Happy birthday!
 

Yes, today is a birthday for all of us. Today humanity is transitioning into a new era. Today is the date that the Mayans marked as the end of their calendar centuries ago. They knew that today would be a new beginning for our world. Right at this moment, around the world many ceremonies are being held and rituals are being performed to celebrate this transformation. 
 

It is not a date unique to the Mayans. Other ancient cultures too have predicted that a new era would be born around this time. Who doesn’t remember the song “Aquarius” from the musical Hair?
 

When the moon is in the seventh house

And Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars
 

That was a Sixties song. But today the message is more relevant than ever. We are leaving the era of Pisces, marked by competition, and entering the age of Aquarius, marked by collaboration. There is no other more fundamental change that humanity can go through. If we go from competition to collaboration, everything will change. Greed, war and selfishness will be replaced by love, peace and compassion.
 

Alberto Villoldo—a psychologist and anthropologist who has studied the healing practices of the Amazonian and Incan shamans for 25 years—says we are moving into a time of unprecedented possibility. An important characteristic of this new cycle is that people will no longer experience a difference between their inner and outer worlds. This has enormous consequences for all of us, Villoldo believes, because “in the new cycle, you can only change the world by changing your inner life.”
 

We would live in a very different world indeed if our inner experience indeed matched our creations in the outside world. How many wrongs violate our conscience, yet persist?
 

Every three seconds somewhere in the world a baby dies from malnutrition or a preventable disease. In the U.S.—the richest country in the world—one in six (a total of 50 million people) goes to bed hungry every day.
 

There is no place for that suffering in our inner worlds. The overwhelming response to relief operations has so often demonstrated how committed we are to solving these painful problems. Yet the injustice continues.
 

The vision of the coming together of our inner and outer worlds, of course, has the characteristics of a utopia. But there also seem to be good scientific arguments for fundamental change. Cell biologist Bruce Lipton writes in his book Spontaneous Evolutionthat our civilization is coming to an end because the system is not sufficiently supported. Systems theory teaches that healthy, resilient and sustainable systems are dependent on active participation by the units of which and for which the system exists. 
 

Lipton says: “In many parts of the world, about half of the people (the dying poor in developing countries, the hungry Americans, the 50 percent unemployed youth in Greece and Spain) don’t even participate in the system. This makes the system weak and leads to its ultimate demise.”
 

There are other indications—climate change, for example—that suggest we live in a time of transition. The change accelerates. And despite the meaning of December 21, our world won’t suddenly be completely different when we wake up tomorrow. But here’s the promise: So many of us have sensed the shift and are changing with it that unstoppable transformation has been set in motion.
 

It feels like a privilege to live right now. My thoughts go to the Mayans who with their chisels hacked December 21, 2012, into stone as the last date of their current calendar. What were they thinking? Were they longing for the day of change that is ours today?
 

So, once again, happy birthday to you. Today, an emerging new world opens doors to an emerging new you. 
 

Please take a moment to meditate with Alberto Villoldo today as he joins millions around the world in a celebration of December 21, 2012. Click here.
 

Also, join us tomorrow for the last session of his course “Beyond 2012: The Reinvention of Humanity”. Recordings of the previous sessions will be sent to you as soon as you sign up.
 

To keep in touch with the frontiers of humanity’s evolution in consciousness you can sign up here for a membership of The Intelligent Optimist, arguably the community that best aligns with our emerging new world (and in that case, you can join Villoldo’s course FREE). And, you may want to give a gift membership to a friend.
 

These are the times, and we are the people.
 

Jurriaan Kamp
 

photo:  flickr.com/brett_plank