Jonathan Bethel has an article up at 2012 Eschaton that mirrors very closely my own feelings about what is coming up for us and adds a scientific dimension:

Modern man throughout the twentieth century was coming to terms with his theological and scientific paradigms, and in the last decade of that century s/he saw an intensification of the integration of these two worlds; the true philosopher’s stone, the stone of the wise, was condensing from the merging of these two paradigmatic systems. This new paradigm of thought was synthesized in a dialectical process where the thesis and antithesis were merged, the worlds of theology and science, and it is now informing the morphogenetic fields that rule social behavior all over our planet. These fields order our behavior through the process of morphic resonance, whereby our thoughts and emotions are in sync with the planetary mind, and our mind then follows suit. These global morphogenetic fields of humanity have been called many names: the collective unconscious, the genetic archives, the akashic records, and the phylogenetic unconscious. At any rate, this morphogenetic field that humanity resonates with is a sphere of thought surrounding the planet, and the synergistic tendencies of the information couplings within those fields are gearing up for and catalyzing a transformational shift to a whole new order of being. In the notions of the French priest and paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the biosphere, nature, will give rise to and exude the noosphere, a global layer of thought, the informational synergy of which will actualize the Omega Point into being. This will usher in a new paradigm, a transcendence for all of humanity. It is interesting to note that Teilhard came to his realizations long before the global network of the Internet; therefore, many philosophers consider the internet to be the hardwiring of the noosphere.

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Humanity is in a very precarious situation; never before have so many mounting crisis points been converging together. I’m no doomsayer, but if you remove yourself from the group mind with its aversion to the facts at hand, and you take a good look at what is about to transpire, then you can’t help but be white-knuckled and fearful of the future. But this fear is not at all what we need, if reality is truly affected by our minds as scientific studies are beginning to bear out. The following situations “Could” transpire in the years to decades ahead; they are not necessarily slated to occur in 2012!

The increased complexity and convoluted nature of our global civilization has made the threat of a pandemic a much more conceivable situation. A virus could be transferred to many areas of the world through our transportation grid in a very short period of time, and an all out pandemic could be actualized in a matter of weeks. . . .

A pandemic is just one possibility on the shelf of global, future threats. In addition, we have the Geo-Political environment, a motley crew of a makeup with each component striving for dominance on the world stage. It is one thing to agree to disagree with the other parties in the global arena; however, we now have radical terrorists, self proclaimed servants of God, who believe it is their God given duty to kill all those that will not convert to their way of thinking. It is hard to deal with these people in a rational manner, as their behavior elicits the very primitive instinct of seeking their utter destruction. In addition, we now have the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and they are now in the hands of some very fanatical and tyrannical leaders. It is easy to foresee and imagine that if the terrorists ignited a nuclear bomb in one of our cities due to their ideological insanity, then the civilized world could very easily retaliate, thereby sparking a nuclear tit-for-tat of all the countries involved. . . .

Our global society is also facing major economic collapse as we move forward into subsequent periods of time. Our economic markets are so reliant on what occurs globally now, and the countries of the world have created such a deficit that some financial specialists say what we are facing is insurmountable; we are operating on borrowed time, and a huge spiral into economic collapse looks like an extremely conceivable scenario.

If those realistic threats weren’t bad enough, the biosphere is being destroyed in so many aspects that it is barely possible to imagine. Researchers believe that the biosphere may become completely uninhabitable in just a couple centuries. The facts of man’s destruction of the habitat that brought him forth are truly appalling and ghastly. We are decimating the rain forest by miles daily, the main source of the oxygen we breathe. Climate is changing as both the jet stream in the atmosphere and the gulf stream in the Atlantic are shifting. Our oceans are dying from pollution and over fishing, and many species are being wiped into extinction. Is this insanity? What are we doing to ourselves? The planet was never intended to support life for 6.5 billion people, and that population is only increasing daily. The facts of the matter make one wince when looking at all the details, creating a nauseating feeling in the pit of the stomach. The melting of the ice caps is occurring from a multitude of sources that are causing Global Warming. It is not just our fuel use causing global warming; it also has to do with natural cycles that revolve around the earth-sun connection. The melted ice will cause the sea levels to rise, obliterating the coastline and inundating us with water. This biosphere issue is definitely not something that will cause a global catastrophe in 2012, but it is an indication of where we find ourselves and the nature of our shared predicament. The operative word is “Shared,” and we need to realize that all of us on the planet are in this boat together, and it has now begun to traverse the rapids and dangerous currents ahead.

Additionally, we have the sun-earth connection to be concerned about. The Sun’s Coronal magnetic flux has increased 100% in the last century. Global Warming is partly caused by man and is also caused by the earth’s relationship with the sun, and scientists say the sun has steadily become more active in the past several hundred years. It must be understood that when a Solar Flare or Coronal Mass Ejection occurs a wave of energy moves out in all directions, and when it impinges with a planet’s magnetic field, the field contorts in reaction. This contortion shifts the Jet Stream creating climate change, and it also puts stress on the system of plate tectonics, causing an increased number of earthquakes and volcanoes. The last sunspot cycle ended with the two largest flares on record and the next major cycle is scheduled for 2012.

Now that we have discussed some of the sobering bad news about our future, and because I like to be the optimist even in the most drastic and horrid of situations, I think it is essential to relay the whole picture. Yes, things look very dire, but they also look most promising. Strides in science, medicine, government and technology are making major advances in ridding our species of the undesired effects of bad health, famine, poverty, or lack of any name. So, like I said, what we are moving into is both wonderful and horrid. It is a double-edged sword!

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So, we live in a time full of radical changes of both a qualitatively good and bad nature. The ancient seers knew that this exact period in time represented a period of catastrophic changes preceding a golden age. Most cultural traditions have some intimation of the times we are living in, whether it is Hindu, Hopi, Mayan, or many, many others, and they are all in basic agreement that a great purging, a cataclysmic time of change, will precede a golden age of enlightenment. The Mayans encoded 12-21-
2012 into their calendrical system, and they pointed to that day for some reason. Hundreds of years later in the 1970s a hippie botanist, Terence McKenna, had a vision under the influence of Shamanic Power Plants, and he saw how to distill a timewave from the Ken Wa sequence of the I-Ching. This Timewave mapped the ingression of novelty into the universe, an organizing principle of ever increasing complexity upon which all of our reality is ordered. At any rate, he saw on the timewave that this nature of novelty hits a moment of infinite novelty, what is called the concrescence of novelty, at the same exact time that the Mayan Calendar cycle ends, December 21, 2012!

There seems to be something embedded in human psychology that both craves and fears an apocalyptic vision. This may have been deepened in the mass consciousness with Pluto’s travel through Sagittarius, bringing increased obsession (Pluto) to our ideologies (Sagittarius). Part of this may be a desire to wipe the slate clean; to gain an opportunity to begin anew; a Plutonian desire to eliminate everything on earth that isn’t working for us. We saw this as the year rolled from 1999 to 2000, with little result. We are likely to have a similar experience at the end of 2012.

Still this does not negate the overall trend of humanity towards a nearly total evolution that is likely now that we are at the bridge of the Aquarian Age! As Jonathan Bethel says, whatever happens it is sure to be a wild ride.