With the Olympic Games marking a moment of inspiration, 2012 is an opportunity for humanity to move into spiritual maturity, says Paul Fletcher
The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London managed, incredibly, to provide a diverse tapestry of myth, history and inspiration about Britain and its capacity for spiritual rebirth.
From the source of the River Thames we journeyed through the green and pleasant land, the industrial revolution, two world wars, the rise of popular music and the invention of the internet.
During the ceremony, the flags of the nations of the world were placed on a replica of Glastonbury Tor, along with the Olympic flag, which was carried by the head of the United Nations alongside seven other great humanitarians. The Tor was present all the while as the still standing symbol of spiritual power.
Ceremony director Danny Boyle somehow managed to encapsulate something compelling about the world, the Olympic ideal and the ‘Matter of Britain’ (its literature and mythology) – all on global television with an audience of over 1bn. This was a moment to shine.
But when did our civilisation’s road to 2012 start – this time that marks the end of a 5,125 year cycle as recorded in the ancient Mayan calendar? Was it 1926 when the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin and Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky first talked about an added planetary layer, outside and above the biosphere, made up of thought substance?
“Our situation is calling on all of us to change, to work out how to move into global maturity”
Was it in 1969 when we first looked back at our blue planet Earth from space and gasped at the beauty of Gaia? Or was it the spiritual awakening of August 1987, known as The Harmonic Convergence, when people all over the world visited sacred sites and held ceremonies, prayers and meditations to mark the beginning of a 25 year cycle to 21 December 2012.
This is a story of the evolution of consciousness; of the gradual dawning awareness of a unified field of life and its support systems. In recent decades, this thought-form began to bring forth many positive initiatives such as the creation of Amnesty International in 1961, Friends of the Earth in 1969, and Greenpeace in 1971, as well as other non-governmental organisations worldwide. There was also an explosion of interest in different forms of spiritual practice and healing.
For some reason, known to the Mayan culture thousands of years ago, our present global civilisation has reached a crisis point symbolised by the year 2012. Hollywood and some sensationalist media are portraying this as ‘the end of the world’. This is not the case; Earth Day co-founder and author of The Mayan Factor, José Argüelles, has stressed that transformation is the key to this point in humanity’s history, which is “a period of dramatic evolutionary change affecting the whole planet.”
Our situation is calling on all of us to change, to work out how to move into global maturity so that we can pass on a healthy and unpolluted planet to future generations. Many visionaries have written about 2012, and the 20-year period that follows, as a time of intensified possibility. Many of the practical initiatives emerging are to be found in the pages of Positive News.
This future will need to bring about a unity between humanity and the natural world. There will need to be a sustainable global economy that moves away from exploitation and is underpinned by a holistic wisdom; a participative society, transforming from separation to community, where the young value the wisdom of the elders and the young themselves are allowed to blossom and participate in decision-making.
Danny Boyle dared to dream and now, in 2012, so must we.
