Beyond the Horizon

The Coming of Ages

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Elizabeth Whitney

In December of 2012, a whole lot of hoopla went down about the end of the Mayan Calendar. Most of it was disinformation by the media who insisted on referring to it as a prediction for the end-of-the-world. No one with any real understanding of the Mayan culture said anything of the kind. The media being who and what it is, there was little effort made to clarify what was meant by the calibration of an end point in the type of calendar the Mayans kept.

It was not the end of the world. It was the end of a world age. A world age is a vast season of consciousness made manifest on the physical plane. The Mayans, very advanced beings, created a physical culture to teach the consciousness of time, the essence of which is that time is consciousness. We have now entered the world age in which we will learn and live that reality.

The previous world age was a cycle that had an entirely different consciousness and served an entirely different purpose. It lasted 5125 years and encompassed all of what we call civilization. It has been referred to as the “cycle of history.” You could also characterize it as the cycle in which we separated from nature. It literally began with the distortion of the calendar from its primordial role as a social form that harmonized human activity with the synchronic order of all creation into a tool to control humanity via government, warfare, taxes, debt and police. The holy days–holidays–of the ancient matriarchal societies of the previous world age were tied to natural events such as seasons, celestials comings and goings and–very much to the point–the rhythms of the female body.

All of us are now living through the morphing of one age to another, from one dominant thought form into another. We are recovering from the intense experience of a dark vs. light drama as the age of history played itself out in the struggle to find redeeming glimpses of harmony in an increasingly distorted world. This is still the world that greets us daily as “news”: hideous examples of humanity living out a psychotic suicide mission of disharmony on all fronts. Technically, none of that is news because it belongs to the world age that is over. Nevertheless, a habit-bound and reactive media keeps serving it up.

World ages don’t end crisply. They end like a car running out of gas, in fits and starts. You keep pumping on the accelerator pedal out of habit but the car is rolling to a stop. When the tide turns, there is an initial period of chaos as the water that was pulled one way reorganizes itself to respond to being pulled in the opposite way. What fueled the previous world age, thoughts that were programmed in via a time-equals-money macroprogram (the twelve-month erratic calendar), no longer fuels the new world age–but the sputtering car has a little momentum left.

Meanwhile there are signs of the radical changes that are coming to be the fuel of the new world age, and these signs are the real news. We have the structures of the old age collapsing. Watch them go. The Vatican appears to be the first to bite the dust. The central banking system will follow. The concept of money as debt is no longer viable. It doesn’t work. Too many have too little and too few have too much and the inevitable outcome of that disharmony is bedlam. (Bedlam is a word that derives from the name of a London hospital for the insane.)

On the fringes of awareness, new systems are being birthed. We’re seeing the arising of consciousness movements with political agendas that are founded in values of the heart, not pitting one group of us against the other. We are seeing that survival is a whole planet issue, not a pecking order privilege. We are likely to see movements arising outside the political formula attached to the last world age. Maybe they will be more like Burning Man and less like burning down the house. We are seeing the power of celebration, meditation and synchronized dance forms to bring about the renewal of hope and aspiration. The long-suppressed feminine energy once embodied in the authority of natural time is returning, as is the 13 Moon Calendar of Natural Time.

This is the period of incubation, of the seed murmuring under the soil, of the brewing of new energies and the testing of new ideas in a friendlier climate. Sensitive people are agreeing that things have changed and noticing the subtle power of projecting internal personal harmony into social situations. The appetite for the archetypal nurturing values of the feminine is undeniable. We’re tired of war and violence as tools of resolving anything. It’s better to reach out and take away the pain than inflict more pain.

Gradually the awakening of the new consciousness will take form on the physical plane. The human race will heal the earth in the world age we have now entered. All our genius of invention will be harnessed in the undoing of the damage that has been inflicted on the physical earth and the simple act of overturning our priorities will initiate a new creative explosion of healing and restoring. In this we will not be alone. The harmonization of all beings with the synchronic order of the universe is the invitation that will open our awareness to the vast field of cosmic intelligence that surrounds us.

Welcome to the New Age.

Posted in Cosmology, Evolution of Consciousness, Mayan Calendar, metaphysics, New Age | Tagged awakening, consciousness, Mayan Calendar, natural time calendar, New Age, synchronic order, world age | 1 Comment

Living in Reactionary Times

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Elizabeth Whitney

These are reactionary times. These are times when events are explosive and unexpected. Protest politics are back, pitting people power against intransigent institutions. Earth events send shock waves of fear and empathy around the globe. Solar flares wake up a quiescent sun. Financial dramas large and small are the order of the day. Acts of violence know no bounds. There’s high drama on the high seas of the human adventure; when we don’t have time to adjust, all we can do is react.

The negative political fervor that showed up in the 2010 election is playing itself out in wild ideological grandstanding that threatens to paralyze the system. We have no idea where any of this is going. A recent meeting of earnest, concerned local residents investigating the topic “collapse” was visited by a delegation from Santa Rosa, three tightly wound crusaders rooted in fear-based survivalist political activism. That was strange!

The cartoon image of the bearded man in robes carrying a sign reading “The End of the World is at Hand,” is no longer a cartoon. It’s a billboard on D Street in Petaluma. Like it or not, we are in the thick of the “End Times” emotional roller coaster.

Inevitably, we are going to react to what we see around us that is strange and threatening. We are going to fall into patterns of judgment and blame and outrage. We are going to demonize the “enemy” (Gov. Scott Walker and his buddies the Koch brothers for starters) and romanticize our allies. We are going to become mirrors of everything we see wrong in the world around us as the world around us becomes an uncomfortable place run by moral indignation. We do this because we still live in the small realm of our limited understanding of what this time is all about.

We think we are a lonely little planet populated by a species that can’t organize itself and in a way that creates benefit for all. As the kids say on Facebook: Earth: FAIL ☹. Naturally, that leads to a bummer state of mind. From the bummer state of mind comes the anger and the bully mind and the fanaticism—and the possibility of social chaos on a scale none of us want to imagine.

Maybe it would serve us better to realize that we are not inherently unable to cooperate and live in balance with our biosphere, but shackled by beliefs and conditioning that corrupt our intrinsic nature. It is these false beliefs and corruptions that are being cleaned out by the waves of change coming at us. If we cling to them, we’ll go with them. If we let them go, we’ll be free.

Belief number one is the reality of money. Money is a measure of scarcity. Nature and the vast universe reflect pure abundance. All the man-made, artificial economies are failing because the end of money is at hand. What lies ahead is an economy of abundance and love. Our mission in reactionary times is to imagine that economy into being.

Belief number two is slavery to mechanical time and a political/economic calendar. Time is a dimension of synchronicity, a radial present in which all possibilities exist. Time is a dimension of consciousness. The role of a calendar is to connect us to the cosmic synchronic order. Our mission in reactionary times is to contemplate these ideas and integrate them into our daily lives as best we can.

Belief number three is the worship of technology. Technology is trap. It will enslave us even as it appears to liberate us. The technology of the next age is mental, not physical. Applying it requires disciplines of mind and body that are joyful and life giving. These are the anchors of the culture to come in which humans interact in art and play. Our mission in reactionary times is to begin these disciplines now and infuse them into society at all levels, from childhood to elderhood.

What is coming has been foretold in every cultural tradition on the planet. First comes the purification, then the realization of a Golden Age of peace and harmony. We were born to be a part of the birthing of a new age of humanity. We picked up some clues of our true purpose in the psychedelic era; we buried them in our re-embrace of materialism in the technological era. Now we can rediscover what we have always known: we are in the right place at the right time.

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Hope is Just a Four-Letter Word

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Elizabeth Whitney

The other night the Dance Palace [our local community center] produced an event on “The State of the Obama Presidency” with journalists Norman Solomon and Bill Press in conversation. Co-sponsored by Point Reyes Books and benefiting the community center, the two were introduced by bookstore co-owner Steve Costa, who reminded us of the outpouring of hope and happiness that Obama’s inauguration had produced in our community two years ago. On that memorable morning Toby’s Feed Barn was packed to the ceiling with 500 happy souls watching the inauguration on a big screen. Some of them had even jumped into Tomales Bay at dawn as an initiation rite to honor the beginning of a new era.
Two years later there was little of that energy in the room and the tone of disappointment and discouragement was heavy. Norman Solomon considers the Obama presidency a betrayal of all of the progressive values and considers Obama himself a cosmetic marketing operation who can’t or won’t fulfill his campaign rhetoric. Bill Press was willing to grant him some accomplishments but had his own list of failures. At one point he said his was the glass half full and Solomon’s was the glass half empty.
My question is: What was in the glass you were drinking, boys? Do veteran Washington watchers actually think that a newly elected president comes into power like an avenging angel with a flashing sword able to slay the resident dragons? My metaphor is quite different. Think of all those movies you’ve seen about the new prisoner in the block. The door slams behind you and you feel the presence of the old-timers who’ve held the power in the place for longer than you know. They run the prison black market, they have the goods on all the guards and they know how to manipulate the various hate groups that have been cultivated by the system. They have the drugs and dispense the favors. And here’s this new boy who came in the door thinking he’s some kind of hotshot! He will be roughed up to see what he is made of. He will be humbled in front of the big bad dudes. He will have anything he’s attached to taken away to see how he behaves. He will have his reality spun on their terms. Then he will be evaluated to see if he will be allowed to play in the power structure that is the only game in town: theirs.
In the dying age of materialism, this is what politics is, folks. It’s rough, it’s mean and it’s desperate. And it’s unpredictable, which is the only good news to report. Very good news. The control that the system has on everyone, which is largely the control of money that corrupts everything, has begun to be unraveled. The ship has sprung a leak: WikiLeaks. The power of fear that holds it all in place has lost a vital organ: secrecy. When anything can be revealed, there is no measure of truth any more from outside authority. The only measure left is inside authority. This is the beginning of the disintegration of the illusions of the global plutocracy. The Empire has no clothes.
The financial sector is the next crack in the dike. Money these days is numbers speeding among computers. Real money barely exists. If those numbers are manipulated by what will be called “cyber terrorists,” faith in numbers will collapse. The financial wizards have been inventing new games as fast as they lose the old ones, but they need their elf nerds to do all the hard crunching. There is sabotage in their ranks inspired by the WikiLeaks adventurists. Stay tuned. The prison walls are going to come a-fallin’ down.
I was glad to see my friend Gene Ptak in the audience the other night. He reads the radical prose of Thomas Paine at the 4th of July celebration in Inverness and he teaches Shakespeare to kids. I hoped he was thinking, as I was, how like Shakespeare play is Obama’s presidency and how we should just appreciate the great theater of it all. Obama is a true warrior in the midst of enemies and allies, his allegiance not to the power brokers of Wall Street but to the people he saw in the projects in Chicago, the two fascinating strains of his own family, and the soulfulness of his in-laws. To accomplish his mission he has to go into the thick of it, get beaten and bruised, risk his life daily, and keep his allegiance to the world outside the prison, where social justice and equality are God-given, not man-made.
We here in West Main need to imagine what part in the grand theater of life we want to play as various institutional structures lose their ability to keep us together. Courage, sacrifice, generosity, faith and grace are much more interesting words than hope.

Posted in Democrats, Election 2008, Politics, West Marin | Tagged Barack Obama, Bill Press, cyber terrorism, hope, money, Norman Solomon, Obama presidency, plutocracy, Point Reyes Station, progressive agenda, Wall Street, Washington pundits, West Marin, WikiLeaks | 2 Comments

Into the Vortex

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Elizabeth Whitney

Minutes after Zenyatta’s heart-breaking, valiant run at Blame—a run that didn’t quite make it by a breath—the words came pouring out. Jockey Mike Smith, more noble in defeat than he could possibly imagine, faced the cameras and faulted himself for strategic mishaps in the early part of the race. Eminent turf writers pulled themselves together and posted eloquent commentaries capturing the mixed dimensions of a race that showed both the heroic depth of Zenyatta’s will-to-win and the cruel truth of the words win and lose. Zenyatta’s Facebook page was inundated with postings expressing love, pride and encouragement. Around the breakfast table at my Louisville B&B the men were angry and the women were sad. Around the Internet, “comments” evoked respect and love for the Queen but also reprised old arguments, squabbles and, well, blame. Headline writers had fun with Blame and some writers recalled Man O’ War’s only defeat to Upset. Words, words, words.

I didn’t make my pilgrimage to Louisville from California for the Breeder’s Cup Classic at Churchill Downs because I am a racing fan or even very horseracing literate. I saw Zenyatta’s 17th race on a YouTube clip posted on an old friend’s page in June. It blew me away. I dove in. I watched all the races over and over again. I researched all the members of Team Zenyatta and my respect for them grew and grew. There was a moral flavor to them that was refreshing and magnetic. I read everything I could about racing. I studied its history; I devoured the books on the great horses and soberly took in the harsh critique of thoroughbred racing by James Squires, Headless Horsemen. I started a daily routine of reading all the turf writers I could find, getting to know this lively and gritty band of characters who want to tell a story that, in reality, few people care about anymore. Like any passion, however, from the inside it colors everything you see.
None of my friends knew anything about Zenyatta, but one by one, they caught the fever. We called it “witnessing for Zenyatta” when we brought our laptops to parties to show her races—“Got two minutes to have your mind blown?” It always worked. Because she raced in Southern California, I could get there by car, and my ancient Volvo proved as valiant as she when I hit the road south to get to Hollywood Park. Thanks to a welcoming exchange with Zenyatta’s trainer John Shirreffs who happened by when I was at the stable gate with my friend, we met the Queen one foggy morning when there was no one else around. She was sleeping. Then she woke up and looked at me and the experience was transfixing. At that moment I was aboard the ride wherever it was going to take me. I saw race #18 at Del Mar and met the track’s kind media man Mac McBride who gave me a $10 pass and wished me luck with my writing aspirations (a query to Rolling Stone magazine). Seeing her racing in person was electrifying. I saw in her body language the absolute assurance that she would win, something I couldn’t create from desire mixed in with ego. It came from her.
I became more fascinated by her capacity to reach into each of us and awaken something ancient and deep and spiritual. Is she part of this thing that we feel that is coming, the spirit of the feminine that is rising out of the dying age to reconnect us with holiness and sacred love? It was quite easy to entertain these lofty thoughts, to think of her as a miracle, a sign, a Goddess. And, by golly, those words were also on the lips of Mike Smith, owners Jerry and Ann Moss and John Shirreffs—people who ought to know. She is not of this realm. She is given from another source. She is a filly from God. She is a blessing. The higher her star rose in the firmament, the more humble and reverent were the words that came from them, not exactly typical sports lingo. The snarky arguments in the land of comments on the Internet were an unbearable contrast to what I was seeing from those closest to her. More impressive were the respectful remarks from trainers and jockeys of her rivals and potential rivals who rose above comparisons and noted that they, too, saw something extraordinary they were honored to witness up close.
For race #19 at Hollywood Park I had my 11-year-old granddaughter by my side. Dubious at first, she gradually got drawn into the racing spirit and the thrill of seeing the Queen pass Switch right in front of us. We have our souvenir hats and will have our souvenir memories of those two minutes forever. Hollywood Park was fun and relaxed that day. It cost $7 for me and was free for her and we had great seats among friendly company. The next stop on this cruise ship was Louisville, Kentucky, where she was entered in the Breeders Cup Classic, the culminating race of her three-year career and the showdown with the best of the best of her racing peers. This meet moves around over the years; in 2009 it was in Santa Anita in Southern California and in 2010 it was scheduled at Churchill Downs, the one racetrack everyone has heard of.
Churchill Downs in my imagination was the temple of racing, the golden apple in the green pasture of Kentucky’s famous breeding grounds of noble thoroughbreds, the over-the-rainbow of every horserace dream. In reality, it’s pretty darn ugly. Once upon a time it had a charming integrity with picturesque spires and sloping roofs, but two big blocky add-ons on either side of the old building dwarf this charm and give the whole place an industrial look. “It looks like they saved money by not hiring an architect,” I emailed a friend. It is close to major thoroughfares, other sports venues and your basic urban commercial decay. It was shocking to come upon it without seeing any landscaping; it didn’t fit any of my preconceptions.
Nevertheless, the tickets to the Breeders Cup races were top dollar, something that had concerned me from the beginning of this adventure. To make a long story short and sweet, I got lucky and befriended a talkative gentleman from Louisiana who sold me two standing room passes for the two race days for $100 that would put me in the stands at the level where I could see the whole race, including the backstretch. I discovered in the previous two races that seeing Zenyatta race live was where I got intuitive information about the shape of the race and its outcome. I needed to have my eyes on her, not the big video board.
Speaking of eyes on her, from the moment she arrived by plane from LA and was dramatically vanned into the barn area with full police escort, all eyes and cameras were on her. Herds of professional and amateur camera persons followed her every move from barn to track for morning workouts to the back lawn on Longfield Avenue outside her barn where she came out several times daily to graze and be washed down. You knew where Zenyatta was by the cloud of people in her wake.
All the promotion was about Zenyatta. It had finally come to a crescendo, this three-year long career of chalking up win after win until the numbers began to look—well, the phrase always ended up—unbelievable. “This is un-be-lievable!” was the cry of race caller Trevor Denman one year ago when she ran in the Breeders Cup Classic and came from behind to beat the all-male field and become the first female horse it its 25 year history to win it. (The year before she had stuck to the distaff side of the ledger and won the Ladies’ Classic.) She was here in Churchill Downs in Kentucky’s chilly November weather to defend her title in the same race with another powerful all-male field. She was the exotic diva from Southern California who brought her entourage, her bodyguards and her publicity machine with her. Just because her home at Hollywood Park isn’t in Hollywood, doesn’t man she’s not a Hollywood star. She is the epitome of female stardom: beautiful, talented, rich, powerful and radiantly healthy. She has great legs, a gorgeous chest and an ass to die for. Her trainer John Shirreffs, not given to hyperbole, considers her the perfection of 300 years of thoroughbred breeding. She’s also kind and gentle and intelligent.
Through her owners’ guidance, she has generated lots of money for racing’s causes: thoroughbred rescue, jockey benefits and scholarship funds for back barn families. Zenyatta, named for the Police album Zenyatta Mondatta, is a made-up word, but it contains the root syllable for the word “zenith” and Mondatta contains the root syllable for the word “world.” She arrived from her triumphant California-based career at the Mecca of thoroughbred racing at the top of the racing world. From the obscurity of virtually no mainstream media about horseracing outside of the Kentucky Derby, she was within a few weeks featured on 60 Minutes, in Oprah’s O magazine, illuminated in the fashion rag W, and the object of a sizeable feature in Sports Illustrated. Zenyatta had finally leapt out of the intimate world of racing aficionados into the public eye. If she won her race—billed as her last race—achieving an unprecedented record of 20-0 she would certainly have a shot at the front page of the New York Times. There was a lot more than Mike Smith riding on the mighty Queen.
There were millions of devoted female fans all over the world who knew about this race and there were thousands who had managed to get themselves to Kentucky to see her in person. It was the effect on women that created the Zenyatta phenomenon. It crossed all ages and attitudes. Mothers shared the devotion of their teenage girls; economic strata and what you did for a living had no bearing on her appeal. Zenyatta’s hoofs pounded on the common ground of women from all stripes of society who projected themselves into her courage and power. A particularly deep chord was struck among women who own, ride, train and care for horses in every rural pocket of America. They saw who Zenyatta was and wanted to witness her prove to the world at large that a great mare was in a league of her own, one that transcended the record-book boundaries of the sport of kings. The love of women for a female horse was the wave that gave Zenyatta wings of glory.

The Race

One reason I admired the quality of writing that came out of the race coverage by sports writers and columnists and bloggers all over the land was the challenge of putting into words what the experience was and doing it within minutes of the experience. The race took me through an existential disintegration and back. Oppositions collided into each other and fractalized into patterns my mind couldn’t recognize. Night and day. Win and lose. Good and bad. Hope and fear. Inner and outer. Alone and connected. Real or a dream? Whatever had happened in those two minutes was so overwhelming I surrendered to a loss of words. It was easier that way. Now it is possible to tell my tale.
By race time, the sun had set after a long brilliantly sunny but cold day of observing races, people and a variety of rather strange anomalies at the track. An interference move that set off a brawl between jockeys that stunned the crowd. A horse that couldn’t run, that probably should have been scratched but wasn’t. A horse that fell and a girl jockey that rolled out of harm’s way. Was this unusual? I didn’t know. I wasn’t betting. I wasn’t socializing. I was waiting for the last race and it arrived as twilight descended and the palette before me changed into night tones. Suddenly it was Halloween eerie, Ichabod Crane spooky. On the screen came yet one more promotional video of the great Zenyatta and I cringed. Enough already with the hubris!
Zenyatta was prancing mightily as she came past the stands and into the paddock. The crowd was roaring. She was indeed worked up, more than I’d ever seen, her forelegs pawing at unseen energies. What alchemy was she having to do with this roar flooding over her, she who was always so aware of a camera clicking or her name called out? In all her races there had never been this intensity of drama with darkness descending and floodlights replacing the sun. In the stands cameras everywhere were flashing points of light like twinkling stars. I was a tiny spectator up in the back of the Third Floor Grandstand with my binoculars, one of 72,000, finally arriving at an appointment I had made with destiny six months ago. The roller coaster ride was about to begin. Being in the moment was never more palpable.
From the second she came out of the gate, I felt something was wrong. She was caught in a cobweb of energy that she couldn’t shake loose that was wrapping itself around her legs. It was like the dream you have when you are trying to do something but can’t, can’t make yourself move or punch those numbers on your phone or get your clothes on. It was excruciating. She was in another race on another dimension, a race to free herself from limitations that had descended on her. The rest of the field was drew further and further away, leaving her alone with her internal struggle, leaving us alone with her internal struggle. The pack of eleven other horses became two clumps far ahead of her; her figure going around the backstretch was poignantly far behind them, like someone chasing a bus they had missed. Nothing made sense. You wanted Mike to do something, but knew of course he was doing everything he could, that he alone was in communion with her struggle and that her struggle was not his, but hers. And then she found herself.
The catch-up started at they came toward the far turn and the crowd’s voice became one unified roar of relief. The distance closed between her flying black silhouette and the horses in front of her. As they came around, my view was telescoped and I couldn’t see who was where. It was Trevor Denman’s voice who told us she was making her heroic stretch run and was now free of the pack and bearing down on Blame. 72,000 souls were locked into the same dream chanting Go! Go! Go! in tune with her thundering stride in front of us all, catching up with every leap to the only horse left, Blame. Every heart leapt as the miracle was suddenly possible. Then we were dropped into the precipice of disappointment. The wire had come too soon, the mighty Blame hadn’t folded, her in-breath pulled her head back and his exhale extended his neck and nostrils. We didn’t need the photo finish. We saw it. We heard the call. “Blame has won it by a head. Zenyatta has run her heart out and had to settle for second.” A blanket of silence fell from the heavens. Only when she turned back toward us did it become another cheer, one that came from the depths of our heartbroken hearts, the cheer for the noble vanquished.
She lost by a breath but won by a measure that is deeply human. She won over whatever net had descended over her great powers and, like the mythic creature that she is, she brought her courage and invincibility to a level that every seasoned horserace watcher recognized as, well, unbelievable. Her achievement transcended the scorecard and the realm in which the scorecard rules. We wanted the coronation of the Queen for all the world to see and the mad happiness of unequivocal victory. Instead we got a cosmic paradox: the majesty of defeat. At Churchill Downs we didn’t get what we wanted; I guess we got what we need.
The rest of the night was strange and uncomfortable. I walked back to my B&B with a small group of people who had gathered for a bus that never came due to the cordons the police had set up for traffic. We talked quietly about everything except the race as the blocks rolled by. It had been a long cold day in the elements, walking around the stands people-watching with brief respites on cold metal seats. Sustaining the momentum of the hours—and days—before the Classic was hard work; a victorious final chapter was my formula for making it all worthwhile. I didn’t get my happy ending. In actuality, no one did. Even those who cheered or owned Blame were emotionally impacted by the furious assault that almost succeeded. I was drained and lonely. I emailed loved ones that I wanted to wake up at home tomorrow. I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to watch reruns of the race on YouTube, but I trolled the Internet for any crumbs of digestible coverage. The fleeting images that I caught of Jerry and Ann Moss, John Shirreffs, groom Mario Espinoza and the broken-hearted Mike Smith in tears let me know that we were all in this together, all withdrawn into our own hearts and sorrows.

The Queen

With my laptop on my lap as I slouched under the covers, I managed this post on my Facebook page and then went to sleep:
You can talk about winning and you can talk about losing and then you can change the subject and talk about triumph. Triumph involves incorporating defeat into victory. The triumph of Zenyatta’s spirit was unmistakable even if her nose didn’t touch the finish line first. Long live the Queen.
By morning it had some “likes.” That helped. In fact, morning helped a lot. First of all, the day turned out to be about 20 degrees warmer. The time had changed but by then clock time was irrelevant anyway. There was no schedule and I had not even thought about what I would feel like doing after the race. I wandered around the Internet for a while, reading eloquent and emotional posts by the writers I had come to know: Joe Drape of the New York Times, Bill Dwyre of the Los Angeles Times, Jennie Rees of the Louisville-Courier plus bloggers who appear at Thoroughbred Times, Blood-Horse and the Daily Racing Form. Later there would be more and more sports writers and just plain writers chiming in, echoing the naked emotions that this event had revealed. Finally, there was a cryptic post by one of my favorites, the passionate and dedicated race reporter Claire Novak, whose Facebook page I bookmarked months ago. It read: “going to the barn to see the Queen.”
Of course. That was the thing to do, and do immediately. I had been part of several gaggles of fans standing on the outside of the fence on Longfield Avenue looking in to view Zenyatta outside her barn in the days before the race. It was here that the people came to see their Queen, folks who probably could barely, if at all, pony up the money necessary for the inexpensive seats. The word was out that she would come out to graze, and people poked cameras and cell phones through the wire fencing to get souvenir pictures, to ooh and ahh and sometimes even wipe a tear away. They often washed her out there, lots of fun to see, and walked her in loops near the fence perfectly aware that the folks outside were just as important as those inside with passes or the press with their monster motor-drive cameras and flapping credentials. She was the people’s Queen after all.
As I waited for my bus in the warm sunshine I shuffled the dry leaves at my feet, leaves that looked beautiful and sounded deliciously crunchy. We don’t have these leaves where I live, so I had been photographing them as well. I got the idea that I could make a heart out of local leaves in the fence down there and that would be my statement. I picked a few flowers that were blooming in the park and when the bus came there I was with my bouquet and my mission. My mood was changing by the minute.
When I got to the fence, sure enough the public was there and this time it was Dottie Ingordo-Shirreffs, John’s wife and the race manager for the Mosses, who was at the fence talking to people. Questions were asked back and forth and gratitude poured out of the fans and was reciprocated by Dottie. These women were horsewomen, probably local, and they complimented the team for the incredible care given to Zenyatta. One woman wanted to know how they cured that ringworm that was on her when she was purchased, the reason perhaps Zenyatta wasn’t such at hot item at her yearling auction. “I’ve had horses all my life, but I’ve never seen ringworm on one of ‘em. I’ve sure had it on my kids, though,” she laughed. The mood was relaxed, friendly and, of all things, happy.
Dottie said they would bring Zenyatta out at three, in about an hour, and people drifted off to park cars safely away from the blue meanies and their parking tickets and to gather up children and friends for the afternoon visit. I started trying out my Andy Goldsworthy heart, as I called it, and found that I could carefully weave the brittle brown leaves into the fence and use its grid to make a respectable heart pattern with my flowers in the middle. No need for a coat anymore as the sun was warm. In a while, people from team Zenyatta began appearing from the barn. Jerry Moss came out and photographed the heart, which made me very happy. In the process of trying to develop a story for Rolling Stone—which they ultimately turned down—I had talked to him but never met him. Instead he took a picture of my heart. That was just fine. He talked to people, smiling, and soon his wife Ann appeared in a Zenyatta baseball hat and long down coat. She was smiling, gracious, thankful, and as natural as can be, willingly accepting hats and posters to autograph, the latter of which she did by getting down on the ground on her hands and knees. She wears wild looking diamond rings on almost every finger, including her thumb, and the newest one is a “Z” inside a diamond pattern. On her hands and knees with diamond rings smiling and laughing and signing people’s posters! I loved it. They posed for pictures together; everyone called them Mr. and Mrs. Moss and thanked them copiously. I think that was when someone asked Jerry, “Who was higher maintenance, Sting or Zenyatta?” (In his A&M Records incarnation, Jerry Moss produced Sting and still is a pal of his.) He laughed and put his arm around Ann and answered, “This one.”
Finally, out came the Queen, absolutely dazzling in the low autumn light. Her dapples were golden and her coat was shiny as a polished boot. She did all her characteristic moves, lifting her head and posing with pricked ears and happily chomped carrots poked through the fence. (“These are or-gan-ic,” said one woman, clearly communicating that when it comes to the best horse in the world you buy the best.) A little girl had an apple that was handed over the fence that Zenyatta chomped half of. The other half came back over the fence to the little girl. People wanted her to save it somehow. I told her to eat it. “Your lips can touch where her lips touched. You’ll get Zenyatta DNA.” That got a laugh. Earlier there had been a carrot cake (she ate it) and soon another cake came over the fence. The clump of people watching moved like iron filings following a magnet as Zenyatta was led along the fence chomping grass as she went. She came close enough so that her ear was brushing the fence and we who were near were able to poke a finger through and feel the soft hairs at the end of her ear tips. The banter on both sides was friendly, sweet and kind, the Mosses always responding to the comments of gratitude with gratitude of their own. Ann kept signing until it seemed as if everyone was satisfied and only waved good-bye when her part was complete. They were off that afternoon as would be Zenyatta, back to California and home. There were good-byes, waves and more thank-yous, and then the Zenyatta entourage was gone.
Meetings on the fence were as synchronistic as everything else. I mentioned that I had tried to get a piece in Rolling Stone and a woman piped up, “I’ve been trying them on this story for two years and I used to work there!” I zeroed in on her immediately. She’s from LA, she has tried magazines just like I did to no avail. We rolled our eyes at the state of the media we once were part of. “They said it wasn’t a music story,” she said. Jerry Moss was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with partner Herb Alpert in 2006. He’s a music story! Oh, well. What can you say? We tried; we didn’t get backing; we made it here anyway.
Lingering after our great day as the light got lower was Steve Haskin, eminent horserace author and columnist, a household name in the sport. He and Larry Schulman co-host a video show for BloodHorse.com that is full of horse lore and racing knowledge. Steve is the kind of guy who knows who won what race in what year for who knows how many years back and probably who placed and showed as well. When he began his livelihood as a handicapper and writer, horseracing was popular and mainstream. His biographies of great horses are required reading for serious lovers of the sport and his columns are elucidating and eloquent. He had been there all afternoon and got his photo taken with Zenyatta by Ann Moss. He is just as besotted as anyone and now we have the evidence for it. Zenyatta nuzzled him and he kissed her on the nose. She works her charm equally on the crustiest hearts and the cutest kids. It’s all a big love-in to this magnificent being.
A mother and daughter showed up late in the day who had been in communication with Steve Haskin through the daughter’s art and graphic work. Steve was impressed with her portfolio and recommended her to an editor. Now she has a publication assignment for the next Derby. Once again, much mutual gratitude was expressed and lots of story telling. Steve is a raconteur with a million stories of his life-long passion for the races and has seen horseracing slowly sink beneath the sea of public awareness. “Our sport,” as the race lovers like say, is one they yearn to share with people simply for the moments such as we had seen the day before. The excitement, the emotions, the heartbreaks and the victories are compressed into a few minutes in horseracing, minutes that are punctuated by the thundering of horse hooves and the rasping breathing of the horses, underscored by people yelling themselves hoarse, so to speak. The mystique of the animals and the multifaceted relationship between human and horse that is the heart and soul of the sport produces emotions that defy description. It seems to be mostly about a kind of love that either you feel or you don’t. If you feel it, you understand it in those around you, no matter how different they are from you or each other. This relationship has been plumbed in racing literature, factual and fictionalized, and yet is, at the end, a mystery.
Zenyatta brought all that back in high definition in her race toward destiny. The sports pages had her on their front page and turf writers who were turned out to pasture in recent times got their bylines back for a few days. It felt like the old glory days to the elders of this sport and for a few glorious days it was possible to feel that the good old days lived again. As the sun touched the burnished tree tops in the shabby neighborhood on Longfield Avenue, only one little cluster of Zenyatta fans were left by the barns that backed up to the great Churchill Downs track. When we said good-bye—Steve Haskin on his side of the fence and four women from four walks of life on our side of the fence—it would be over. The whole time we had been talking through the heart of leaves. I called it the heart line. To me, that was the story—the triumph of the heart. If Zenyatta is all those mysterious things that are beyond this world, if she is a gift from God, if she is more angel than mortal, if she is a sign of miracles to come, if she is one of the Awakeners, if she is simply an embodiment of the deepest yearnings of our hearts, if she is the Great Goddess returning…if she is any of these things, then she has succeeded in her mission. She took us on a ride around the Wheel of Fortune and into the vortex of love.
And, by the way, according to Dottie, Zenyatta thinks she won.

Morning workouts

Zenyatta in Photoland

The Heart

The Mosses

Ann and Her Zenny

Posted in metaphysics, thoroughbred horse racing, Zenyatta | Tagged Ann Moss, Breeders Cup, Churchill Downs, Jerry Moss, Steve Haskin, thoroughbred horse racing, Zenyatta | 11 Comments

Miracles and Wonders

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Elizabeth Whitney

By Elizabeth Whitney

In 2009 Associated Press voted her the Number Two Female Athlete of the Year after Serena Williams. In 2010 she found herself on Oprah’s Power List of 20 Most Influential Females. This month she has a full page spread in the fashion magazine “W.”
Who is she? A great tennis star? An Olympian medal winner? A derring-do mountaineer or teenage yachtswoman? Here’s a hint. She’s 6 years old.
If you don’t know by now, I’m here to tell you she’s Zenyatta, a thoroughbred racemare racing toward her destiny. She’s about to carve her name into the record books as one of—if not the—greatest female racehorses of all time. On November 6 she races her last race before retirement, the Breeder’s Cup Classic in Louisville, Kentucky. She won the same race last year against all-male contenders, becoming the first female to win in its 25-year history. If she wins again, her record will stand at 20-0. That beats all records—even Man O’ War lost a race and Secretariat and Seabiscuit lost a bunch of races.
There is more to her than her record, as astounding as it is. She is a spectacular being that is captivating the entire (albeit shrinking) racing world from its crusty trainers to veteran turf writers to goofy girl fans treating her like a rock star. She’s referred to as the Queen, a title that sits easily on her majestic shoulders that are six feet from the ground—she’s 17 ½ hands high.
She not only wins every race but she wins in heart-stopping fashion, coming from the back of the pack and closing at the stretch with a drive that seems impossible to everyone except her. If that weren’t enough, she also has developed, all on her own, a prancing/dancing performance in the paddock before the race that is pure show business. It may be how she intimidates her rivals or how she warms up her legs, but from the human fans’ point of view, Zenyatta’s dance is proof that she is sublimely aware of her charismatic power. From the moment she emerges from the barns she gets the spotlight and never gives it up.
Out of the dying embers of horseracing’s former glory comes this heroic symbol that has transformed the southern California tracks where she has raced all but two of her races. At her 19th race at Hollywood Park last month the crowd of 25,000 was the largest in 10 years. A week later it was barely over 2,000. The irony of a horse like Zenyatta arriving on the scene when racing everywhere—but particularly in California—is struggling for survival is not lost on anyone in the business.
The reason you don’t know about Zenyatta is because there is virtually no coverage of horseracing anymore outside the handful of still prestigious and fashionable racing centers in the East Coast and Del Mar for a few short weeks. Covering Zenyatta in The Point Reyes Light may seem like a stretch but this is not a sports story. This is a story of the light cracking through the dark, of beauty and power and female essence triumphing in a transcendent display of primal emotion. People cry—men cry—when she does her thing, when she wins for the joy of winning and then soaks up the mad applause.
Her jockey claims she was sent from God. Her owner acknowledges she’s “given from a higher source.” Her trainer says over and over that she is a gift, a blessing, that they are so fortunate to have her. They love her, they are proud of her and they are in awe of her. The upwelling of fan love delights them and humbles them. “I love you all,” said owner Jerry Moss after Zenyatta won the 2009 Breeder’s Cup Classic to the uproar of the fans.
This is a story for and of our time. I think the story of Zenyatta belongs in every newspaper and YouTube clips of her races should circulate madly. Zenyatta fever needs to reach epidemic proportion. She is mythic—call her a wonder horse or a goddess and or Gaia herself. It all seems plausible.
I’ve been following her for six months and seen races #18 and #19, the last one with my 11 year-old granddaughter along for the ride. I told her it would be like meeting Elvis. She was dubious but she went for it and had fun. Now I’m going to Churchill Downs to see her run in the Breeder’s Cup Classic on November 6. Once again the field will be all male muscle horses, the best of the best. She will put on her last pre-race dance. The media will be crawling all over her. The stands will be packed as if it were the Derby. The excitement will be unbearable. It will be the Queen’s day and winning is all she knows how to do.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Breeders Cup, Churchill Downs, Jerry Mossthoroughbred horse racing, Point Reyes Light, Zenyatta | 2 Comments

Zenyatta: Racing Toward Destiny

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Elizabeth Whitney

Two great horses. Two great stories. One male. One female. One’s tale is told in a new movie. The other one is a living Hollywood star. The movie horse is the legendary Secretariat. The right now horse is Zenyatta, the racemare racing to make history. If these two stories merge in the fall of this year, we’re all going to be horse crazy.

In the fall, Disney’s movie Secretariat is coming out, the story of one of the greatest racehorses of all time, a horse that captured the imagination of the nation in 1973 with his Triple Crown victories, setting records at the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes that still stand. In November, it is highly likely that real racehorse fever will be back on the front pages, this time with two female horses sharing the spotlight. Zenyatta is set to run in the Breeders Cup in Churchill Downs as the grand finale race of her career and she could well be facing her great female rival Rachel Alexandra. Both these racemares have spectacular victories under their girths and by November Zenyatta will be entering her last race with a possible 19-0 record. She is at 17-0 now and expected to run twice more before her November date with destiny.

The Zenyatta story runs deep. She is owned by Jerry and Ann Moss; Jerry Moss started A & M records with Herb Alpert in 1962, a legend in its own right in the recording industry. In 2005, Moss and his wife already achieved the dream of dreams of any racehorse owner: their 50-1 long shot horse Giacomo won the Kentucky Derby. Now the same owners, the same trainer and the same jockey have the spectacular mare Zenyatta poised to achieve a record unmatched by any of the great legends.

But her statistics are only half the story. She is a great personality; a star, a queen, an amazon and an adoring crowd sensation. Her racing style is the closer, the one who languishes at the back of the pack for three-quarters of the race and then thunders past every horse to win, sometimes by a head but more often by many lengths. Even her jockey, Mike Smith, who has ridden many great horses in a long and illustrious career, says she is the most incredible horse he has ever ridden. “I’ve never been on a horse that can run down anything. I’ve never felt the power that she has.” Even in her spectacular Breeder’s Cup Classic victory in 2009 over top male horses he says she never got to the bottom of her “gears.” She can overcome anything, he says. To his mind, she is the horse of the decade.

Zenyatta is a southern California phenomenon; she trains at Hollywood Park. She has raced at Del Mar and Santa Anita with a trip out of state to Arkansas for the Apple Blossom Classic, which she won two years in a row. The Breeder’s Cup Classic that she won—the first filly to do so—took place in Santa Anita in 2009 but will be in Churchill Downs in Kentucky in 2010. Rachel Alexandra, her rival in the minds of horse race fans, beat her out as the Horse of the Year in 2009 and races in the east coast. Built into this rivalry are familiar east coast versus west coast attitudes and challenges. Way over in Europe there is Goldikova, yet another stellar filly racehorse who has beaten “the boys,” as they like to say, on major European tracks. Both Rachel Alexandra and Goldikova have been beaten but recent strong victories for each of them put the three back on the map. Right now in horse race circles, the talk is all about the ladies.

Zenyatta’s next race is likely to be at Del Mar for the Clement L. Hirsch Stakes that she won in 2008 and 2009 on August 7, Zenyatta Day, whether she is there or not. Her owners have indicated that they will keep her in southern California rather than bringing her east. Meanwhile, the fan base is growing, the excitement for racing coming awake again in these tracks where Zenyatta is the draw. Her fans include droves of girls and young women sporting t-shirts and caps for Queen Zenyatta. When she makes her first appearance with her characteristic side-steps and dancing, prancing moves—her own personal warm-ups before the race—the fans go wild. At 17 ½ hands, she is a majestic and self-possessed athlete at the top of her game. She was brought out of retirement in January 2010 because clearly she had one more great year in her. As she gobbled down her 6 year birthday cake on April Fool’s Day, surrounded by her family: Jerry and Ann Moss, trainer John Shirreffs and his wife Dottie Ingordo, the manager of the whole shebang, and the stable hands who love her, she looked every bit the part of champion hungry for the next race.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 2010 racing season, Breeders Cup, Jerry Moss, Rachel Alexandra, thoroughbred horse racing, Zenyatta | 4 Comments

2012 the Movie vs. 2012 the Reality

Posted on November 28, 2009 by Elizabeth Whitney

Call me uptight, call me prim, call me whatever you want, but I thought the movie 2012 was not only bad science, it was bad religion, bad psychology, bad morality, bad art, bad human values and worst of all, bad eschatology. Can you have all that and be a good movie? A lot of critics seem to think so because the genre “disaster movie” gets away with murder. It can be bad at everything movies are supposed to be good at and be good only because computer artists can blow our minds with destruction scenes beyond our wildest imagination. Big deal. No one is ever going to take a DVD of 2012 on the last boat out of here when the world is destroyed. I think I’m not supposed to take disaster movies seriously, but I took 2012themovie seriously because 2012 the year is real and something will be happening then but you don’t know what it is do you, Mr. Hollywood?
The movie just gives lip service to source of the whole 2012 phenomenon—and it is a phenomenon by now—the Mayan calendar which says: End of Cycle at December 21, 2012. Somewhere in the beginning the young scientist says, “Isn’t it amazing that some Mayans knew this was going to happen 500 years ago?” End of Mayans, on to various silly plots as predictable Christmas decorations in the mall by Thanksgiving.
The bad science has been pointed out on the topic of neutrinos from solar flares heating up the Earth’s core. No less than Scientific American gave it a shot, as did the science editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. If neutrinos really did turn bad, they would destroy the Earth’s surface long before they heated up the core. But the science that knows that solar flares and coronal mass ejections of a certain magnitude do pose a threat to life as we know it was not in the movie and more or less dismissed in the science articles.
Here’s the real science: Solar activity is cyclical and we are due for a solar max phase in and around 2012. It has started late and we have had a very long quiet sun cycle. Solar storms that generate these explosions of subatomic particles and rays have sometimes been very, very strong, but not lately. A really big one happened in 1859. Look it up: The Carrington Event, also known as the Solar Superstorm. Telegraph transmissions all over the world were totally disrupted. Fast forward: 2012ish. Same scale of CME (Coronal Mass Ejection—get used to saying that, it’s fun) under the same conditions would wipe out for starters all the satellites on the way to the Earth where it would then blow out a whole lot of the power grid. So that scene on the ark at the end of 2012 when all those guys are staring at computer screens figuring out what is going on around the earth and where the new land is, is all bullshit science. There would be no communication satellites. They’d have to wait for a dove.
NASA actually commissioned a study on the possible effects on Earth of a solar superstorm like Carrington’s Event. It came out in the spring of 2009. You can read it on the Internet. Originally they talked about the solar cycle (solarcycle 24) peaking around 2012 since the cycles are 11 years and the last max was 2001. Then they also came out with an update a few months later saying things were starting slowly and probably it wouldn’t be until spring 2013 and maybe not so big after all. Like they really know! Superstorms are events that are the creation of a variety of synchronicities (the favorite phrase now is “perfect storm”) that open the floodgates, so to speak, for maximum impact. None of the threads that weave into the perfect storm scenario are in themselves radically out of order, but it’s their timing that sets up the magnification of the effects. Timing. Important word to bear in mind as we roll our big wheels toward the 2012 date highlighted by the Mayans, time masters beyond measure in the history of people on this planet.
Science wants to say pooh-pooh to the synchronicities that could produce a big fat disturbance from a highly active solar season. (Where did that phrase “lull before the storm” come from anyway? Could this be folk language for a deep human knowing that big dips precede big waves?) Establishment science has a responsibility to respond to hysteria with knowledge, and I am glad of it. But it is always interesting to see where science fears to tread when it comes to dealing with anomalies, words they use to categorize the stuff that doesn’t fit their projections or their definitions of reality. They can’t handle how a calendar from 1500 years ago could be about something NOW. They won’t consider that some people on our planet could be advanced beings from other dimensions who incarnate among us to guide us. Impossible, they scoff. And meanwhile extraordinary human beings exhibiting wizard-like powers continue to pop up everywhere on the planet and always have. And then there are crop circles…don’t get me started on crop circles and the straight scientists who won’t even go look at them. Because they aren’t real!
I digress. Back to solar science. No one knows what the sun’s pattern will be in a few years and whether it will be extraordinary or ordinary. We do know that a solar storm in March 1989, the solar max before 2001, knocked out power all over Canada and Alaska. This was before the computer age. Solar flares emit rays that can affect computer chips. That should give you pause. No one can predict what will happen but there is plenty of data out there on what could happen, based on science. There will be more and more hyperbole on the subject, that I can predict, and 2012 the movie made a big contribution to that.
The Mayan Calendar has been at the heart of the buzz whether it’s scientific talk or not. What’s the story here? It’s true that the Mayan calendar doesn’t “predict the end of the world.” There is no “end of the calendar,” because the Mayan calendar doesn’t end. But it is also true that one count, named the long count, clearly delineates a very precise cycle, based on highly comprehensible mathematics we now understand, with a beginning point (8-14-3114 BC) and an endpoint (12-21-2012). The Mayans, cosmic beings perhaps, would know that there is no such thing as the end of everything, but they were very interested in teaching us how they measured cycles of Earth years. Basically, the end date of the calendar everyone is paying attention to announces the beginning of the Fifth Sun. It’s like the odometer of your car rolling over when it gets to all 9’s. It is not the end of your car, but in this case, it is the end of a cycle—in fact many concurrent cycles—that carries meaning, according to the way the Mayans looked at time itself.
They believed that time was a measure of circulating, radiating energy patterns that pulse from some grand mystic central point called Hunab Ku—“one giver of movement and measure”—and that we all bow into that synchronic order. Our bodies keep this time, our Earth turns in this time, our solar system turns in this time and our galaxy spirals in this time. It seemed important to the Mayans of the 400-900 AD years of the classic civilization that we be informed via stone carvings and many inscriptions in hidden chambers of mysterious pyramids that we on Earth were part of something far bigger than our little Earthling comings and goings, squabbles and victories. It seemed damned important because they created a scientific laboratory of fifth dimensional mathematics to accomplish this built as pyramids in the middle of the jungle on the Yucatan Peninsula. They incarnated among Indians steeped in a shamanic love affair with psychedelic mushrooms. They fit right in. That’s the Mayan backstory.
Let’s look at some of the other bad elements of 2012 the movie. Bad religion. I read somewhere that Roland Emmerich didn’t dare show an Islamic mosque crashing on thousands of prayerful people because some Muslim’s don’t take kindly to mockery of their religion. So we had all the Catholics rolled to death by St. Peter’s dome instead, and the implication that the same fate was in store for the faithful at Mecca. But what really pissed me off was the bad Tibetan Buddhism way in the beginning. We have wise old Lama Rinpoche listening to the young boy monk all agitated about what’s coming to pass because his brother works on one of the ships being built for survivors. The lama commences to pour an overflowing cup of yak tea and tells the kid that the mind needs to be empty before you fill it up with all these wild ideas. Then he gives the kid the keys to the truck so he can go run off, get his grandparents, and get on the damn ark before it’s too late. I thought the message was that he should go empty his mind, but no, it’s run along, kid, join all those folks who want to get out while the getting is good and let everyone else die too bad for them. I expected something better from Lama Rinpoche sitting on the top of a Himalayan mountaintop. If he knows it’s coming and it’s all over for billions of incarnations, he would have said something much more interesting—these wise Tibetans always do. And chuckle. You ask the Dalai Lama, you’ll see.
Only in the scene where the tidal wave is about to engulf all of India, including the family of the scientist who started the whole awareness of the melting Earth crust—bummer, they didn’t get picked up and taken to the escape ark—only here do we have a spiritual moment with any soul in it. Husband, wife and child all know they are about to die and they sit facing each other in a state of transcendent surrender. They are our hero’s the good guy friends who get sacrificed in our story. They probably got to Nirvana a lot faster than most of the ones who got on the ark. But even there our attention is diverted by the mountain of water rising up behind them and then, uh oh, it’s all over for that religion and that country. The people who will survive this debacle have no religion, even though they say OMG a lot.
Moving on to bad psychology, let’s look at the people that drive the human plot. Once again a spaced-out underachieving writer has married a debutante type who clearly wants nice things and a stable home environment. So now they’re divorced. Why do these divorce stories always feature Dads who are off in the ethers and Moms who wouldn’t offer a Bohemian a crust of bread if he came to the back door? Why don’t writers marry fellow artists who get that being up in the clouds is part of the package and give them the space they need to be who they are? Then at least they’d have creativity to bond them. No, in these yarns the artist is pretty much a loser who neither is famous nor rich and probably absent-minded and late all the time. (How many times have you heard the line coming from Mrs. Uptight as she transfers their children: “For once, could you try to be on time?”) In our movie, it is inevitable from take one that we’re going to get this couple back together, jettisoning her boyfriend, even though he did manage to pilot the planes that made it all possible. I mean, this is not Jules et Jim and there isn’t enough love to go around. The brave new world that supposedly is coming in year 0000 doesn’t include the possibility she could love them both and everyone would live happily ever after the way it would be in heaven. It’s the same old world with relationship tension and conventionality at its center.
Speaking of relationship tension, I almost gagged at the intimate exchange that took place between the two exes in a quiet moment between numerous harrowing life and death experiences. She asks him intently: “Do you think you have changed?” (As in grown up and become responsible.) Talk about a loaded question. You can tell he is reaching for the answer she wants to hear. No soul searching required from either party. No speaking from the heart. It’s back to Goddess Hera’s behavior modification school for the wayward artist if he wants to worm his way back into the family nest. What’s the point of this new world it it’s the same old world?
The point is that nothing about 2012 the movie addresses the real meaning of December 21, 2012, the 13.0.0.0.0. date (4 Ahau or 4 Sun) on the Mayan long count. The real meaning is the initiation of a new era, an evolutionary quantum shift from one level of consciousness to another. Jose Arguelles, the first person to give out the Dec. 21, 2012 date in his book Mayan Factor in 1987 in conjunction with the Harmonic Convergence, refers to the era we will leave behind on that day as “The Cycle of History.” In the cycle of history, we brought a false notion of time to the forefront of human consciousness. We launched (in Babylon) a 12 month calendar, overriding the natural timing frequency of 13:20—one that unifies all creation in a “synchronic order”—and we launched civilization after civilization based on erroneous principles of energy: warfare, slavery, taxation, colonization, capitalism, exploitation, industrialization, class and sectarian rivalries, ethnic hatreds and terrorism, to name a few.
Arguelles emphasizes that only by restoring the natural timing frequency of 13:20 can we truly break free of the limitations of the false time. By joining the 13 Moon 28-day calendar we entrain into the cosmic pulse that regulates the physical plane. We discover ourselves to be cosmic beings with vast capabilities. We become wizards. We have telepathy among ourselves. Mechanical technology no longer defines and imprisons us. We enter an unimaginable new era of humanity as we achieve Galactic Synchronization seven Moons after December 21, 2012. We can begin this now by learning to live the 13 Moon Calendar way of life. That’s what Jose Arguelles teaches about the meaning of 2012. It’s not a disaster movie. It’s the birth of a new creation.

Posted in 2012, Cosmology, Evolution of Consciousness, Extra-Terrestrial Contact, Mayan Calendar, metaphysics, Time | 2 Comments

Over the Rainbow, Under the Moon

Posted on November 7, 2009 by Elizabeth Whitney

Over the Rainbow, Under the Moon

If the premise is that we are living in the last stages of a dying age, then where do we put our attention? Commiserating over what went wrong in the past has limited value. Should we remember our negative history? What does it mean to create memorials to war and tragedy? Why should we fly the banner “never forget” over the atrocities of our history? What would it be like instead to forgive our history—forgive and forget? As individuals, we are counseled to move on past the traumas of our lives to liberate the energy tied up in the memories and emotions. As groups of individuals, we re-enforce our identity through those memories. What kind of energy is stuck in those thoughts and what would our reality be like if it were released?

The radical edge of the 2012 discussion is not what the correct interpretation of the Mayan calendar is or who has the authority to discuss it, but the proposition that we are on the threshold of a categorical shift in realities. A categorical shift in realities is equivalent to waking up from a vivid dream, opening our eyes and gradually accepting the waking world as real and the dream world as not real. At the other end of the spectrum is falling asleep to the physical world and entering the dream world that is also experienced as exceedingly real. Some unique humans are able to move consciously back and forth between those two realms, transcending their distinctions and weaving them together in a yet third reality. These humans in many interesting ways point us toward an evolutionary path of exploration beyond the limits of either/or. They suggest that something else is going on and seek to open our mind up with expansive thoughts about who, where, what and why we are.

Jose Arguelles, in a series of books called Cosmic History Chronicles, presents ideas of an emerging new reality and the initiation of a new cycle of human evolution. He says this in the introductory chapter of vol. 5 (2009), “The Book of the Timespace”:

When the homeostasis, which keeps everything in balance, is sufficiently disturbed, disruption or disorder occurs and the Earth enters a new timespace. The present Earth is in its last stages of the sixth day of creation. At this stage, the Earth is a timespace capsule enveloped in the 12:60 machine frequency where money is the ruling force. The whole Earth is encapsulated in this machine frequency brought forth by human free will.

As the timespace shifts, some people work to unify and hold the balance, while others, out of self-interest, aid the disruptive forces in an attempt to halt the new world coming into being. The polarization between the two is the law of the system and only seeks to further the Plan. Within the Divine Plan, each individual has sealed in his/her heart a special duty to fulfill on behalf of the whole system. Many fulfill this unconsciously, while others choose to consciously fulfill it.

Admittedly, that’s a mouthful to digest, but it gives us the flavor of a very expansive whole systems view of yet another reality we abide within. These are the key understandings:

1.) There are distinct stages of creation. Disruption of the homeostasis, or balance, precedes a shift in stages of creation.

2.) We are coming to the end of the sixth stage. That means this process of categorical shift has occurred in various ways five times before. Stages of creation are therefore normal.

3.) We are in a stage conditioned by the machine frequency 12:60, ruled by money. It’s almost over. Earlier he stated: “The time of the 12:60 frequency represents an initiation of harmony through conflict—conflict with self and conflict with nature. At it’s root, this conflict was brought about and confirmed by an error in time.”

4.) Using our free will, we made an error (changed our consciousness of time from joining the harmonious natural rhythms to being ruled by a man-made artificial timing frequency). It created conflict as a state of reality. We struggle within that conflict to find harmony, creating a constant and escalating polarization. Even that is within the Divine Plan!

5.) Each of us has a mission on behalf of the whole. Some of us are aware of it and some of us are not.

To continue with Arguelles’ answers to the who, where, what, why and when questions…

This 12:60 frequency creates the dissonance and ultimately a breaking of the homeostasis. If not curbed, it will result in a catastrophe (from the human point of view). However, even human disorder is a function of a higher order.

Tipping the homeostatic balance in 2012 will trigger a pause in time, the time quake, when a massive timespace adjustment occurs, emanating from the tail of the magnetosphere. From that timespace adjustment comes the creation of the next timespace or the next Earth for that timespace, the seventh Earth, the Earth of the Seventh Day of Creation.

The Earth is currently passing out of a beam that is 5,125 years in diameter. The shift in timespace comes about once the Earth and its solar system are synchronized within the larger galactic community. This is the point of Galactic Synchronization of the Galactic Seed, July 26, 2013.

From this information, two more key points:

6.) The bad news: We are building to a crescendo of destabilization in 2012—a mysterious event of timespace adjustment that Arguelles calls a “time quake.”

7.) The good news: July 26, 2013 (Yellow Galactic Seed) ends the 5125 cycle defined by conflict and the error in time and returns the Earth into harmony with the galactic whole and launches a new stage of creation.

There’s more—much more!—but that is the bare bones thesis that distinguishes Jose Arguelles’ approach to the subject of the Mayan calendar and culture from everyone else. I offer it here not so much to advocate for it as to expose you to the kind of thinking that lifts and expands our view of reality. We use the phrase “food for thought” but how often is there fresh new food on our thought table, not the same old leftovers? We can’t know what will happen to us on December 21, 2012, until we are living it, but right now we can imagine possibilities that are either encouraging or discouraging. If we are discouraged, we live contracted, grumpy lives. If we are entranced and encouraged, we live sparkling, imaginative lives. We attract and affect the people we circulate among based on the quality of our essential spirit. Thinking vast thoughts about the nature of reality and what’s up with the Divine Plan may not be our cup of tea, but sooner or later we live our everyday life from fundamental conclusions we have drawn about these matters. It seems to help to have an expansive view of the possibilities of existence and, if nothing else, at least admit we don’t know what’s going on rather than deciding it’s all going down the drain.

What we think about the situation we find ourselves in has very much to do with how it resolves. Our thoughts are entwined with emotions and our emotions radiate a lot of energy. Studies now show how all this works in the brain and the nervous system. We are energy transmitters and what we transmit radiates outward, affecting many situations around us. The martial arts disciplines of the Asian cultures are anchored in this premise. The emphasis in training that martial arts students enter for years and years of their lives is every bit about training the inner being as the outer body. If your role is to enter situations of conflict and protect a victim or subdue an attacker, then having a calm and confident inner state is essential. If you find yourself embroiled in a conflict, then your skill has as much to do with keeping your mind clear and alert as any technique you have learned. These arts have lineages that go back many centuries and are interwoven with spiritual disciplines as well. The knowledge that we are energy beings with great internal powers is not new on this planet, but in this time of disruption of homeostasis, it will become more and more important to bring this knowledge to the forefront of collective awareness.

The individuals who have core inner strength will be able to rise above the chaos however it shows up, and groups of these individuals will be able to cooperate in ways that will seem almost magical. The ability to know what to do and when to do it will not come from the hierarchal power formula of our present social system, but from being deeply tuned in to the energy of the moment. Right now, we barely know that the patterns and weavings of all the forces that we can imagine, from the elemental to the ultra subtle, are coordinated by a universal order that governs everything. We will never be able to plot this order on a master computer or anything like that, but we can simply rest in its embrace. Mythically, this is described by metaphors like Spiderwoman weaving her web or the Three Fates spinning the strands of our lives. The drama of life, which formed the foundation of drama itself in the Greek plays, revolves around how we function in the larger context of pre-existing forces that serve up the unexpected. We are told by some authority figures that we cause these forces by our behavior, but it is more accurate, I believe, to understand that we cause our outcomes by how we receive these forces.

In some cases, they serve up synchronicities that present moral dilemmas requiring agonizing choices. In others, they elicit instant reactions with huge consequences. If we operate under the delusion that someday these events won’t come around because we do this or that or join this or that belief system, we will probably be even more unprepared for the reality of yet another involvement with the uninvited unexpected. Just as there will always be waves of different sizes breaking on the shore and always be wind and always be weather and always be fire somewhere and always be too much or not enough rain somewhere…there will always be human drama and its myriad consequences. What can change, however, is our own ability to be masters of change rather than victims of change.

The evolution of our humanity is destined toward this mastery. Along with it comes our ability to work as highly functioning groups of masters, creating a powerful new definition of government that includes cooperation with the great forces of fate. We’ve never seen this before except by isolated wizard rulers here and there. What’s in store for us in the shift of the ages is the reality of conscious cooperation with the grand design for our planet and our solar system and our galaxy, all of which are embodiments of consciousness with destinies as well. We aren’t little ants running around in tunnels only aware of our ant survival. We are antennas for a much more expansive awareness of the purposes of creation—purposes that far exceed our most outrageous imaginings. We can hear the call of the cosmic dance now by entertaining these thoughts and noticing what shifts inside us. As holograms of the whole enchilada, we are everything that is. All the mystical paths point the same direction and all the prophesies describe a time when the “scales fall from the eyes” and we see who we really are. The desire to experience a vision beyond the conditioned reality activates the process—even a healthy curiosity flavored by skepticism is enough to shift our attention to the world beyond this world.

The simple act of living in a natural timing frequency, available to anyone willing to make a small effort of discipline, is a categorical shift in perspective. Those of us who have used the 13 Moon Calendar for our framework of organization in a regular way for a few years find ourselves able to navigate in time as an alternative to being driven by the time-is-money mentality. Communities who live together and work with the patterning that comes from the 13 master number take the system to a powerful level of functionality. Time is the fourth dimensional organization mechanism. Time travel is not going back and forth in linear historical time. Time travel is entering a consciousness that awakens a vast new awareness that is all encompassing, where we perceive what actually animates our physical selves. We have bodies and egos and personal histories, but we are not our bodies, egos and personal histories. We are something far more than that. The true adventure of being alive is finding out what that is.

Posted in 2012, Cosmology, Cycles, Enlightenment, Evolution of Consciousness, Mayan Calendar, metaphysics | Leave a comment

Recession for Dummies: Three Easy Lessons

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Elizabeth Whitney

We’re all dummies when it comes to this recession. We have been dumbed down by a false ideology that hammers us daily with a bunch of big fat lies: there are no easy answers; there is no light at the end of the tunnel; there is no end in sight.

Enough already with all this economic trouble-talk. There is only one thing that is really happening, and that is the demise of the great hallucination of materialism: the idea of money. Where once money was something of value, a gold coin you could bite with your teeth, now it is a bunch of numbers in cyberspace completely at the mercy of—listen up, this is important—emotions.

If you want a cure for this epidemic of economic malaise, start waking up to the deeper reality that it is your own internal state that defines what is real. That’s your job. You haven’t lost that job. You can find it by looking beyond the conditioned reality that claims to know “what is” and discovering the eternal reality that always is. These teachings are everywhere. The invisible institutions that are responsible for the truths that underlie all truths have not collapsed and never will. Let’s see how the essence of these timeless teachings can be applied to today’s crisis.

Lesson One. Imagine in one instant that money has vanished. There is nothing in your wallet. All accounting in the world turns into zeros. There is no record of what you owe or what you are due. You have no debts and you have no savings. There are no price tags and no bills to be collected or paid. Just imagine it.

Still imagining that all money has vanished into thin air, look outside your window, as I am right now, watching a bountiful rainstorm. Money may have vanished but nothing out there has changed. In fact nothing in your house has changed either. All your physical possessions are still right there, the symbols of the world you create around you.

Think deeply about your real life, that which suddenly comes to the forefront whenever disaster, tragedy and trauma disrupt the status quo. What is your real life? It is the people you love, the family you are bound to, the various communities you cherish, the creatures that are dear to you, and aspects of the greater world that have touched you at an emotional level. It is the world of your mind and your feelings, your memories and your dreams, your imagination and your ambitions. All that would still be there when, in our imaginary exercise, all traces of The Economy have vanished.

To know this is to begin to wake up to the reality of what truly is. It will ease letting go the false notion that “money is what makes the world go round,” one of the most horrible lies ever told. Every prophecy—and there are many, coming out of every known tradition—has announced that the coming of the true new will be presaged by the collapse of the institutions of materialism. Look it up. Worldwide economic collapse is a necessary phase before we enter a new era, one that holds all of the positive prospects for human and planetary evolution. The economic contraction is generating a fertile chaos of opportunity and rebirth.

That being said, what does an individual like you and me do to navigate these wild and certainly frightening times? Most of us are going to hold on to the old falling apart bridge as long as it represents stability but inevitably we must let go and jump into the waters of the unknown. And some of us are preparing to dive in now because our job is to get the life rafts ready. You might want to decide if you are one of those, which means your time is now. Look for your comrades and refine your skills because the times they have a’changed.

To sum up, Lesson One is about thinking clearly and calmly about this unsettled and unpredictable time. Think outside the scary headlines and TV news bites—it will help you build your personal emotional lifeboat. Many of us have lost money, equity and investments that represented security in a future time. Because we were so conditioned to believe that money = security, it appears that what was lost was being secure in the future. In reality, only the thought of being secure in the future was affected. We can still be secure in the future, because it is our commitment to take care of each other that guarantees security, and we can invest in that right now with our thoughts, feelings and actions.

Lesson Two. When there is chaos all around, unify within. This is the time to anchor our values in personal morals and integrity. It is easy in times like this to be angry and resentful because others are apparently at fault. Such thoughts don’t benefit us and are a distraction from seeing the new path that lies before us. Instead of surrendering to the impulse to judge those who have transgressed in one way or another, try imagining that these people are us, before we learned better.

Paying attention to our personal ethics and re-establishing the value of our honorable actions will yield dividends that include material security. There is a quality of stability in a good reputation that attracts energy in an unstable time. In tiny increments, become more responsible, more trustworthy, more reliable, more forthright. This is not a time to join the irresponsible group mind of those that created our current crisis but to emanate a mindset that focuses on the cure for the sickness that has come to pass. Do you want to be the patient or do you want to be the doctor? Make up your mind.

As we look at our personal balance sheet showing where we stand within the new economic realities, our strongest ally is a calm, clear mind. It is calming to adapt a stance of integrity. The opposite occurs when we engage in deception and evasion. If others are getting away with self-serving schemes do we want to do the same or make the effort to keep our dealings clear and honorable? It may look like a solution to avoid responsibility, but in the end it keeps us in the swamp instead of the clear stream.

A lot of sleazy people made a lot of money in recent times. Yes, they did, and now they, too, have lost fortunes and lost more than fortunes. Those people have a brand of unhappiness that you and I don’t want. The sickness of moral compromise sucks away at the survival energy required to pull out of the pit. In hard times, we need all our personal resources, because it is the performance of the core of our being that will generate the recovery of the external situation.

Lesson Three. Trust time. Time is far more than a clock or a calendar that enforces service to the system. Time is a dimension of consciousness. You exist in the one and only present moment that synchronizes all possible realities. What is, is. You got laid off today. That is what is. Before, you had a reliable formula for making things work, paying bills, taking care of life’s many decisions. Now that formula is shattered. If you trust time, you can walk forward saying to yourself, “If the old formula is gone, a new formula is coming.”

The formula is synchronicity, that which comes together in time. Everything exists within that formula. Reality is a kaleidoscopic turning of all possible realities that consciousness stops, so to speak, and declares as real. Lots of factors condition consciousness so that we either see things expanded or contracted. It’s like your camera…you can zoom in or zoom out. If you open your lens you see a bigger picture. When people describe recovering from a crushing difficulty that contracts them into feeling scared, alone and abandoned they speak of gradually letting more of the outer world in.

When we come out of the dark cave of mourning and into the full spectrum world that includes, once again, infinite possibilities, we are signaling an intention to survive. The Universal Law of Attraction says what we emanate from our deepest self has the power to draw toward it that which matches this energy vibration. Isn’t a Recession a perfect time to practice the art of attracting what you need to be healthy and whole without the interference of a corrupt money system?

Time works on the physical plane like waves on the ocean. Waves rise and gather energy into a point of collapse and then dissolve back into the eternal source over and over again. The ocean doesn’t get used up making waves and every wave is unique. In nature’s reality, we are a sea of manifestation moved around by waves of time. If we can join that reality with our minds, we will realize that we are living in a state of perpetual abundance.

Posted in Cosmology, Cycles, Enlightenment, Evolution of Consciousness, metaphysics, Point of View, Politics | Tagged consciousness, Economics, recession | 4 Comments

First Contact…

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Elizabeth Whitney

Imagine this. You step out of the Palace Market one evening around sunset, glance up at the western horizon and the Inverness Ridge and see the sky start to fill with pulsing, luminous, jellyfish-like flying objects. Silently they move in a stately procession across the sky. This lasts for many minutes and people indoors are summoned to come out and stare.

You look around and see your friends’ and neighbors’ faces bathed in the strange light from these objects. Everyone is transported to a state beyond amazement.

OK, that’s a fantasy…although, literally, it is a prediction I have come across in my research. Some serious people think an event like this is going to happen, all part of the End-of-Cycle show scheduled for anytime between now and 2012.

They describe these light ships as manifestations from the etheric planes that will be reconfigured at a vibration that makes them temporarily visible on the physical dimension…a contact from loving space beings in response to our planetary crisis.

“Real” or not, images like these, even in our imaginations, touch an archetypal place in us, the longing to know that we are not lost but found, not abandoned to our own misfortune but protected in an embrace of strong, wiser guides and protectors.

In fact, it is said that a heartfelt desire for such communication is what magnetizes the contact. If that’s true, liberating the desire is one way to be a player in these strange and unpredictable times.

Posted in Cosmology, Extra-Terrestrial Contact, metaphysics, New Age, Revelation | Tagged First Contact, Star People, UFO | Leave a comment