The question I am asked most often in interviews these days is this: How can I get ready for 2012? I would like to work on this question through the next few articles.

What is the significance of 2012? In the Mayan Long Count calendar, the thirteenth baktun cycle is completed on December 21, 2012. This marks the first time in over 5,000 years that this event has occurred. The ending of this great cycle is associated in Mayan lore with the cosmic womb, death, new life and transformation. One could say that according to the Mayan calendar, Earth hits its reset button and the odometer rolls over to zero and starts another Long Count on that date. It is expected by Mayan researchers such as John Major Jenkins that a shift in consciousness will occur as part of this moment in time.

I do not wish to debate the various corollary threads of New Age Mayanism: the “dark rift” riff, the alleged UFO connection or its posited link to crop circles. These sidebars to 2012 lore are interesting but they do not resonate to me as part of the main theme. However, the date itself, and the supposition that a shift in consciousness is related to it, do resonate to me, enough so that I have just written a book on the topic of getting ready for 2012. It is called Living the Law of One 101: The Choice.

You can pre-order this book now by writing [email protected] and asking to be put on the pre-publication list. The book is at the printers, and due to arrive within the week. It will be added to our on-line store when it comes out.

Classical Western astrologers also find the winter solstice of 2012 pivotal. At this date, the Age of Pisces ends, according to Western astrology, and the Age of Aquarius, that much vaunted time of New Age pop culture, begins.

According to Roeland de Looff, “In 2012 the center of the Galaxy is at 0 degree of the Western zodiacal sign Capricorn. 0 degree Capricorn is the point of the zodiac where the Sun is during the December solstice. At December 21, 11.12 GMT during the December solstice the Sun is at the exact center of the Galaxy.”

The sun makes a sextile to Mercury on this date. This aspect generally is interpreted as relating to a spiritual experience.

There is also a “yod” or “finger of God” involving Jupiter, Pluto, Saturn, Mercury and Venus. The yod, when found, indicates profound transformational experiences which may include suffering.

There is also a T-square with Neptune on this date. “Spirituality, transformation, ascension and floods” are associated with this configuration, according to De Looff, a Dutch astrologer. His web site, has a wealth of information, nicely presented, if you wish to examine this angle further.

Another interesting 2012 theory originates with Terrence McKenna, an American philosopher, scientist and shamanic experiencer who was born in 1946 and who died in 2000. Mind you, I am no more skilled at mathematics than I am at astrology, but I will share with you the gist of his “Novelty Theory”.

McKenna was studying the Chinese I-Ching oracle when he stacked the 64 hexagrams which make up its variations to create a perfect square, and saw patterns of movement within the shapes. Craig Howell writes,

“He decided to create a linear model beginning in time with the era that the I-Ching was created in China and continuing to the present to see what patterns develop. When he input this information into a computer program, it formulated a graph with a rising and falling line, like a stock market forecast.

“He then noticed something astonishing. The parts of the line that were highest or lowest corresponded with times in history when new forms were developing. When the line reached a peak, a new form would trigger the psyche of people. When the line fell into a crevasse, it aligned with a time when reality seemed to be falling apart, or there was a great event, or group of events all at once, that galvanized people. (The graph tells when, not where or what happens.)”

The last maximum peak in this graph coincided with classical Greece and the profoundly influential time of the great philosophers and culture of that period. It has been descending ever since, hiccupping its way downhill to nothingness. The end of this trough is the winter solstice of 2012.

Howell reports that, “McKenna said in an interview with the Sightings TV show that his best guess is that it is as if someone is likely to invent a time traveling machine of sorts, because it is as if it is the end of linear time. In other words, all time merges into one time. Everything becomes connected to everything else. Past, present and future become one. We could in effect be experiencing an infinite amount of evolution in a finite time.”

There are other systems of religion, philosophy and lore which expound upon 2012, from Nostradamus to Christian doomsday writers and more. However it seems to me that these sources are derivative, taking the lead from astrology and the Mayan calendar.

On January 24, 1981, the Ra group channeled through L/L Research some interesting information about this pivotal time on “this sphere” of Planet Earth:

I am Ra. This sphere is at this time in fourth-dimension vibration. Its material is quite confused due to the society memory complexes embedded in its consciousness. It has not made an easy transition to the vibrations which beckon. Therefore, it will be fetched with some inconvenience.

Is this inconvenience imminent within a few years?

I am Ra. This inconvenience, or disharmonious vibratory complex, has begun several of your years in your past. It shall continue unabated for a period of approximately thirty of your years.

After this period of thirty years I am assuming that this will be a fourth-density planet. Is this correct?

I am Ra. This is so.

I have always enjoyed the Ra group’s deliciously Attic wit. Looking back at the ever-increasing glut of tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados and other extreme-weather events that have marched in steadily denser array as the years have passed since 1981, the dry description of it as “inconvenient” is charming to me in its terse irony.

Mind you, at first, the Ra group declined to discuss this topic at all with the Questioner, Don Elkins. Elkins was quite familiar with the prophecies concerning 2012, and in the very first Ra session, on January 15, 1981, he asked, “Can you comment on the coming planetary changes in our physical reality?”

The Ra group replied, “The changes are very, very trivial. We do not concern ourselves with the conditions which bring about harvest.”

To the Ra group, 2012’s significance is that it marks the end of third density, the Density of Choice, on Planet Earth and the beginning of The Density of Love, also called fourth density. On that date, they said, fourth-density Earth will be up and running. Third-density Earth will continue until all humans on third-density Earth have evacuated that density through the harvesting process, by graduation to fourth density or by transferring to another third-density planet for a repeat of “third grade”.

The harvesting process is described by the Ra group as a self-harvesting one, wherein the souls of those who have died naturally to Earth’s physical life walk steps of light and sort themselves out. There is no overseeing Judge. Rather, each of us souls is offered a stairway, which begins in third-density light, and on which each step is slightly fuller of fourth-density light. At a point, the light is entirely fourth-density in its nature. Each step beyond that point continues to consist of slightly more mature or dense light. Elkins did not ask how far the steps went, but my guess is that the steps go all the way to sixth density, since we have so many sixth-density wanderers on Earth today.

Each soul, then, walks up the steps of light, stopping when the light begins to be too bright and feels uncomfortable. If the soul stops while in third-density light, that soul will reincarnate into another third-density school of souls for another round of the Density of Choice. If the soul stops in fourth density, fifth density or sixth density, he has graduated from third density. It is likely that those wanderers from various fourth-, fifth- and sixth-density planets will return home at harvest.

This third density in which we of the human tribe of Planet Earth now experience life is called the Density of Choice by Ra. The choice of which they speak is the choice of polarity. As Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, puts it in his song from “An Other Cup”, a 2006 release,

You can’t bargain with the truth ‘Cause one day you’re gonna die And good’s going high, And evil’s going down – in the end“ (all rights reserved by Usuf Islam)

Like so many of Yusuf’s lyrics, this little chorus puts a seemingly complex issue quite simply. One can quibble with the definition of good and evil, but in the main we know the difference. The Ra group, and the Confederation in general, have suggested that the “good” is characterized by an attitude of service to others. A harvestable “grade” of service to others (STO) is 51%. The “evil” is characterized by an attitude of service to self (STS). A harvestable grade of STS is 95%.

In other words, if our thoughts and actions are concerned for the welfare of others in our thinking over half of the time, we will graduate STO and go forward to Earth’s fourth density positive, the next “grade” in our creation’s “school of souls”. If our thoughts and actions are concerned with promoting and caring for ourselves ninety-five percent of the time or more, we will graduate to fourth density negative, also the next grade in our cosmic refinery. And if we find ourselves in the sinkhole of indifference between 5% and 51% service to others, we will repeat the Density of Choice on another third-density planet.

2012 is significant in the Confederation information not as a time of abrupt Ascension nor as an Armageddon that wipes out Planet Earth, but as that moment in time when it will become virtually impossible to do further work in refining our choice of polarity. Like oil and water, third-density and fourth-density vibrations will begin to pull apart. It is already far more difficult to begin to polarize now than, say fifty years ago. Fourth-density waves of truth have interpenetrated third density more and more. All the issues with which we have avoided working until now are coming up in our lives and smacking us in the face. It is time to face these issues. It is time to fall in love with ourselves. How can we do that? I will take that up in the next article of this series.

I open my arms and embrace your spirit. Moving forward in faith, let us link spirits and intentions and walk together towards the dawning of a new heaven and a new Earth.