Anxiety Watch

A news report suggested that public belief in a looming apocalypse is one of the reasons people aren't flashing their credit cards so freely, workers are facing the threat of job layoffs and the stock market is acting so erratically.

Largely thanks to the Christian church, which is steeped in prophecy of a doomsday event in "the end times," millions if not billions of people all over the world have been expecting something terrible to happen ever since our calendar hit the 2000 mark.

Television documentaries are laced with doomsday scenarios that suggest this event may range from a collision with a stray asteroid to a planetary polar shift. The programs examine the effects of global warming, the possibility of another ice age caused by increased volcanic action, or perhaps a nuclear war.

A lot of would-be soothsayers predicted the return of Jesus on or about New Years Day, 2000. These little cult groups flocked to Jerusalem and set up housekeeping, awaiting the appearance of their messiah. Naturally, the Israeli government found them to be a nuisance and did all it could to discourage them from making public spectacles of themselves.

When Y2K passed and Jesus failed to make his appearance, we suspect some thought the apocalyptic date would happen on January 1, 2001. Purists, of course, saw this as the official start of the 21st Century. But that date also passed without a showing by a savior of the chosen. In the meantime, the world has been plunging rapidly toward some kind of cataclysmic event, as seen in the increased solar flares, the melting ice caps, the super storms, burning forests and onset of killer diseases.

Then there is the theory based on the ancient Mayan calendar uncovered in the jungles of Central America. This amazing calendar, which recognized 365 days in each year plus one extra leap-year day every fourth year, reaches an abrupt end on Dec. 22, 2012.

Armed with this piece of information, many doomsday prophets now say they believe that this calendar marks the day the world ends. I found a web site that claims the Mayans were given special knowledge by the Annunaki, an alien race of beings said to have invaded the Earth thousands of years ago. The site suggests that a pole shift is going to occur on or about this date, causing mass death and destruction of most, if not all life.

It is obvious that the doomsday prophet who developed that particular web site doesn't consider the Jesus factor a valid piece of the futuristic puzzle. That might be the only area where we might agree.

Scholars who study the Mayan culture find the calendar to be a complex and highly accurate record of not only the Earth's yearly cycles, but also movements of the planets and even certain star clusters. The Mayan calendar measures thirteen 144,000-day Earth cycles, with its final cycle, or "baktun," ending on the day of the winter solstice in 2012.

But does the conclusion of the Mayan calendar mark the end of the world, or the beginning of a new cycle? Could there not be a new beginning for those of us fortunate enough to survive the deadly obstacle course we seem to be preparing for ourselves in the years between now and then?

People who study the astrological charts notice something very interesting about the year 2012. It is a year filled with perfect alignments involving the Sun, Moon, Venus and the Earth. Two solar eclipses will occur. The first will be astrologically conjunct with the star cluster Pleiades, which was of special interest to the Mayans. This star cluster was somehow linked to the Mayan belief in the serpent, which also is an important symbol to contemporary mystics. The second eclipse will bring the sun and moon in alignment with the constellation Serpens, recognized by the Mayans as the head of the serpent.

The serpent, or kundalini, is recognized among many native tribes as a phallus. In reality it represents the energy transmitted along the human spine. It is the electrical force that links the body's chakras. And it may be the channel through which we find our escape from the doomsday scenario developing in the old reality we have known in the third dimension. We think the Mayans understood this distinction.

The winter solstice of 2012 also will be the last in a series of solstices that have the Sun aligned with the equator of our own Galaxy, or the Milky Way. People who can look into the future know that something important is about to happen, and this particular moment in our future looks like it could be an especially magical event.

We believe that some humans . . . at least those who are awake and aware of the fantastic changes occurring all around them . . . are going to go through an important evolutionary process.

We say this because prophets, psychics and remote viewers have snatched glimpses of humans in the future. They say there is something very different about these people. They appear superior both mentally and physically to contemporary humans.

The secret to this evolutionary process may lie in our own laboratories, where contemporary scientists are even now discovering the very secrets of a long and healthy life through stem cell and genetic engineering. But it may be something else. The key to our next evolutionary step may lie deep within our own memories. Could it be that we are about to step from the third dimension into something even more wonderful?