, I also witnessed Neptune, Mars, Mercury, Venus and Saturn. They were all visible in a straight arrow line-up on either side of the Sun.

After I shared my visual experience of this rare Galactic Alignment with my 91 year old Mother, she later told me, “I keep thinking about that cosmic line-up you saw. I think that is the perfect way for the Deity to send Love to the planet. Every day I think about that, and I feel so grateful.” Me too, Mom!

With this Cosmic energetic support, it will likely become easier to mobilize, find collaborators of like-vision, and take transformational action. In fact, it may feel increasingly compelling to do so. The New Earth of peace and harmony is created from our empowered, aware choices. As the Hopi prophecy reminds us, “WE are the Ones….”

Yet at the same time, on our world stage we are painfully aware of extreme news stories depicting cruel acts of violence, domination and control. In our personal lives, there are still intense challenges. Many are exhausted, cynical, despairing. How do we make sense of this relentless process of challenge and breakdown, and still maintain hope for and commitment to the necessary transformation?

♥ The Necessary Turbulence of Changing Direction

Few can escape the impact of this profound personal and planetary turmoil as we emerge from the closing of the old cycle and its concluding Galactic Alignment, moving from 2012 to 2013. It can help to know that this is a necessary chaos. Indigenous teachers, such as Ohky Simine Forest explain that the extreme turbulence we are experiencing is created by the changing of evolutionary directions, from the life-destroying direction of separation, greed and domination to the life-serving direction of oneness, sharing, and greater good.

Think of it this way: Observe what happens as you stir your coffee or tea counter-clockwise. Now change the direction of your stirring to clock-wise. When the spoon you are moving through the liquid changes directions, it creates a perturbation, a turbulent energy in the waters. Likewise, this pervasive sense of planetary turbulence is an expression of our necessary correction of evolutionary direction. This is where we stand in the process of our transformation on Earth.

We are in the chaos of reversing directions, before the coherent momentum of the new evolutionary direction of our stirring gathers into a visible force. Thank Heavens we are receiving unprecedented Cosmic support! We need it!

So how do we shift into the desired experiences of interconnection, compassion and oneness as we emerge from millennia of separation, fear and greed consciousness? How do we proceed?

♥ The Breakdown is the Doorway to the Breakthrough

We proceed with awareness and conscious intention, aligned with committed action. We proceed empowered by the full consciousness of standing exactly where we are: grappling with the personal and planetary SHADOW, as it presents on both the inner and the outer Stage of Life.

Transformation requires that we enter into the Shadow of the wounded self and the broken world, without averting our eyes or going numb. Spiritual teacher Eckart Tolle describes the Shadow as the personal and the collective “Pain-Body,” and he describes the transformative power of allowing full awareness of “what is.” This process of awareness allows the breakdown to reveal the doorway to the breakthrough. We take responsibility for healing, for cleaning up the impacts of our inner and outer messes.

“Personal transformation creates planetary transformation,” as I am fond of saying.

Becoming clear about what we don’t want inspires the question, “what do you want instead?” And we “follow the Good.” As Barbara Marx Hubbard’s global Birth 2012 vision has proposed: Look for what is working. Find those making that happen. Join them.

♥ Global Stage: Patriarchal War on Women; Indigenous Honoring of Women

Currently one of the most intense and dramatic arenas of this global breakdown as humanity changes evolutionary directions is the escalating global war on women and the Feminine. The ending of our counter-evolutionary movement into separation consciousness includes the ending of Patriarchal domination– but not without the turbulence. The substantial progress in women’s rights globally during these last decades of the ending of the Mayan Calendar has met with a viscous backlash.

It is fascinating to me that the final Mayan Long Count of roughly 5,125 years marking the end of their Calendar coincides with the historic record of intensified Patriarchal systems of cultural and religious domination by the masculine. According to the Mayan Count, that cycle began on August 11, 3114 BCE. and it ended December 21, 2012. Patriarchy as the institution of power-over and domination is ending with this Long Count. And globally we see increased resistance to relinquishing the old idea of power as self-serving control and exploitation of others.

Filling the mainstream news airwaves the opening days of 2013: we learned about the Taliban bombings of schools for girls; the 14 year-old girl shot in the head by the Taliban for blogging that girls have a right to learn in Pakistan; the savage gang rape and murder of a female student on a bus in India; the Facebook video of a smirking Ohio male bragging that his friends were in process of gang-raping a girl…and multiple other violent exploitive stories.

It is stunning to notice that the evidence of an escalating global “war on women,” as mainstream media now labels it, is simultaneously being countered by an equally dramatic context, of global Indigenous ceremonies honoring women. But these alternate news headlines are not yet widely known….

Filling the “below the radar” news airwaves the opening days of 2013: Mayan Grand Elder, 13th Generation Mayan High Priest Don Alejandro conducted a ceremony to transfer the “Staff of Leadership” to Mayan Grandmother Flordemayo, representing the transfer of planetary power from the Masculine to the Feminine.

Don Alejandro and the men in this ceremony honored the women present on behalf of all women. This ceremony occurred in fulfillment of Mayan prophecies, and expresses their wisdom tradition of Balance, of maintaining a necessary balance of power through ensuring alternating cycles of gender authority. 2012 ended the cycle of male authority. Similar ceremonies were performed by many Indigenous Tribes all over the world, as documented with their permission by author and ceremonial collaborator Drunvalo Melchizedek. (per his books, Serpent of the Light Beyond 2012, and The Mayan Ouroboros)

The breakdown paving the way to the breakthrough is happening right now on the global stage, as these extreme events galvanize women worldwide into solidarity and united action. Seen as “women’s Arab Spring” and “the feminist tsunami,” the www.OneBillionRising.org  movement is inspiring masses of women and those who love them to come together on Valentine’s Day 2013. Gathering locally to express global solidarity, to “strike, dance, rise,” women are reclaiming dignity, ownership of their bodies, and celebrating their beauty, creativity and power…and “breaking the chains” of Patriarchal domination.

(One of the local Pittsburgh OneBillionRising.org events is scheduled from noon to 2 PM at Market Square downtown. Check out the website to locate, organize and/or support an event near you.)

So right here and now we witness the necessary turbulence of changing evolutionary directions. Humanity’s evolutionary task is to integrate opposites into Balance: the Masculine and the Feminine, the Human and the Divine, the Earth and the Cosmic. In this process of integration, we become Whole Persons able to co-create a Whole Planet…and to usher in the Golden Era of Peace.

♥ Embodying the Transformation: From Conqueror to Bodhisattva

The way I understand it, the Great Shift of the Ages is about “Being the change,” as Gandhi put it. EMBODYING the transformation…this requires each person’s inner shift from fear to embodying power—but a transformed power– the power to serve Life rather than to exploit it for self-serving ends.

This shift from the love of power to the power of Love changes the prevailing planetary archetype from the Conqueror to the Bodhisattva.

The Bodhisattva’s story is that even though she has reached personal enlightenment as the Goddess of Compassion, she refuses her reward of Nirvana. Instead she insists on remaining on Earth to assist ALL beings to become enlightened and able to ascend with her. I see THAT story as embodying the current transformation of the concept of “power.”

I am reminded of Marianne Williamson’s revolutionary quote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask, who am I to be brilliant…? Actually, who are you NOT to be?…Your playing small does not serve the world…As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

As I see it, we are exactly where we need to be on this sacred planet. We are facing our fears as we stand fiercely in the chaos of the Transformation, healing the Shadow of the personal and planetary Pain-Body. We are committing to the new direction of evolutionary movement towards wholeness and unity… with Bodhisattva consciousness.

From here we take a stand for the highest visions of the possible, based on what matters most. From here we begin the deepest most committed process of embodying the change we want to see in the world. As in: I AM the miracle. As in: I AM the highest path. As in:  I AM the home of Love. As in: I AM “Another Yourself” –which is the way Oneness is expressed in the Mayan greeting, “In Lak’esh”.

This New Earth of Oneness emerges from each and every one of us. We are not separate. I know this to be so. I will never forget the words given to me from the loving consciousness of Mother Earth at the sacred site of the Serpent Mound, as told in my story, The Seer and The Sayer: Revelations of the New Earth:

“I am in you. You are in me. We belong to each other.”

In Lak’eshHappy 2013. May we commit to bring such momentum to this evolutionary change of directions that the chaos does not have to endure long.

(I am Another Yourself),

Vikki Hanchin