We at Sounds True recently asked a number of our authors two questions about the phenomena of 2012: 1) What is your view of the year 2012 being identified as a time of unprecedented collective change and transformation? and 2) In your view, what is the best way to respond to these challenging times? What can we do to align with the shift in a way that is most supportive of personal and collective transformation?

We are pleased to present healer and author Cyndi Dale’s responses. For more information about Cyndi Dale, please see www.cyndidale.com.

What is your view of the year 2012 being identified as a time of unprecedented collective change and transformation?

I don’t think there is anything magical about the year 2012; that is, not any more mysterious or powerful than say—2009. Or 2010. Or 2042. Or any year that we might collectively decide is “the” year to demonstrate our divine potential. Having said that—why not pick 2012 as the “line in the sand” to heal our hearts and transform ourselves, a person at a time, to reassert the “kind” in “human-kind”? We’ve probably only a few years to truly make such a transformation before we descend (again) into the clouds of our own shame and waste.

For over 15 years, I have avidly researched the Mayan prophecies and the idea imbedded in the end of their calendar, which is 2012. I have done so in context of other cultures’ similar beliefs. This passion has included conducting more than a dozen trips to the Yucatan, Belize, Guatemala, and other parts of Central and South America, which hosted our ancient Mayan friends, but also visiting sacred sites in and reading sacred scriptures from around the world. And I’m saddened and struck by how many societies prophecy doom and gloom, for that is the culminating message: We are at an end.

A striking warning comes from the Kogi, a group of people native to Columbia. After a brief interview with the media, in which they foretold an inevitable end of the world, they have re-misted themselves in their mountain home and now remain shrouded from view and visitors. Apparently we have nearly killed our planet, with our wasteful patterns and loathing actions. In general, the Kogi and other prophecies foreshadow the ending of our age, devolution into the equivalent of another Ice Age or Great Flood. As with all endings, this one is erasure of all things good through a violence from all things bad.

There’s little argument; people are injuring and destroying life and that this can’t continue. The picture I get is that there is a rip in the sky. Through it fall badness, evil, despair, cruelty, and horror. We’re trying to patch it—didn’t our ancestors say we only have until 2012 to do so, before the world goes up in flames? This tear, however, is a mirror of the same in our own hearts. As the ancients said, “As above, so below.” We are the people of torn hearts. By repressing our inner goodness and knowledge, we’ve given way to darkness and hate.

But does this mean that we really deserve to die—and take all that is precious with us?

Many cultures believe that we’ve spiraled through many such ages, cycles of change that culminate in the choice to progress or regress. We’ve always screwed up. The Hopi, for instance, believe that we’re in one of our later ages, having devolved from higher orders. The early Egyptians shared teachings from an earlier age, demonstrating skills of levitation, healing prowess, and seeming magical abilities that were once universal. The graveyard of Stonehenge and Avebury in England are leftovers from the days and times we lived more fully. Looking backward, it really does seem that we have become shells to our true spiritual nature and inheritance, doomed to spend 50 hours a week in cubicles and pressed air, killing ourselves and others a breath at a time.

Killing ourselves, we are. Most of us spend most of our time hating our lives. I have a mainstream client base composed of “real people” who are accountants, homemakers, information service providers, nurses…people. And to the one they complain about hating their jobs, hating their lives, and hating their own addictive behaviors. They constantly share the desire to “go home”; to escape a world that has become an icebox.

It seems to me that we have pretty much frozen all things truly sweet. Intimacy is passed out in the guise of sex like popsicles from the freezer. Faith is packaged as religion and truth is simply what you can get by with. There’s simply nothing MATURE about how we’re living.

Is 2012 really the year that it all ends? Maybe we’d act more powerfully and purposefully if we simply decided that what doesn’t work needs to end RIGHT NOW. Maybe it’s time to grasp our divinity in each and every moment and decide that it’s time to mature in the moment. Maybe we don’t need to wait for—or even prepare for—2012. How about 2009?

In your view, what is the best way to respond to these challenging times? What can we do to align with the shift in a way that is most supportive of personal and collective evolution?

I think the only way to respond is to shorten time and decide to change now, personally. In short, I think we need to move from intention to decision.

I discuss intention in all the books I’ve authored. In my most recent book, The Subtle Body through Sounds True, I outline the extensive research and case material about the power and effectiveness of setting and following intention. Intention is good. It focuses our willpower and therefore energy, bringing us to action. But I think it’s time to move a step further, to move beyond intention, which directs attention, and actually make a decision. For myself, I’ve actually decided to actively surrender my free will—the act of continually choosing between good and bad, to simply decide to be whatever my goodness is all the time.

That sounds really grand, doesn’t it? Well it’s not. It’s hard and fairly laughable. The first day I made this all-encompassing decision I made oh, 55 mistakes. Not that I usually don’t, it’s just that I noticed the 55 mistakes. (My ten-year-old insisted, of course, that I’d actually made 86 mistakes, the main error being my refusal to sponsor yet another trip to the toy store.) Over the next few days, I made an equal amount of blunders, but I also took a few new steps. I began a joint effort with a Mr. Kim Callis and others in a project called Ambassadors-4-Sustainability. We’re joining spiritual with business forces to help ourselves, families, corporations, and nations create real, sustainable, and loving progress. Besides that rather heroic effort, I started to make the changes that make a real difference. I began really recycling my water bottles, not just pretending to. I bit my tongue more often and actually started calling my mother everyday, rather than only thinking about it.

The truth is that we really do know the difference between good and bad. No one can tell me that national leaders think it’s good to drop bombs on the unsuspecting or research viral weapons. No one can tell me that a married person thinks it’s okay to cheat or that we don’t know it’s bad to hit a child. We know these things.

We need to move beyond judgment and discussing and hiding and simply change. That’s what the prophecies of 2012 afford us—in a way. In another way, the line in the sand simply puts off the inevitable and gives us a leeway, as if we don’t give ourselves enough of them.

I’m only one person, but as my ten-year-old would say, I’m a “big person.” You’re only one person, but that fact means that you are also a “big person.” What if all we big people would decide that it’s time to really serve; to simply decide to do whatever is the best in every moment? This isn’t about perfection or avoiding errors. Goodness is a bit of a moving target. It’s not good to hold ourselves to impossible standards because that just leaves us feeling bad, which is so NOT a good thing! Deep in our hearts, however, lies what I call the “forever” self, the one that has known “forever” what it means to be kind, helpful, honest, and loving.

How might it look? How might all of us, starting with ourselves, decide to “be” the change, not only “wait for” or “talk about” the change? Well here’s the list I’ve designed for myself:

For myself, I’ve chosen to embrace 2012 as the year that we can collectively mark all good things human and living—but 2009 as the year I decided to become more honest with myself about my true power and goodness.

For more information about Cyndi Dale, please see www.cyndidale.com.

Learn more about Cyndi Dale’s transformative book The Subtle Body and her audio learning courses.