The Feel is For Real

Just finished a book by Gregg Braden "Fractal Time: The Secret of 2012 and a New World Age". His voice is calm and reassuring, unlike that of other books I have read that seem to preach and scream about the necessity of change. I appreciate that.

His basic thesis, as I understand it, is that time, like all elements of Nature is fractal. Like a hologram, there are repeating patterns that differ only in scale. What happens in a particular piece of time is reflected in larger time cycles and vice versa.

He discusses material from many sources.. not just the "usual suspects," although you cannot write any book about this topic without mentioning Jose Arguelles and John Major Jenkins. He gives a more detail about what the Hopi have said about this time period. He also brings in the information from the "bible code" regarding 2012.

He has developed something called the Time Code Calculator which is based on the mathematical principal known as the 'golden proportion' that was used to build the Great Pyramid in Giza. You can access it here.

Braden claims that events in the life of individuals, nations, and even the planet, repeat and that the timing of those events can be predicted based on a 'seed event'. While calculating the possible repetition of the seed event will give us a probable date...it is not necessary for the event to recur. All the elements may be present and still the event may not happen.

This, of course, ties in very closely with the prophetic Mayan texts known as the Chilam Balam. Based on the notion that history repeats itself, the Jaguar Priest prophesied into the future. The Chilam Balam that we have found date from the Colonial period of Mayan history, but they are believed to be based on earlier practices and texts.

Indeed, the Maya concept of time is based on fractals... that is many levels of time occurring simultaneously. Repeating cycles within cycles.

I got two useful things from this book.

First, he refers to a Buddhist teaching that says "Reality exists only where we create a focus." I would love to know where this came from... but it is not necessary.

Lately, I have been trying to find my next step. Not by 'figuring it out,' but rather, by feeling my way, listening. But as usual, I tend to look outside of my current circumstances for an answer. That is... whatever I am doing now, cannot be what I am supposed to do....because it is 'not working.' Sound familiar? This one sentence changed all that. Rather than looking for something different from what I am already doing... I feel the meaning is I should do it more. That is, put MORE energy into it... FOCUS on it rather than always looking out the window so to speak. DO IT with my whole being. In Latin, the word 'focus' means hearth, cooking fire. It is the 'focal' point of the home. The fire in the heart/hearth. Make my heart/hearth the center of my life. In Roman times, the fire place evolved into the altar where the sacred fire was kept lit. In Mayan cosmology, the 'three-stone place', ie, the heart/hearth of the cosmos, is the creation place.

This leads to the second thing I got from this book, which was the nature of the change we must make to thrive during these times.

I am not sure if Braden was aware of the number of times he used the word 'focus' in the book, or if he knows the etymology of the word, but it stood out for me. It was lighting up like a beacon. What is my focus?

He writes about the research by physicists that shows the effects consciousness has on matter, citing some experiments that have been done to demonstrate this. He talks about how a particular team of scientists noticed a rise in global magnetism during 9/11 and other 'world shattering' events. This led to research and observation of the relationship between emotional states, health, and magnetic fields.

He writes about the Institute of HeartMath and its founder who said, "regulating emotions is the next frontier in human evolution." This has significance for me because I have believed this for quite awhile. My years of study and practice of Sufism, a 'heart-centered' spirituality, aims at healing the broken heart of humanity. Basically asserting that it is because we are broken-hearted that we act out in destructive ways, reacting rather than responding, living in fear rather than love and trust.

As an aromatherapist and flower essence practitioner, my role is to serve as a conduit between the plant and human worlds. I truly believe that the plant world is in many ways more advanced than the human. Plants came before animals and made animal life on this planet possible. Every step in evolution was made first by plants, then the animals/humans followed. So, now, we need to trust the plant kingdom to lead us in the next step of our evolutionary journey. Incredibility, scent affects the emotional center immediately. It bypasses the rational mind and goes right to the instinctual level. Flower essences work on the energetic level, again below the radar of the mind. Both these modalities are effective in helping us toward a heart-centered reality.

Braden says that the key to our transition lies in our collective feelings about the change. I agree completely. How we feel about what is going on right now is crucial. Because we, in the modern, western world, are so accustomed to using our mind to understand, we don't know how to do it any other way. Seeking other modalities seems 'silly', 'crazy' or 'weird'. The closest thing we come to any other way of knowing is if we have a religious belief - which is the only kind of 'irrationality' we accept. But, for most people, religious practice and belief eroded away a long time ago. We may still participate, but don't feel anything.

One thing I am aware of is how effective the media are at numbing us. We are becoming armored by watching and hearing all this bad news. We can't allow ourselves to feel because it is overwhelming. How many starving, drowning, brutalized people can you seen in the news? But unfortunately, what this also does is numb us to our immediate circle of friends and family. Numb to the suffering of humanity just to survive the day, we have become numb to our own life. The way out of this is to fast from media. Don't watch it. Don't listen to it. Don't read it. It's true, there's little you can do about it. But what you can do is be sensitive to those in your immediate world. Open to those around you. Help them when you can. If everyone did that...all would be cared for.

How we feel is more important that what we think. The New Age has made us all familiar with 'your thoughts create your reality.' Let's go one more step.... how you feel affects your thoughts. Joe Miller, an incredible man I never met, but who was well known my many of my Sufi friends said, "you can get more stinkin' from thinkin' than you can from drinkin', but the feel is for real".

Thank you Gregg Braden for reminding me of my focus.
His website