What you make of it

This was in Alan Cohen's newsletter this month

What You Make of It


2012 is here. Finally. After many years of anticipation, sensationalism, foreboding, titillation, and wild prophecies, we’ve reached the end of the Mayan calendar. The era of momentous astrological configurations. World upheaval. Apocalyptic destruction. Dissolution of the world as we know it. Mass landing of UFOs. The spiritual ascension of humanity. The dawn of a new age. And on and on and on. . .
Prophets, authors, soothsayers, shamans, and Hollywood have had a field day predicting, explaining, and dramatizing the events to come. Will this year be a turning point in human history? Massive suffering leading to spiritual resurrection? The annihilation of evil and the restoration of virtue? The second coming of Christ? A redux of the Y2K dud? Just another year?
I have a prediction in which I am quite confident: 2012 will be what you make of it. Your whole life is what you make of it, and 2012 is no exception. Your thoughts, feelings, attitude, words, and actions will determine your experience and the events you attract. What you want and expect to happen will happen. If you are immersed in the Hollywood terror version of 2012, watch out. If you value the upliftment of humanity, transformation will ensue. If you expect just another year, so it will be. Your pen is scribing the novel of your world. What will you write?
The universe is brimming with infinite parallel realities. All events and experiences that have ever existed, do exist, will exist, or could exist, already exist. In one reality, the 2012 earth will be blown to smithereens. In another, the planet will be transfigured to heaven. In another, it will be the same ole’ same ole’. A dozen different movies are playing under one roof of the multiplex of life, and you sit in the theater that matches the ticket you paid for. In one room a love story is unfolding. In another, social and political drama keeps viewers on the edge of their seats. In another, bombs are exploding and the walls are shaking. One theater, many shows.
Just as in the multiplex, you are free to exit one theater and enter another. If you’re tired of the terrorist movie, you can watch a romance instead. If you’ve had it with drama, you can pick a comedy. If the horror movie gets too dark, try a kid’s feature. The theater manager will tell you that you have to stay where you have been sitting, but you can move if you want. Every reality is self-reinforcing, insisting that you keep playing by the rules it dictates. But the rules change from reality to reality. If you have the guts to change theaters, everything changes with you. A Course in Miracles reminds us, “I am under no laws but God’s.”
The Course offers a profound prophecy about how the world will end. “The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. . . The world will end in joy, because it is a place of sorrow. . . The world will end in peace, because it is a place of war. . . The world will end in laughter, because it is a place of tears.”
Werner Erhard noted that the world coming to an end would be the best thing that could happen, because the world as we know it has not been working very well. The institutions and systems to which we have looked for security are not serving their purpose, and need to be replaced by systems that actually help people. But we have to let go of what is not working before we can step into what would work better. We have to trust the process of transformation. Two caterpillars sat on the ground looking up at a butterfly flittering above the trees. “You’ll never get me up in one of those things,” one caterpillar remarked to the other.
The irony, of course, is that the caterpillar already is one of those things. While you and I envision a world transformed, we may be so steeped in the identity of who we have been and the “reality” of how things have been that the idea of living a better life in a new world may seem fantastic, even ludicrous or frightening. Yet the butterfly is so much freer than the caterpillar that any caterpillar in his right mind would be exhilarated to step into the dreamliner.
2012 will be the year of just such a transformation if we choose to make it so. Leave the hoo-ha to Hollywood and create the year you would have. Perhaps the end of the Mayan calendar signals that we will move beyond the limits of time as we have known it, and dwell in a consciousness free of time and space. Perhaps the changes we experience in and around us are the runway on which we take off to soar through skies we once only looked up at, but are now ready to explore.
All end times lead to beginning times. Now there’s a prophecy we can live with.

Mid, I agree with a lot of what Alan said. The parts I have difficulty with are the parts about "you(meaning one person) will see/feel/want such and such to happen and it will happen".

I don't usually think in terms of numbers (how many people of like mind does it take for a social change one wants to see happen happens, or the idea that there's not enough people of like mind out there to cause any real change to occur) but this time, numbers do seem to be important. For example, 10 million people focusing on the same cause, same details as to how to achieve it, using the same methodology, etc in a country of 300 million people CAN cause change. On the other hand so could a few hundred do the same. How do I know this? I'll give you an example: Back in 2003 I received an e-mail from a Shoshone elder who talked about the Yellowstone geysers, including Old Faithful was heating up rapidly and could trigger the super mega volcano underneath to explode. He asked people like myself to do a medicine/prayer circle in the old way to slow down the buildup and about a hundred of us did so the same weekend. The heating stopped. All this (the temperature rise and then the fall of the temperature) was noted, even mentioned in the national news (not the prayer circle part, of course) but nothing further was said about it. Did the hundred or so of us have a part in this? Or was it merely an unexplainable blip in the natural process of heating and cooling that goes on all the time.

I'll never know whether we did have a part in it. Nevertheless, I still continue to do my prayer work. I'm not counting on our media OR our science to either acknowledge this phenomena or not. We (persons like myself, regardless how many of us there is) just keep on focusing on helping out Mother Earth as best as we can.

For some, that's pretty arrogant of us to think we can help god, mother earth, or any such powerful force. Yet I still believe focused psychic energy towards the same cause for the good of all mankind and the planet itself is what is meant by the statement that we are all part of what is being created as we speak in our world, both social, physical and spiritually. And therefore, without being arrogant about it, I can say we are all part of "god", ie., the force that is constantly working for the betterment of mankind and this planet and that the way it which it is done is always changing, but the purpose never changes. So in a nutshell, whether there are millions of us or just a few of us wanting and then focusing our psychic energy on the desired changes, we just keep on doing it.

That doesn't hurt. It ain't easy, but it surely can't hurt, my dear. Aho!

I think he just means we create our own reality. Which is what the course says, as well as the "Secret" and many others.