Article by Ralph Miller

We are now within five years of the fateful December 21, 2012
date which is ostensibly the day that a radical change will
occur on the planet, possibly even a catastrophic change. I
recommend reading my first article on this subject entitled,
The 2012 Problem which discusses the difficulty in pinpointing
a singular date as a hinge point for some great transition.

Rather, I believe the December 21, 2012 date to be a symbol

that exists as an extraordinary irony. Any particular date is a
man created marker denoting the concept of a point in time. If
you consider that events could happen before a date or after a particular date, then our
concept of ‘time’ would also by implication denote the passage of time. I find this ironic
since the great transition or evolution we may be approaching surely has to do with
complete renovation of our time consciousness or even the eradication of time itself. It’s
quite likely time is easily eradicated since it really doesn’t exist in the first place! Time is a
notion or a perspective. It is not a tangible thing unto itself. Time is the result of our
habitual observation of things and events, and how we have learned to mark their existence
or occurrence.

In any event December 21, 2012 is the date that the ancient Mayan calendar comes to a
conclusion. This end of a great cycle in Mayan prophesy coincides with similar prophesies of
other indigenous peoples like the North American Hopi. The great angst people across the
globe share about the condition of humankind and the planet itself suggests that a rapid
transformation and change could happen. We are like the animals that can sense the storm
coming and head for cover. It may be unavoidable.

In speaking about our collective angst I am referring to a plural consensus that exists
across almost all national boundaries, that is a concern about dwindling resources and about
what seem to be insurmountable environmental and political problems. It would seem that
humankind goes from one crisis to the next. We exist in a constant state of alertness
awaiting the next news of a new war, or rocketing costs of living, or the currency we use to
buy things dwindling in its value. The Al Gore film, An Inconvenient Truth was hugely
successful worldwide, and has galvanized mainstream thinking around the idea of climatic
change due to carbon emissions.

We recently heard that the world’s human population will reach 7-billion by 2012.
Population is now growing so rapidly that there has been a four-fold increase in just the last
100 years! When graphed this growth is termed exponential or asymptotic and the trend
line is kind of J-shaped.

Population growth occurred at a constant rate for 10,000 years (A in the graph below) until
the Black Death swept across the European continent and resulted in a decline of one-fourth
of all humans on earth. Then during a relatively short period of only 62 years, the
Guttenberg Bible was printed in 1455, Columbus sailed to the West Indies in 1492, and
Martin Luther put forth his 95 Theses in 1517. Thus you had the printed word, the dawn of
the age of discovery and the Christian reformation occurring almost simultaneously.

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If you consider that the commonly held belief of the time was that of a relatively small flat
earth; the journey of Columbus changed humanity profoundly. This was also a time
approaching the end of a 1,000 year period of the dark ages where all earthly authority was
subject to the church, and so Martin Luther’s act of defiance revolutionized all human
authority almost overnight. The dark ages were a time when almost all people could neither
read nor write; there was no need of it. The dawn of the printed word exploded radical
change in human experience allowing people for the first time to obtain information in a
brand new way. These great transformations occurring almost overnight brought the
conclusion of the dark age and ushered in transformation of individual and group
consciousness with such speed that those people’s notion of their ‘humanness’ and even
their ideas about their cultures were forever and profoundly transformed. The world was
never the same again.

This astounding change of human thinking and consciousness transformed human culture
on the planet and literally increased the ‘carrying capacity’ of human civilizations. Our
confidence as a species expanded. We knew we had made a breakthrough to a new day!
Then the further cultural efficiencies achieved during the period of the industrial revolution
during the late 18th century have allowed human population to increase even more rapidly,
resulting in exponential growth for the last 250 years (B in the graph above).(1)

A few years ago I read an article that suggested that around half of all the human beings
that have ever been born are alive today. This idea has spread and been taken as fact when
it is simply not true. Regrettably, I think I have made reference to this erroneous
information in lectures I have given. What is true is that enough information exists to
calculate that roughly 106.4 billion people have existed since the dawn of man say 55,000
years ago. That means that 5.8% of all the people who have ever been born are alive
today.

In any case the 5.8% percentage is still astounding to me. The collective human
consciousness that is embodied in living, breathing human beings presents the possibility I
believe of a group or collective responsibility or karma that is drawing us to a conclusion
and transformation. When the Black Death concluded on the European continent in the 14th
century the remaining human population at the time also held a collective karma that
catapulted humanity into complete transformation just 100 years later. People of the time
had no idea of the enormous change that was just around the corner.

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I believe that as we approach 2012 we are experiencing a sort of Karmic compression. This
compression is a speeding up of the rate that consequences of our actions become manifest
in our lives. Referring to consequences; I mean both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ consequences. They
are only the result of our actions or of the energy we put out. Our intentions of service to
each other are quickly forming into projects and cooperative ventures which are readily
accepted. When this happens, we are experiencing our intentions becoming manifest. In like
manner our karma knocks us back when we become self serving and arrogant.

“Instant karma's gonna get you

Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you're gonna be dead
What in the world you thinkin' of?
Laughing in the face of love
What on earth you tryin' to do?
It's up to you, yeah you!”
John Lennon, 1974

This principle of Karmic compression is important as we approach a time of great change

because it will teach us that we are connected to everyone and everything. The great
illusion and the great lie that we have been led to believe is that we have been separate
from each other. When you act in a way that is unkind to another, and you very quickly
receive an echo of your unkind act coming back to you, you then soon begin to realize that
you and the person you were unkind to are the same. There is a synapse in our experience
of ourselves and our experience of others that is closing.

I suggested in my first article about 2012, entitled The 2012 Problem, that our notion of
time itself was going to go through a dramatic shift. Perception of time as we are
accustomed exists in viewing each moment as separate to every other moment. In other
words, we have become accustomed to experiencing time itself much in the same way as
we do any other people, or things. Every part of time is separate from every other part of
time.

Just like those people in the 14th century we now have very little understanding about what
is ‘just around the corner’! Something really incredible is about to happen!

If in a relatively short period of time, a brand new ‘meta quality’ will be added to the
consciousness experience of individuals, then the relevance of future or past events will fall
away and the relevance of the clock will fall away. The consciousness we are adapting to is
beyond any benchmark previously established. Human consciousness will come to exist
inside a new holographic knowing. It will exist in the stillness of the present moment. This is
a change over in consciousness that will forever transform who we are as human beings.

The renaissance period of the 14th to 17th centuries will mirror exactly another great
revolution of consciousness we are now embarking on. We are standing in the doorway of a
brand new renaissance; a brand new confidence.

The Kogi Indians of northern Colombia have a concept of consciousness called Aluna. They
believe in a point of reference that is within us or an inner dimension where from that point
time itself ceases to exist as we know it. In the Aluna dimension everything that is in the
past and the future exists together with the present moment. The Aluna dimension is a real
place; it is a real point of reference that exists in all of us. Perhaps it lies dormant in many

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people now, but like an unused or vestigial organ, it is a perception, that once awakened,
becomes alive and prominent.

When Columbus made his journey even the skeptics had to take notice; commonly held
truth changed … for everybody. This dimension of timelessness is real. Inevitably we will all
awaken.

While the greatest percentage of humanity exists in post-modern consumer cultures, there
are small numbers of indigenous Indian cultures like the Kogi all over the planet. These
cultures have survived for millennia and most of their cultural values remain the same
today. There is a deep connection among indigenous people with the earth as the source of
life. They view the earth as the giver of life and sustenance. They live in harmony with
nature. They will not put a spade in the ground to plant seeds without first making an
offering or a prayer of appreciation to the earth. They know that who they are came from
the earth. They view all living creatures as equal to themselves.

This connection to the earth is the recognition that all things and everything is connected.
Many have lost this connection to this oneness or source; their waking minds are habituated
to the notion of separateness. As human consciousness is transformed the perception of the
unity of all things, the interconnectedness of all things emerges naturally.

In fact every cell of our bodies does come from the earth. Even ‘man-made’ materials are
really just compounds that were first taken from the earth and re-shaped into something
‘man made’.

When we view the world as our domain to dominate and indiscriminately take from and
plunder, we have forgotten that we came from the earth. We have fallen asleep in an
illusion where we are separate.

The earth provides us with a perfect life support system. Our planet provides air to breathe;
water to drink; animals and plants for food. Who knows what a perfect human diet is. We
try to employ the use of superfood plants like Açai in our workshops. Certain foods like Açai
can literally supercharge our bodies. Surely the plants provision of a ripe fruit, ready to eat,
hanging on a tree for us to pick is nature’s definition of a fast food drive up window! I
suspect that much of human diet evolved around priorities like food preservation and supply
and not necessarily eating the most healing and nutritious food. The plants give us ready to
eat food to nourish our bodies.

But plants exist in a much more complete (albeit sometimes forgotten) relationship with
humans. There are a whole assortment of other plants that, being medicinal in nature, give
us healing for the infections, illnesses and maladies of the body. Many of today’s synthetic
drugs marketed by pharmaceutical companies are created as synthetic facsimiles of a
medicinal plant source.

Still other plants exist that are healers of human souls. These plants are the shamanic plant
teachers and have been used for millennia by people like to Kogi to enable their perception
from the Aluna dimension. How fitting it is that we of the civilized world turn to indigenous
traditions in order to comprehend and endure another great transformation of our very
humanness.

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I feel great hope for the future of those who open their hearts and minds to the great
change that is upon us!

© Ralph Miller 2008

(1) Adapted from Population Reference Bureau (1984) World Population: Fundamentals of
Growth, Population Reference Bureau, Washington, DC

Heart of the Initiate offers tours to Brazil where we help people make
sacred inner journeys through an intensive workshop experience. Our Brazil
workshops incorporate shamanic ceremonies using the ancient plant teacher,
Ayahuasca.

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