Lets talk about education and stuff...

"History is a race between education and catastrophe."

~ H.G. Wells

Here we go again, long time no speak. You might want to make sure you are in a comfortable chair, turn off your cell phone and put some popcorn on, because I have a lot to tell you about.

Let’s first flash back to mid-February. Peace Corps decided that I might have a thing or two to teach the trainees, so they brought all the new Sustainable Community Tourism volunteers up to Chilascó for a visit. We actually got to spend Valentine’s Day together, which was anything but romantic, but nevertheless a good time. Honestly, I don’t know if they learned anything from me or not, but as I told them: Peace Corps service is what you make of it. Everyone’s experience can be completely different and you have to find out how to make the best of yours. All I could do was speak from my experience thus far, and I tried to provide concrete and practical examples of things that have worked and things that have failed. Peace Corps, like life, is a continuous learning process. Trial and error and a lot of patience is the recipe for success.

A couple days after the trainees left so did I. I took a week of vacation to do some hiking in the jungle. With a wonderfully eclectic group of volunteers, ex-volunteers, Guatemalans and Graces, with an age range of “barely legal” to “do you offer a senior’s discount?”, we headed up to the northernmost part of the country to hike to “El Mirador”. The hike was two days in, one day of exploration and two days out through pure sub-tropical jungle. We covered about 150 Km in the five days, and if we didn’t burn enough calories walking then all the laughing we did at night made up for it.

El Mirador is an archaeological site of the ruins of an ancient Mayan civilization. It is exciting to go to because of its isolation, but impressive to be at because of the sheer grandiosity of it. Most consider it to be the largest Mayan ruin site on the planet, and its largest structure, “La Danta”, is considered to be the largest construction from the ancient world (including the pyramids in Egypt!) I have been to Tikal and was awestruck, but El Mirador dwarfs this more accessible site. And because it is less accessible, and not as “tourist friendly”, El Mirador really allows you to make the mental journey back to the 6^th Century BC when the mysterious Mayans lived there.

Thanks to Oliver we had an excellent guide; Walfred. He was attentive and knowledgeable, he caught on to our senses of humor fast, and he got us hooked up with the local park guards allowing us to see some really cool stuff that most people don’t. We actually got to enter one of the pyramids and explore its inner workings; something that very few people have ever done or ever will do. I will let the pictures speak for themselves to explain the rest of the trip, but it can be summed up like this (please excuse the inside joke): “My Big Blue Moon played Catch Phrases in Spanglish, ate pancakes that tasted like rubber for breakfast and cucumber sandwiches for lunch, and had an unforgettable trip through the jungle to experience the past while forging friendships with a bright future.

Now, back in Chilascó, things could not be better. My first year is behind me and I am switching my focus slightly. For the first year in site the majority of my time was spent strengthening the administration practices of my host country association: ADESOCHI – The Association for the Sustainable Development of Chilascó. At the end of January we finally put the last piece to our accounting system in place by voting our yearly budget into law. We have certainly come a long way from not even knowing if we were making or losing money every month. I am happy to report that in the first month under the new budget, we were able to achieve a profit of Q. 2,000 (compared to an average monthly loss of Q. 1,900 for the past year plus.) So, while I will still continue to work steadily on improving ADESOCHI’s administration, I am now switching my focus toward using the association as a vehicle for change in the community. Primarily, I want to concentrate on education.

I feel that the only true path to development is through the education of the country’s youth. Any case study where a country has gone from receiving to giving international aid (South Korea and Costa Rica are astounding examples) has one major component in common: their primary focus, where they invested the majority of their resources, was in education. In this way the development is home grown. It is not so much about teaching them what we know from the outside or the top-down, it’s about providing them with the opportunities and resources they deserve to obtain an education and grow from the inside-out, from the bottom-up. Education is the life-blood of sustainability (feel free to quote me here.) And if you won't take my word for it then listen to John Dewey:

"I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. All reforms which rest simply upon the law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile.... But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.... Education thus conceived marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience...The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests."

With this in mind the association and I have chosen three projects we want to focus on in this next year. The first is one that I have already mentioned several times in this blog, the bottle schools. However, we have expanded it slightly. Where originally we were only going to build one, it has come to our attention that there is a serious need in the elementary school as well as the middle school. The teachers there approached me and explained that there are currently three teachers that do not even have their own classrooms; they are cramming 70 students into rooms made for 25. So, what could I say? We are now going to attempt to build two buildings: one for the elementary school and one for the middle school. Infrastructure is the buzzword for the first project. The second project will be aimed at providing opportunities for the youth of Chilascó to continue their educations past the middle school level through scholarships (more on this to come.) The third project will be to open a community library and computer lab (with internet access.) There is a serious bottle neck in the learning process here, because the resources and the access to information, are limited and not easily accessible to the population at large.

Bottle school update: We are full steam ahead on this project. Garbage is a HUGE problem here, but the entire community has got involved, as well as several other neighboring villages and a school in the capital, and we are already seeing major changes. I recently held a community clean-up day with the middle-schoolers, and someone from back home asked me: “why do they need someone to come and tell them to clean up their town? Shouldn’t they want to do this on their own?” I thought about this and talked with some of the community leaders I am working with about the question. This is the answer I came up with:

The last several generations in this small and isolated town grew up in conditions of poverty. Many of them never finished elementary school nor had many opportunities to venture outside of the village. When you are living hand-to-mouth like this the aesthetics of your environment are not a luxury you can afford to worry about. That combined with a serious lack of education (especially about the effects of contamination on the environment) lead to a sentiment that it does not matter where you throw your garbage. Furthermore, there is no system to control the garbage here. No garbage truck comes by to pick up their trash, nobody has garbage cans. So the options are either burn it or find a place to throw it. And, just like a wall that has a little spray-paint attracts more spray painters, once someone starts throwing trash in the street everyone else feels they have the right to do it as well. I am trying to teach them that there are other options. The word recycling is a foreign term here, so we are just now learning ways in which we can re-use this garbage. Mainly, we are going to build 2 school buildings with walls made of plastic bottles, filled with inorganic garbage, and covered with cement. The buildings end up just like any old concrete building, but are only a third of the cost and help to clean thousands of pounds of garbage out of a community that has nothing else to do with this waste. We don't realize how lucky we are.

I recently took the first steps towards realizing our second project. I took a trip to what is known as the "Zona Reyna"; one of the most isolated areas in Guatemala, with about 93 aldeas (little villages) all without power or water and very damaged from the Civil War. I was hosted by my friend Laura and her association. That have been administering a very successful scholarship project for several years now, “Becas Especiales Uspantan”:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Becas-Especiales-Uspantan/143756852253?ref=ts.

The idea was to learn from them and create contacts so that they will be able to help us as we try to replicate the project here. We went to visit some of the students that they are providing scholarships for up in the most isolated areas of the Zona. We wanted to talk to them and their families and teachers to learn how things are working and what else can be done to help. The stories were almost overwhelmingly heartbreaking, but at the same time incredibly inspirational. The people in this region are a testament to the power of the human spirit. And man is it ever GORGEOUS up there. It is true primary forest, completely untouched, and we had the opportunity to do some camping as the first visitors to an ecotourism site in the community of “La Gloria”. I'm a huge sucker for such natural beauty; I was ready to move there. As I said, the eventual goal is to replicate the scholarship project here in my community... so if you ever feel like sending a Guatemalan kid to school you let me know. It only costs $100 bucks a year, but most of the children don't ever go past elementary school, because even that is too expensive for their families. Sad, right? Imagine, for the price of a flat screen TV you could put five students through all three years of middle school! We don’t realize how lucky we are.

In regards to the third project, the library/computer lab, we are also in our first steps. Through Peace Corps and USAID each volunteer can receive a grant of up to $3,000 during their service for Small Project Assistance (SPA). Now, while I see this idea as anything but “small”, we are currently filling out the paperwork to receive this grant. We already have the space for this community education center, but the shelves are empty and the computers are non-existent. Knowledge is power, and between a good collection of books and the miracle of the internet, we hope to provide the community with unlimited access to this power. Anyone interested in helping in any way here should let me know. Maybe your company or your home has an extra computer lying around, maybe you have a contact at an NGO that provides used books, or maybe you want to sponsor a year of internet access for $200 dollars. Even if you just want to share this information with your friends and family we will appreciate it here. A lot of us take our education and unhindered access to information for granted, but the truth is we don’t realize how lucky we are.

So, congratulations, you have reached the last paragraph. Thanks for sticking with us. I just want to let you all know that life is GREAT here. In 2009, despite all the challenges it faces, Guatemala came in fourth place in the “World Happiness Index.” As hard as this may be to believe, living here I can see why. After a year here just about every last person in the community knows me. I cannot walk down the street without hearing “Tony” or “hello Professor” (probably because of the new glasses) or “good morning” (whether its morning or not) yelled out about 20 times, stopping to chat about 5 times about everything from the weather to the fact that we are running out of garbage in the streets, and usually getting invited to do something fun. You can just feel the warmth and friendliness of everyone and it is contagious. Enjoy the pictures!

"All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth." ~ Aristotle

How Firm Thy Friendship OOOOO - H IIIIII - OOOOO

What? You want us to us trash to build our school? This Gringo is nuts!

Class time in La Gloria.

A breath-taking shot from the road in to the "Zona Reyna"!

Sherry with some proud mothers of scholarship recipients.

Laura and me washing off under the waterfall at the ecotourism site we visited in the "Zona Reyna". We may not look like it, but we are very much enjoying this!!

These "little" guys are everywhere out there.

Night time at El Mirador.

Sherry meditating at the top of the pyramid at sunset. Please notice the Fight with Love breast cancer support t'shirt from Sue's store!

This is an aerial photo of the great central plaza of Tikal, with an image of "El Tigre" (the second largest structure at El Mirador) superimposed over it. It is seriously awe-striking!!!

70 kilometers in... we made it!!!

At camp on the third day.

The crew at the top of La Danta.

Ancient stone carvings. WOW!!!

Oliver!!!

Woody Woodpecker.

It is actually pitch black, but the flash gives you a great look at the bats inside one of the pyramids.

We saw lots of cool birds.

With Siggy on top of the ancient world.

At the base of the third phase of La Danta.

Stone Face.

Our campsite. That black and yellow beauty on the right is where my two "strange bedfellows" and I enjoyed our nights, sleeping (or trying to at least) to the sounds of the jungle: insects humming, birds calling, howler monkeys yelling, and a several unnamed hikers "sawing logs".

Lunch in the jungle.

The Mirador crew with Ronald on our way up to begin the adventure.

Juan and Viviana with one of our TEN trusty mules.

In the car with my crew on the way to the trail head.

It is a Guatemalan tradition to do a procession from the house to the church on your wedding. day. Wheres Waldo?

Cutting the cake with a knife that could be used in a slasher film.

Posing with the bride and groom, Panchita and Louis, at their beautiful wedding!

Orchids.

And more Orchids.

Team "Jaguar" showing their gangsta side! (I in no way support gang involvement, unless of course it takes the form of three teams of middle schoolers recycling the trash of their community to build schools.)

The leaders of team "All-Estrellas" with big smiles!

Team "Sexy Ladies" showing off their trash!

Team "Jaguar" cleaning up the streets!

Two thumbs up for community clean-up day!

I finally got the hammock up on the front porch (I needed to find special cement nails) and Iris LOVES it!!

The trainees and me on our way to see the waterfall. Unfortunately there was so much fog that you could not even see it from the base, but we still had a blast!

If you are having fun in Chilascó raise your hand!

Show me your bottles!!

For some strange reason all the female teachers from the small villages that is helping us recycle bottles and inorganic garbage wanted their picture taken with me. I think its the new glasses. And like the shirt says "Life is good"!!!

The Case of the Perplexingly Pungent Perfume

Chilascó is a farm town. As a farm town it presents a dizzying array of sights, sounds and smells. The occasional rooster will come meandering through your doorway, the wild dogs have a habit of keeping you awake at night as they apparently hold choir practice at 4 am, and you will all too often find yourself asking “what in the hell is that odor?”

Well, for the past two weeks I have been asking myself that very question… on a daily basis! From the picture above you can see how my bedroom is laid out. The room is about 10 feet across, on the right side sits my bed and on the left side sits my dresser/bookshelf. What you can’t tell by the picture is that behind the dresser is an archway that leads to the next room over, it is closed off with wooden planks.

Okay, so the scene is now set. Two weeks ago, just about when I got back from vacation, a mysterious aroma started plaguing me as I would lie down to go to sleep. I also came down with a pretty bad sinus infection at this time and was pretty stuffed up, but even with this inhibited sense of smell the stench was pungent. “Something smells like crap”, I said to myself. (Literally, out-loud, I said this. I’ve been catching myself talking to myself more and more.)

My first line of defense was to start burning incense. This was able to mask it, but only until the stick burned out, then the beast would return with a vengeance. The key was to try and fall asleep before the incense stick, “mystic wood” scent if you’re curious, burned out. It was a futile effort to race the beast.

Next, I washed everything; sheets, blankets, pillow cases, all my clothes, ALL OF IT. But alas, no dice, fail, the beast persevered. So, after a little anxiety attack, I went on a cleaning frenzy. Seven hours of cleaning under everything, in every little crack and crevice, pouring bleaches on the floors and walls, lysoling the hell out of everything… I even flipped my bed over and washed the underside. I was half expecting to find a dead family of mice or something, but there was nothing. The beast prevailed.

Then, today, just as I was about to take a bath in tomato sauce (I once heard this is how you get skunk spray smell out), I came home to find the door to the next room over open. The smell of the beast was pouring out the door. I put my game face on and went storming in for the final showdown, and found myself face to face with 400 pounds of fertilizer. Chicken shit. Several feet from where I sleep seems like a reasonable place to store feces, right?

Today, I conquered the beast. Or more accurately, I relocated it to the front porch of my host family’s house. Now they can deal with it...

There is a beast in man that needs to be exercised, not exorcised.

~Anton LaVey

One year in the books...

A year ago today I stepped off the plane and into a new world, a different life, and an exciting adventure. I have been trying to find a way to sum up the past year, but I cannot seem to find the words. When I came here I professed that I was looking to gain a new perspective on life and on the world. I can say that I have unequivocally achieved this, but paradigm shifts occur gradually, and to explain mine I first need to rewind the tape to the point where it all began…

And so now, having just stepped off the plane from spending the Holidays with my family back home, I find myself stepping back on. The ball rises as we count from one to ten, and the Sabres start with a 4-3 lead at the end of the third period only to see themselves fall behind 0 – 3 in the second as I sit next to my Father and sisters watching on. We take the ornaments off my Mother’s 14 foot Christmas tree one-by-one. I wind up back in the Antigua market returning Christmas gifts. We take the cement off first, then the individual bottles, until all that is left standing is the frame of the would be bottle school. My Spanish slowly deteriorates and I turn the pages of many books in reverse. ADESOCHI first stops using the accounting practices I had taught them; then the daily administration tools disappear; in the blink of an eye we don’t even have a guestbook anymore. Many Guatemalans from all over the country go from trusting me, asking for all different kinds of advice and using the informal tense, to being lukewarm but still unsure, to curious with the formal tense, to doubtful, to baffled about my presence in their town, to not knowing me. I hand my diploma for completing training back to the Ambassador and walk backwards down several volcanoes. Florecita sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Start to me in reverse. The plane backs its way to Miami, then to Washington, then to Buffalo. My dad drives me back home from the airport and I unpack all my stuff. At the going away party I am presented with a special presentation, “The Twelve Days of A Guatemalan Christmas” (but it is performed in reverse). I am back at the office, and we hit chapter skip back, a year flies by and I am now staring at the blank application form for Peace Corps on my computer.

What was in my head at that moment? It is tough to say now. There were definitely feelings of stagnation and restlessness; certainly a curiosity about the rest of this world we live in; for sure a desire to help people who recognize their needs and want to learn to meet them. But above all, the chorus that was ringing in my ear was probably singing “Go, live, make your life a story worth reading”. If nothing else I had my instincts, and they were telling me that this was the right move. So I took a leap of faith, filled out that application, left everything behind, and followed a dream.

I can say now, with complete conviction, that I could not have made a better choice. From the open homes and caring hearts of the people here I have learned a great deal. I have learned that happiness is something that you first must find within yourself. That what’s really important is people; relationships, friendship, love. That you can have just as much fun rolling an old bike tire up and down the street as you can with a Playstation 3. That a house can have dirt floors and still be a home.

I have learned that we don’t need to be in a hurry all the time. That it is important and healthy to take things slowly sometimes. That it’s not the quality of the meal or the coffee but the value of the company you enjoy it with that matters. That we need to do more listening and less talking.

I’ve learned that the world is a big and beautiful place with millions of things to see and billions of people to meet, and that invisible lines drawn on maps are not reasons to deprive yourself of these wonders. That we need to respect and take care of nature. That, while you can’t help everyone, you can certainly help someone… and you always should.

I have learned that, contrary to popular belief, people can change (timshel). That our pasts form us, but they do not define us. Every day is a new day, and it is never too late to chase a dream, to reconcile with an old friend, to make a new one, to learn something new, to forgive something old, to confess, to ask for forgiveness, to say “I love you”, to move on, to move forward.

I have learned that closed-mindedness is something to be feared. That there is nothing wrong with telling the people you care about just how much you care; and telling them as often as possible. That unless you are foolish enough to think you can really make a difference, you never will.

I realize that this all sounds very cliché, and that some of you may be sitting there rolling your eyes as you read this. Which brings me to one last thing I have learned; that clichés exist for reason - that being the inherent truth in them. But they are very much like advice from a parent; sometimes you can’t really understand it, believe it or appreciate it until you learn it through your own experiences. That’s what I have done in this past year. These are all excerpts from my journal, things I have learned through my own personal experiences here in Guatemala.

This last year has truly been incredible. I wouldn't change a second of it, and I can’t wait to see what the next year has in store….. Happy New Year to you all!!!

This is a long story that you might not believe if I told you.

Christmas photo with the crew of Viviente Verapaz (and some cute little girl who snuck in the picture)

The dance of the Venados in Chilasco.

Ditto. This is a yearly tradition on December 7, the day they burn out the devil.

Johnny on his first trip outside of the village, ever. Eating some Pollo Campero fried chicken (his choice).

The Thanksgiving crew at La Casa de las Tres Gracias.

Photo shoot with some chicas bonitas in the Tres Gracias garden.

Kickin' it with the cast of El Laberinto de la Mariposa... what an amazing play~!

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've always imagined."

~ Henry David Thoreau

The Mayan Prophecies of 2012

Recently, quite a big deal has been made in the media about the Mayan Prophecies for 2012. Their have been many different interpretations offered on this subject, and given the press' inclination towards the dramatic most have been quite ominous. I have done a fair share of my own research on this subject, and I would like to summarize and share my findings with you in this post.

First lets talk a little bit about the Mayans, their outlook on time and calendar system. The most important thing to realize about the Mayan calendars is that they represent a concept of time that is radically different from our own. Time for them is cyclic, and it is this perception that provides the context for the prophetic tradition that was their way of life. Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein would agree with the Mayan’s conception of time. The theory of relativity requires us to abandon our long-held notion of time being a fixed, isolated dimension, and that it is inextricably related to space. Time recurs, turns and loops back on itself unendingly; therefore it can’t be measured definitively. This gives us the recurrence and return that is the basis for the Mayan prophecies.

The Mayans used many different calendars in their timekeeping. To understand what will be happening on December 21, 2012 picture an old fashioned car odometer, and pretend that each rotating number is a Mayan calendar. As the first digit which counts each tenth of a mile clicks from 9 back to 0 the second, mile digit, clicks to 1. When this one reaches 9 and then clicks back to zero the next one registers, and so forth. Now imagine that there were only six digits and the odometer read 999,999. The next click is going to cause the whole cycle to reset. This is what will happen to the Mayan calendars in 2012.

This event will mark the end of 5th and final Great Cycle in the Long Count Calendar. Each Great Cycle is a period of about 5,126 years. The current period started on August 13, 3114 BC and will end on December 21, 2012 AD. This cycle is said to time our collective unfolding as a species, as well as the cycles of culture. Being that it is the final Great Cycle the entire Long Count Calendar (the Grand Year) will reset. Many people have confused this with the end of Mayan time. A new beginning would be a more accurate description.

The Maya are a short, dark-skinned Amerindian people with straight black hair; a characteristic feature being the roundness of their heads. The Maya have a holistic view of the spirit, the soul, the gods, human beings and numbers. They hold a concept of an absolute god called, Hunab K’u, ‘Sole God’, the giver of movement and measure. They believed that everything that exists is bound by the same life force, or energy, thus a human being is an integral part of nature and is inextricably linked to nature’s creator. Within this ‘Sole God’ were other versions of gods. This seems contradictory, but the idea is that at the core we are all one energy. An example of the others are the Chacs, the rain gods. Them like the other gods are set in groups of four and related to each of the 4 cardinal points of the compass and one of four colors: white, yellow, red and black. Apart from the 4 points of the compass the Mayans envisioned a fifth direction, the centre. An omnipresent direction that was imagined as a huge tree, the ceiba tree, which is connected to different plains of existence.

They are noted for the incredible architecture they constructed (see my Tikal photos below) and the amazing advances their civilizations achieved in mathematics and astronomical studies. Shockingly, they did not know that the moon revolved around the world or that the world revolved around the sun, but were still able to calculate the average synodical revolution of Venus with an error amounting to only 1 day in 6,000 years. They made calculations such as this relying solely on observations of the naked eye and an in-depth understanding of advanced mathematics.

All the Mayan calendars are based in astrology. The great significance of the coming calendar change (other than it being the end of the Long Count Calendar) is that it coincides with "Galactic Synchronization". There is a conjunction of the planets that takes place every 26,000 years. This event will occur on the winter equinox, December 21, 2012. What will happen, vaguely, is the earth and the solar system will be exactly in line with the plane of our galaxy, the Milky Way. For the Mayans this marks the end of our world age and the birth of a new one. This approximately 26,000 year cycle consists of 5 smaller cycles (5,126 years, the great cycle), the five suns; each sun being thought of as a world age or ‘creative cycle’. The cycle was calculated by observing precisely how long it would take for a constellation to reappear over the same observation point relative to earth. Modern Astronomy has confirmed this period as 25,800 years. Amazingly accurate given they only had the naked eye to work with. What will actually happen on this day is the suns path through the sky will line up exactly with the center of the milky way, the galactic centre.

As noted previously, the Mayan's relied heavily on prophecies in their culture. Much stake is being put in this these days, because the Mayans have been startlingly accurate in the past with their predictions. For example, the start of the year Katun 13 held a prophecy for the coming of foreigners and a new religion. This year coincided with 1519 Ad when Cortez and the Spaniards brought violence and Christianity to Meso-America. Many prophecies were put forth by the many different Mayan civilizations. Although the current Mayan Elders have publicly denounced the 2012 prophecies as a type of world-ending, doomsday prediction, that is what people still choose to focus on. In the rest of this post I will attempt to shed some light on what I feel, through my own personal research, is truly at the heart of the Mayan Prophecies of 2012.

One major part of the prophecy calls for the emergence of contemporary Mayan masters and teachers. They will come from old and young alike, from all cultures, religions, sexes, races and classes. Their main concern will be to redress the problems caused by the failure of our society to meet its educational ideals and responsibilities, and to correct the extent to which the negative influences of a materialistic education, technology, and the overuse of the planet’s natural resources, have restricted our spiritual development. A return to the Mayan ceremonial sites that were mysteriously abandoned in the 9th century is also predicted here.

This is something that I see already coming into existence everywhere I look. Whether these contemporary masters identify themselves as Mayan or not, I see a concerted global focus on generating a renewed kinship with nature. With the rapid growth of industries such as ecotourism and green energy, new fields of science like biomimichry, and a general increase in environmental awareness and the importance of communing with nature, I would say that this prophecy is already playing itself out.

Another part of the prophecies calls for the return of a supreme being. The most prevalent being in Mayan culture was Quetzalcoatl, also known to the Maya as Kukulcan. He is the plumed or feathered serpent. This idea of him returning is reminiscent of the idea of a second coming of Jesus Christ. The Spanish missionaries used this similarity to their advantage when converting the culture to Christianity. Many take this return not as something literal though, but more as a resurgence of energy much like the kind used in Kundalini meditation. It is hoped that this energy should allow us to transcend an earthbound, materialistic view of life. We are to change how we value our world, and it seems to me a growing number of people are already gaining this awareness.

This transcendence into a more self-actualized existence is further expressed in the prophecies of Pocal Votan, an ancient Mayan King from 603-683 AD. He was known as the ‘Closer of the Cycle’ and thus holds special importance as we end the great cycle. His epigram was “All is number. God is number. God is in all.” A major theme of his prophecy was the calling for the awakening of the human spirit. With this awakening the current Elders see the human race finding the necessary capabilities to transcend the materialism that bogs us down. They also believe we need to start to see time as cyclic (as the Mayans do) rather than linear. Again, we are living out of tune with nature.

Some of the ominousness that come with these prophecies is related to those predictions based on the moon. The Mayan hold an obsessive mythological attachment to the Moon, they actually gave it it’s own calendar, the Tun-Uc. Much is read into the character of the moon from the Mayan viewpoint. The Quiche Maya believed the moon to be unpredictable, hard to understand, promiscuous and deceitful (on a funny/interesting side note, this character description of the moon caused her to be named either the wife or the mother of the Sun. I guess women haven’t changed much over the centuries.)

The Mayan also see the “Man on the Moon” as the “Rabbit on the Moon” which carries a link with drunkenness. This leads to further instability surrounding the moon, and the predictions speak of unpredictably violent disasters such as flooding. This is where many of the end of the world predictors find their fix, but in reality it is a small part of the overall prophecies.

The prophecies also relate to Venus. To the Mayan Venus is the ‘Dark Planet’. The transit of Venus across the sun is an event that usually occurs in pairs about 8 years apart. The last transit took place on June 8, 2004, and is scheduled to take place again on June 6, 2012. The Mayan accurately tracked this cycle. This is seen as a build up to galactic synchronization, and higher levels of energy on earth. Those of you who have seen the recent blockbuster 2012 will recognize these higher levels of energy.

On of the most integral parts of the prophecy calls for the unity of mankind. This says that the various races, religions, and classes that divide us, mask an essential unity, and that despite the conflicts, people will be drawn closer together; they must realize our inherent unity to overcome the problems facing our planet and civilization. A new enlightenment is called for as humanity is entering the most crucial phase of its existence, and the coming years will witness the unprecedented and undreamt-of changes in the course of its long evolution. This could not be more important in this day in age. Globalization is increasing by the second and we are an increasingly interdependent species, our world's greatest super power is fighting two separate wars, and people are blowing up themselves and others everyday in the name of God. I think we all know that the need for the fulfillment of this prophecy is paramount to our continued survival, we can only hope that the Mayan's were accurate in their prediction of it.

With this new enlightenment will come the development of a new cosmic consciousness. The prophecy recalls us to the eternal Mayan precept that EVERYTHING is energy, and our urgent need to be conscious of it as the driving principle of the universe, and to experience it in its innumerable manifestations. This to me seems incredibly insightful, seeing that the Maya had no knowledge of the power of the atom, and that the more we learn the more it seems that this concept is completely accurate and way before its time. The Maya do not regard this new higher level of consciousness as something metaphysical, but as a concrete aspect of everyday life. They had a simple theory of consciousness and how it can be advanced by accepting that the mental is a property of nature, a form of energy. Our brains are merely electrochemical tools (maybe merely is a bad word though), and we are capable of deeper forms of consciousness then our everyday ‘rational’ consciousness, and in these deeper forms lie incredible powers that we are aware exist, but have only been toying with and never seriously studied as we have the physical forces. We have all heard it said that we only use about 10% of our brain power. The idea of this new cosmic consciousness that we are to develop is that we will begin to use a great percentage of this astounding power we possess.

The Maya actually believe that we used to know how to use this power, but that we are currently suffering from a collective spiritual amnesia and that we will recover our cosmic wisdom that we once possessed but have since forgotten. This is again speaking to our relationship with nature and the universe. We must remember that man is not an island and he needs to live in harmony with these things and their energy to tap his full potential. This implies that man is sustained more by right thinking, by a certain kind of attitude and knowledge, than by the constructs of science and technology. The instinct and intuition that once informed our knowledge has been lost, or at least obscured through an over-abundance of technology…but we will recover it according to the Mayans.

We must transcend technology. Technology has undermined our spiritual authority and displaced our natural human faculties. What is definitely interesting about the Mayan people is that they seemed to possess some faculties we lack, or perhaps skills we have lost because we have invented a technology that displaces them. The best examples of this is their mathematical ability without the aid of even an abacus, their knowledge of astronomy with only the use of the naked eye, and their ability to deal with huge numbers and vast cycles of time – things we now need computers to handle. We have given our minds over to the technology it has invented. We have tools and computer programs that handle many of the tasks we previously had to handle with our own faculties, thus it stands to reason that certain abilities are not being fostered and developed. The idea is that technology is developing so fast it has passed from useful to destructive…too much of a good thing? Many predict though that this recovery will take a catastrophic even that will knock out all this technology and revert us to the stone ages.

I think the core of this prophecy of enlightenment and a new cosmic consciousness is one of evolution and genetics. This prophecy is based in part on the Sage King, Pocal Votan (mentioned above), and concerns evolutionary changes in human biology that will further develop the mind, the will, and heightened sensitivities, as well as psychic and telepathic powers. A human being is not just a collection of chemicals, but a ‘complex electrodynamic being’; as such we are affected by electrodynamic fields both artificial and natural. Research shows that there is a strong correlation between human behavioral disturbance and geomagnetic field turbulence. Again we must stress the extraordinary potential human beings possess but have hardly begun to study, much less understand. One eerie theory is our potential for telepathy and non-local communication through electromagnetic fields. Apparently we will start to realize these potentials in the coming age. This 26,000 year cycle, and call for a drastic evolutionary event, coincides with our evolution from Neanderthals to Homo sapiens at the end of the last cycle.

With this in mind, another part of the prophecy calls for changes to the Earth’s magnetic field. Interesting. They call for unprecedented and violent sunspot activity that will cause a radical change in the Earth’s magnetic field, perhaps amounting to a reversal of the poles. Sunspots, or solar flares, are intensifications of the suns light resulting from some source of extra energy. These can even displace the earth’s rotation, resulting in natural disasters. Such changes in the suns magnetic energy (which has been known to reverse the poles in earth’s history) is thought to have set up a sequence of solar activity that started it the year 2000 and is due to climax in 2012. These energy fluctuations were apparently charted by the Maya over there 5,126 year long count calendar (please don't ask me how), and has been confirmed by NASA. In fact the sunspot cycle is supposed to rise to a new maximum with increased activity of 30 – 50 percent greater than previous storms, and should also reverse its own magnetic poles in 2012. It has actually been suggested that one of these solar storms led to the mysterious demise of the Maya in the 9th century (which they also predicted).

With all of this said, and all of the other crazy theories flying around the internet on this subject, we must remember that these are just formulated predictions based on what is often very cryptic evidence. What I took from all of this research was that it is becoming more and more evident that humans, as a race, are living in discordance with nature and with each other, and that we eventually need to find a way to correct this. We can only hope that 2012 marks a significant step in the right direction in this process.

Now enjoy some pictures from my trip to Tikal!!!