Over my 47 years as a seer and sharer of what I see, I have come across many ideas about 2012, ranging from intellectual constructs to fantasy and good fiction to downright hysteria.  Always interested in what makes people tick, I have a discerning attitude toward these kinds of things.  I am an evidence-based, yet deeply open minded person; that means that I am open to an idea, but I really believe and know it to be true when I have felt it in my own body.  Call me stubborn…I’m a Taurus, after all.  But this Taurean woman has deep faith, too…must be my moon in Capricorn in the 12th house.  I have been having direct experiences of the Divine since I can remember; my first memory of this is at age 2.

I was sitting in my sandbox in the small yard at a house on Greenwood Cliff Rd.  The morning was cool, and the sand was damp.  I was sitting still, looking across the sandbox to the spider that had built a web under the opposite corner seat.  I remember the blackness of it.  And I remember my feeling of great sadness, a heavy weight and bleak feeling.

I remember then being surrounded from behind by warmth, and arms (or wings?) coming wrapping me from behind.  I remember the warmth more than anything because it felt like love.  I had a sense of a voice over my left shoulder, although I don’t remember specific words.  What I do remember is a feeling of someone kind saying to me, “Hang in there, you aren’t alone.”  This experience has been a touchstone in my life, and has been repeated more than once.  I guess it is important for me not to lose my faith, as tempting as it has been to discard it the way so many do when they get lost in the physical realm.

I’ve been able to hold on to my remembrance of what we all come from, even with the violence in my life (maybe even because of it).  Maybe there is something to the notion that difficult times invite us to reach beyond ourselves in our quest to know “Why?”

As we near the end of the Gregorian 2012, the notions that I’ve read and heard about the ending of an era do make some sense, but it is balance that marks the beginning of the next era.  Balance does not imply an instant correction of our problems, nor a flash of light that heralds mass enlightenment.  Balance is a relationship between two (or more) entities and is achieved when each entity is in correct alignment with the other under a unifying intention.

My experience and understanding is that the feminine and masculine principles (NOT female and male as in gender) are coming into alignment under a unifying intention, and that intention is the balance of the cooperation of the yin/yang, or feminine/masculine energies that are the two basic building blocks of this universe.  The feminine energy, which has been suppressed for more than 5000 years in the human psyche, has re-emerged in our consciousness, and now the masculine, un-partnered and uninterested in the feminine input, is on high alert.  What has been antagonistic and even predatory is now fearful and grabbing at straws to hold on to power.  Thankfully, the feminine is ruled by a pervasive concern for the whole, so the masculine will be subsumed in the feminine field of knowing.  And by the end, it will be a great relief to him as he finds his way home, remembering that his place is in partnership with her.

My experience at age 2 in the sandbox was one of being reminded that I was cared for despite appearances to the contrary.  I want to pass that feeling on to you now, in this time of our tempering.  I believe because of my multitude of experiences that we are being initiated…asked to cross willingly over a threshold and surrender to the greater good of all creation.

Initiation is the act of passing through a difficult trial or passage and emerging and emerging intact, stronger, more whole in order to be of service to oneself and others.  And when one is being initiated, it can be easy to lose sight that there is a greater purpose at work.  As a woman who has given birth twice to very large (and beautiful) babies, I know that this is true.  As we experience the depth of our trial, we will be faced with such great pain that we will wish we could turn back…but the only way is forward.  Moving through the experience is how we are reborn.