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Diagram of the Mayan calendar Stages (Carl Johan Calleman and Ian Lundgold)

By Cathy Eck

End of the World or End of Time?

As I travel about the world, people often ask me, “What’s the deal with the Mayan Calendar?”  Is December 21, 2012, the end of the world?  The short answer is “No!”  The long answer takes us deep into an understanding of time, the nature of calendars, and the evolution of consciousness.

What is a Calendar?

The obvious purpose for a calendar is the synchronization of a large group of people.  Our currently accepted civil calendar is an upgraded version of the Gregorian calendar named after Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.  In 1972, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), was born, which measures time based on the earth’s angular rotation.  While this shift cannot be detected by the average human looking at a watch, it created a subliminal change in perspective because it enhanced the earth’s contribution to sun and moon-based time.

We all are synchronized to calendars.  After we spend enough time on planet earth, we believe our calendars are the absolute truth.   A calendar is merely an agreement among many people.  Along with our collective agreement regarding time, we have beliefs about time such as:  “You can’t change the past,” or “History repeats itself;” or how about, “Time flies when you’re having fun.”  Those beliefs affect our experience of time.

The calendar forms the basic connecting link for any group of people.  Enroll in school, and you accept the school calendar.  Join a religion, and you follow their holy days.  Go to work for a corporation, and you clock-in and clock-out on their schedule.

The rhythms of our body entrain to the calendars in our life; and our thoughts and emotions follow.  If we are in harmony with the calendars that affect our lives, we feel balanced.  If we are in conflict with a calendar, we may feel controlled or uncomfortable.

Throughout history, controlling the calendar aided leaders in controlling the people.  New religions devised new calendars.  Large tribes or empires created their own calendar.  On the surface, it is practical to synchronize the group; but I’m sure that leaders also noticed that synchronized people accept their ideas and opinions more readily.

Synchronizing the rhythm of the people to the leader caused the followers to move into a hypnotic state where they accept more and question less.  No doubt the early hypnotists noticed this and used the watch to put people to sleep, sleep, sleep….

Mayan Calendar as a Blueprint

The Mayan calendar was not about the movement of the sun or moon or the synchronization of the Mayan people.  It was more like a blueprint for the evolution (or devolution) of mankind.  The Mayans possessed this blueprint (as did other ancient civilizations like the Egyptians), and they recorded it in their calendars, mythology, and pyramids.

Ideally, conscious evolution and physical evolution proceed concurrently.  As the mind moves toward genius, it creates material inventions for the greater good.  At the pinnacle of conscious evolution, people have accurate discrimination, clear minds, and there is a complete absence of fear.  Life is joyful, and creativity is virtually unlimited.  This is the top of the pyramid in a perfectly evolved world.

In order for this to work, our conscious awareness must lead the material genius.  We want our inventions to be used for good.  Our technology must be submissive to our humanity.

Each person’s life purpose involves climbing the pyramid to reach their highest possible experience in the world.  One person’s achievement actually opens the door wider for others to join them at the top.  There is no competition in conscious evolution.  We’re not upset if another gets there first; their gain is our gain.  The top of the pyramid represents unity consciousness where we are all one.

In extreme devolution, the masses are controlled by the few, people confuse beliefs with the truth, the ability to discriminate is weak, and fear and stress are rampant.  In devolution, people see their point of view as right and everyone else as wrong.  The overall mentality is one of good and evil battling eternally.  It is a win-lose world.

Inventions are used for mass destruction or control over others, such as monopolies.  The symbol of the pyramid still works in a devolving world with the elite at the top and the masses below.   Those who are devolving often try to pull others down–the old misery loves company theme applies.

If we look at our world today, we find some people are on the evolutionary path and others on the devolutionary path.  

The Mayan tun calendar is based on the continual expansion of the conscious mind of mankind.  It has an ending which presumes that all humans reach the pinnacle of the pyramid.  That pinnacle then becomes the foundation of a new experience on earth.  The Gregorian and Mayan calendars can work together.  If the Mayan is pushing evolution and the Gregorian is reflecting the day-to-day rotation, we have a continuous upward spiral.  But without the influence of the Mayan conscious evolution calendar, we have an endlessly repeating circle.

People begin to synchronize with the Mayan tun-based calendar system when they seek the truth of life, desire greater freedom, or look for creative and new ideas.   Becoming more loving and compassionate is a sign that you are evolving according to the calendar’s plan.  The tun-based calendar was the Mayan’s divine calendar.

Mayan Calendar Divisions

The Mayan Calendar was divided into nine levels, with each level having seven days and six nights.  (These days are just like the seven days of creation in Genesis.)  The nine levels conform to the pyramid shape as each level is shorter than the one before.  As you move up, each level is 20 times shorter than the previous level. The ninth level ends according to most on December 21, 2012.  Some believe that a correction was found in Palenque; and the ending date is now October 28th, 2011.

You can well imagine that there are many opinions regarding the meaning of the Mayan calendar.  I like the Mayan calendar research of Carl Johan Calleman and Ian Lundgold (www.mayanmajix.com) because it is logical and also has the potential to work for everyone in a win-win way.

Carl Calleman was a scientist from Sweden.  Ian Lundgold was more intuitive.  They came together and realized that even though they traveled different paths, they ended up with the same conclusion.  For me, that confirms a job well done.  Carl wrote a book called “Solving the Greatest Mystery of Our Time:  The Mayan Calendar.”  Ian created a conversion table that matches the Mayan calendar to the Gregorian Calendar and provided the concise descriptions of the different levels that you see in the photo above.

Getting into the Mayan Calendar Mind

The easiest way to grasp the intention of the calendar is to imagine that you are focusing on one small point on a wall.  Now expand your focus to include the wall around the point.  Expand your awareness even further to include the room where the point is located, then the building, the city, the state or province, the country, the world, and eventually the entire universe.  Each time you expand your awareness, you see the point as it relates to this new whole.

You can only do this exercise to the extent that you embrace the larger whole; expansion requires a desire and ability to attune to the more expanded level.  However, it is important to notice that the original point on the wall is still there; it just appears much less significant in the larger whole.  The same is true for the Mayan calendar.  The earlier levels become less important over time, but they still exist.

After The Big Bang

The calendar begins at the moment of the big bang, 16.4 billion years ago.  Each level has seven days and six nights; and in the first level, each day and night was over a billion years long.  This period was limited to cellular consciousness.  The second stage began 840 million years ago; and by the end of the last day of this second level, we had mammals.  Forty-one million years ago, the third stage began, which led to the development of cooperation and the family.  Two million years ago, the tribal consciousness was born along with the concept of power in numbers.

Basically, for billions of years, the expansion of consciousness only moved from the level of the cell or self to the small tribal group.  At each level, the potential for fighting increased at the same rate as the potential for greater love.  The question always comes down to whether we hate or love those who are not part of our group.  In addition, the individual might now feel swept along by the group current as they move up the levels.  By this tribal level, the group mind was beginning to appear more powerful than the individual mind.

Remember the Hatfields and McCoys

The Hatfields and McCoys were two feuding families from West Virginia that demonstrate what is necessary to move up the pyramid.  Moving up to the tribal level of consciousness required that they stop focusing on their hatred of each other and see themselves as a tribe instead of two families.  This is not easy for people.  We might forgive, but we rarely forget.  If both families moved up to the greater level of awareness, their reason for fighting would disappear.  They would both win.  This will become even more apparent as we reach the higher levels.

The Fifth Level

The fifth level arrived 102,000 years ago and cultural perspectives were born.  Now individuals in the tribe take on different roles.  If all the roles are important and equal, this tribe is evolving.  Specialization opens the door to higher levels of performance.  The cultural pull offers the opportunity for expansion of one’s conscious perspective beyond their tribe.  An artisan identifies with the tribe but also other artisans.  A healer can learn from other healers outside of their tribe.

In this fifth stage, people created reasons for things.  Shamans (eventually clergy) told their tribe why things happen when they do.  Reasons created beliefs whereby survival became about honoring the reasons rather than the cooperation or strength of the members of the tribe.  It appears this is where things might have started to slide downhill a bit faster.

Beliefs such as sacrificing to the gods could be a possible result of this stage of evolution gone wrong.  The Shaman tells the people that a virgin sacrifice is needed for good crops–seems ridiculous now, but we often believe equally ridiculous things from our modern authority figures.  Ironically, the Mayans did practice sacrifice and disappeared under their own calendar.  They had the information, but they didn’t know how to use it.

The Sixth Level (The Long Count)

National consciousness was born 5125 years ago in the sixth stage.  This level is often referred to as the long count.  Obviously, this stage involves expanding to feel one with our nation.   We do things which are good for our country, not just what is good for our culture, tribe, or family.

This national cycle ushered in the beginning of writing in ancient Sumeria, and history (or as I like to call it “his” story) was born.  The most important developments in this period were laws and punishment.  Hammurabi’s Code of Laws and the Ten Commandments were born during this time period.   Why were laws necessary?  Because many people appeared to be devolving.  The Hatfields and McCoys of the world needed to be controlled.  Evolving people don’t need laws or rules; they would never harm anyone.

The most important concept of this period came from the story of Adam and Eve and the labeling of good and evil.  Now humans made choices, which could be right or wrong by another person’s standards (often labeled God’s standards by those who wanted greater control).  Concurrently, the concepts of shame and guilt entered the human experience.

Around 3000 BC (the beginning of this period), King Menes, the first recorded king of Egypt, actually united upper and lower Egypt.  Much, much later, we see the north and south uniting in America.  The Berlin wall coming down was a grand moment of uniting opposites.   Civilizations that unite parts in to a whole create something greater than the sum of the parts.  This was clearly the evolutionary path of this sixth cycle.

Uniting opposites creates real power.  The great pyramids came after the union of upper and lower Egypt.  The Parthenon came after the geniuses of ancient Greece saw the value of the goddess and united male and female.  America’s unity created the land of opportunity.  Of course, the desire for unity often became the desire for larger and larger empires; and war was a dominant theme in this stage.

The Seventh Cycle

The seventh cycle, only 256 years long, is called the planetary stage.  Each day and night is 20 years long in this cycle.  This is where we all started to experience rapid change and the feeling that time was speeding up.  Time was the same; but relatively speaking, we could now experience several days and nights in one lifetime.

In the third day of this cycle, we have the invention of the telegraph; the fourth brought us the telephone; the fifth gave us radio; the sixth birthed television; and in the seventh day, the internet was born.  Transportation and technology also evolved rapidly.  Viewed from a planetary perspective, the entire planet benefitted by inventions and technological advances.  We could now speak to someone on the other side of the world or even fly to see them–the planet seemed smaller.

Concurrently, we also had the industrial revolution and fighting over control of resources supporting devolution.  People began to take jobs that made someone else rich for the promise of security.  But the price they paid was high.  They sacrificed their own dreams and supported the wealth of the few.

In each level, physical sacrifice is part of the devolutionary path.  Sacrificing your life for your country renders you a hero in this cycle.  That is a misperception of this age.  What we need to sacrifice is our one-sided opinions and hatred.  Success lies in the ability to sacrifice your judgments, not your life.  When we succeed at this level, our countries become melting pots where many cultures live together in harmony.

Sacrificing our beliefs and one-sided opinions or judgments, leads to evolution.  People who demand sacrifice are always on the devolutionary journey–you might notice that while they ask you to give or sacrifice, they don’t.  Stop believing them (or even listening to them), and they will lose that false power.

In this age, we have nuclear power and the questions that came with it.  We created the atomic clock and the atomic bomb.  At the planetary level of awareness, war is obsolete (unless it is star wars).  Thus, we have the peace-loving hippies entering the stage during the later days attempting to balance the advocates of war.  But again, we learn another lesson in hindsight.  Balance isn’t the solution.  Whether you love war or hate war, your mind is still thinking about war.    The very idea of war must go in order to move up the pyramid.

Travel opportunities came of age during this stage of evolution.  One of the coolest inventions of this age is the cruise ship.  These ships sail around the planet exposing people to a variety of cultures.  Guests meet friends from all over the world.  Look at the popularity of reality shows about little people, polygamy, big families, morbidly obese, or unusual careers.  We want to learn about others so we can understand them.  I attribute all of this to humanity embracing the planetary stage.

The Eighth Cycle

Now it gets really interesting.  The eighth stage, the galactic level, began in January 1999.  But before we delve into the eighth tun, note that the consciousness of a new level starts to arise prior to the start date as we were sending rockets into space prior to 1999.  Think about traveling from one city to another.  Your focus is on your destination long before you arrive.  This same phenomenon occurs in the stages of the Mayan calendar.

Our responsibility now moves up to include our galaxy.  If we destroy our planet, we affect more than earth.  We put our entire galaxy at risk by throwing other planets out of orbit.  Ian Lundgold says this tun is about ethics, but at a much greater level than mere morals and rules of the past.  Galactic ethics means working from a win-win consciousness where no one loses.

If we are a planet of hate, we could magnetically attract a galactic enemy.  Hate and fear are dualistic patterns of attraction that gravitate to their opposing pole.  A planet of unconditional love could not have an enemy–true love is non-magnetic.

Interest in space is not just about movie or game themes; it is a level of awareness bubbling forth in our minds.  You can see this clearly in the children of today.  They won’t accept half truths or rules that don’t make sense.  They can’t sit still in school listening to irrelevant information that they know they will never use.  Their minds move at the speed of light, and they learn almost by osmosis.

If you don’t believe me, “How many kids took texting classes?”  Even I can hardly stand to write in cursive anymore–it is too slow and favors one side of the brain over the other.  Imagine how these galactically-wired kids feel making loops for hours.   Blink, and technology has changed.  The young kids come in cable ready.  They learn technology like they learn to walk.  They don’t tolerate fools well; and if you are close-minded, they will ignore you.

Bullying, ADD and all the other labels of children today, come from parents and other authority figures not moving up to the galactic level of consciousness.  Instead they try to pull the children down to their ancient level with guilt, shame, and punishment.  As the adults expand their boundaries and stop trying to slow the children down, the learning-related problems will disappear naturally.

It’s hard for people to see these higher levels clearly.  People claim to be moral and follow the ten commandments but still go to war and kill an agreed upon enemy.  That sort of morality was fine at the cultural level, and it worked somewhat at the national level.  At the planetary level, war is obsolete.  We are one planet now.

Our technology is at the planetary level; but our love and compassion has not moved at the same pace.  At this level, the Mayan schedule requires dissolving borders, not defending them.  Religions need to harmonize, not damn those of different religions or preferences.  Corporations and governments need to make ethical win-win choices that work for everyone.

Success at this level requires us to drop our judgments and prejudices.  Our job is to change our mind and to allow others to think as they wish.  We have to stop listening to power-hungry authority and realize that our life experience is the affect of our personal level of awareness.

As we rise to the galactic level, stress disappears and our bodies heal.  We no longer have to fix problems; we ignore them and raise our awareness to the level where they no longer exist.  Problems, diseases, and even power-hungry authority require our attention to survive.  As we ignore them, they will fade away without any bloodshed.  Enough people at the top of the pyramid will open the door to miraculous solutions.  This is why Einstein said that you can’t solve a problem at the same level of consciousness that created it.  And we aren’t done yet; there is one more level left to go.

The Ninth Tun

The ninth and final cycle is very short.  It lasts only 260 days.  It begins in February of 2011 and ends October 28, 2011 (according to Ian Lundgold).  This is the universal cycle.  We don’t have the hindsight of recorded history to determine the exact nature of this time period.  However, if we extrapolate from what we have learned from the other levels, the goal would be the complete elimination of opposition, even those enemies that we can’t imagine.  We think at the level of the entire universe, which could also be called divine consciousness.  The idea of evil or Satan is finally obsolete.

Unconditional love is what keeps us safe and on our perfect path at the universal level.  The Mayans saw the potential for us to completely co-create in a divine fashion if we could expand our awareness to the level of the universe.

The social mask is completely dissolved at this level.  What you see is what you get.  In the past, we valued the approval of others over our heart’s desires.  We valued knowledge over wisdom; romantic love over unconditional love, and fleeting happiness over real eternal joy.   We trusted people who often had knowledge but lacked wisdom, people who gave to charity but took from their customers, and people who wore nice robes but didn’t have a pure heart.

When the degrees, the badges, and the robes come off, these leaders will be exposed as truly good (of pure intention) or an obvious enemy.  Beauty on the outside will be the product of beauty on the inside.  Discrimination will be easier because we’ll see the love in people who have it and vice versa.

Those who hide their hate will not reap the rewards of the universal level.  They will stay behind and continue to play at the lower levels.  Does that matter?  Absolutely not.  However, someone at a lower level will have much less power than one at a higher level so the old governments will disappear.  We won’t need elections because if someone is pure love and they rule the world, they’ll get all the votes.  For those people who are highly competitive, now the game is to be the most loving, not kill the most people.  Now do we care if you win?  You see, at the universal level, I want to do everything possible to help you win too.

Honoring Our Unique Expression

People, especially the new children, are choosing many different expressions to awaken us to this level of awareness.  The nerds, gamers, gays, goth kids, transgenders, and chubbies are all saying, “Accept me and you’ll win.”  If we can’t accept them, we’re the problem.  They are most in harmony with the galactic level and are ramping up for the shift to the universal level.  They courageously come forth and express their differences so we can move up and reap the benefits of the new age.

Now don’t get me wrong, I meet plenty of parents and grandparents when I speak on cruise ships that completely support the children of today.  These amazing adults and seniors might not have the lightning quick reflexes of the children, but they follow their heart; and they too are moving quite nicely into the universal age.  In the universal level, time moves so quickly that we can’t stop to contemplate our decisions.

If we follow our inspiration (or heart), which always knows the correct path, we won’t get lost.  If we wallow in our problems, they will get so big they will destroy us.  If we hold on to the past, we’ll get stuck like the main character in “Groundhog Day.”  Judgment acts like a brick wall in front of inspiration; it blocks our view.

Without Unconditional Love, We Need Time

Science is so close to proving what the ancient people told us was true.  In quantum physics the wave and the particle are the same.  The intention of the observer determines its form.  The ancients said that as long as we could not operate from unconditional love, we’d needed time.  We had to have a time buffer so we didn’t kill ourselves or each other instantaneously with our crappy beliefs.  But as we clear our minds and follow our hearts, we don’t need a rigid structure of time.  We can use it as a convenience rather than a means of control.  Our atomic clock serves that purpose just fine so long as we allow for the potential that every day is a holiday (or holy day).

Now can you see why the kids are attracted to video games.  They are preparing their minds and bodies to become wildly creative when the world reaches this level of consciousness.  Those with quick minds, intense focus, a win-win attitude, and the ability to make split-second decisions will live at a level of creative genius beyond our wildest imaginations while the trolls (the gamer label for the elite people who operate from win-lose) will be sitting around with their heads spinning.

A government that moves at the speed of a turtle with no legs will collapse, and these kids will pick up the pieces and turn those lemons into gold.  You might notice, I don’t call my blog gateway to lemonade; that era is done.  The new era is the gateway to gold because that is where it’s at–that metaphorical pot that sits at the end of the rainbow.

We Are On Schedule

In short, the Mayan calendar appears to be right on schedule.  It was an idea that was chiseled in stone.  Our belief that something cast in stone can’t be changed makes it so.  And we don’t have to believe them if we don’t want to.  But given our place in time, the prospect of universal awareness is pretty cool.  December 12, 2012 (or October 28, 2011) will come and go just like January 1, 2000.  For those who want freedom and have more creativity to express, you are the ones that we have been waiting for.  This is your time.  And while your life might not change dramatically on the outside on 12/21/12, you’ll feel different inside.

In short, the Mayan calendar is an inner calendar, not an outer one.

The Gregorian calendar will go on; nothing will change.  Those who need time to protect them from their own rigid and hateful thoughts will continue to live like sheep in a herd.  They will continue to react to circumstances and problems and move through life like puppets on a string controlled by those who can control them.  They will say, “See that stupid Mayan calendar was a bunch of hokum.”  And from their perspective, they will be right.

You can’t see a level until you get there.  So ignore them.  Don’t let them pull you down.  Laughter and love create levity; gravity takes you to the grave.

Don’t be concerned about those who continue to live at the lower levels of awareness.  No one really loses because no door is shut; and people can choose to rise up the pyramid at their own speed.  You see, when you take away the calendar there really is no time;  consequently, even the levels of awareness become beliefs that merely supported a very interesting journey.

Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, “You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.”  Just like Dorothy and her friends, we will see the world without the veil of hatred and fear.  The end of the Mayan calendar is the end of the false world created by beliefs.  It is the end of an illusion that has held mankind in a sort of hypnotic state for billions of years.

The end of this illusion promises that we will be back in the Garden of Eden and realize that we never left.  And we’ll hang out in the garden until we decide to create a new calendar and do it all over again.

Cathy Eck is the founder of Gateway To Gold.  She has studied the ancient mystery school teachings for decades. She is passionate about cracking the code of life’s greatest mysteries and translating the ancient wisdom in a way that is practical, simple, and empowering so that everyone can remember their true Self and live a perfect life.   You can learn more about beliefs by reading articles under the category Freedom from Beliefs (Lies), here is a sample:  https://gatewaytogold.com/why-you-dont-want-to-be-a-believer/