Reply #17: At risk of being a resident spoilsport, I voted "nothing of significance" [View All]

Liberation does not come into being because of the arrival of a calendar date. It is not any more or less possible because of what numbers someone wrote in a box in a small, mostly empty, book, and what page in the book someone else opened that day.

It comes about through work, very very hard work, very very disciplined work, and yes, suffering. In my opinion the single greatest failing of the new age movement is a tendency to assume that things will be, or ought to be, easier than they really are. The hard reality is that if you want to find the real masters and teachers, look for the bloody footprints in the snow, and follow them.

It's hard. It's very hard. If it were not so hard it would be commonplace. And the Universe doesn't offer special bonus points towards liberation because you've reached a particular number on a piece of paper (or rock, clay, whatever). Life is no video game.

Now we are moving rapidly as a society towards a crisis, and how we deal with it will determine whether we become the first human civilization with some self-awareness and staying power, or whether our civilization will collapse and we will descend into a new dark age. I don't think this crisis has anything much to do with 2012, either, though being a long term phenomenon this crisis will certainly be part of the general atmosphere on 12/21/12. We will all need to play our part, and make our decisions, regarding this crisis. But this crisis isn't about a special dispensation granted from above -- it's about karma coming to bite our collective sorry asses.