Theatre of the Mind Podcast Episodes

Mayan Cosmology and Philosophy

Kelly Howell: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Theatre of the Mind. Your host, Kelly Howell. Our show today explores more on the Mayan Calendar, and my guest is John Major Jenkins. John has devoted years of study to reconstruct ancient Mayan cosmology and philosophy. For over 20 years he's traveled to Mexico and Central America to study sacred sites and indigenous cultures.
John has taught classes at the Institute of Mayan Studies in Miami, the Miami Calendar Congress in Mexico, The Esalen Institute, Naropa University and many other venues, both nationally and abroad. He is the author of "Maya Cosmogenesis 2012" and "Galactic Alignment." John, welcome to the show.
John Jenkins: Hi, Kelly. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Kelly: Oh, I'm so happy to have you here. I've just gotten off on this Mayan Calendar roll. [laughs] So we've done a couple of shows so far on the calendar with Carl Johan Callaman and Barbara Hand Clow. And I read your wonderful essay in "The Mysteries of 2012."
John: Right.
Kelly: Yeah, and I loved that.
John: Great.
Kelly: And I wanted to just start with that. How did you first become interested in the calendar?
John: Well, it's going back some 22 years, now. I was living in Boulder, Colorado and reading the work of Frank Waters. He wrote about the Hopi, amazing books about the indigenous wisdom of the American Indians. One of his books sent me south of the border, a book called "Mexico Mystique," and I became fascinated with the fact that there were Maya people living today in the remote villages of the highlands down there in southern Mexico and Guatemala.
So it was 1986 and I saved up a little bit of money and I took a bus south of the border, and that sort of launched the work that I've been engaged since then, which has been to push back the fringes of what we know about the ancient Maya calendar cosmology and their beliefs and their amazing understanding of humanity and our place in the cosmos.
Kelly: So you spent quite a bit of time down there, huh?
John: Well that first trip, actually, went for about four months. So it was really kind of a matter of traveling on a shoestring, but I visited some of the temple sites and got to the villages there in the highlands of Guatemala and really fell in love with the Maya people and Maya culture. I returned almost every winter for the next four or five winters.
And then I've made periodic trips since then engaged in various projects in the highlands, such as a MiniPeace Corps kind of thing, helping to rebuild a school in the village of San Pedro. And on one trip in the mid 90s I delivered relief supplies to a Quiche Maya community in the highlands.
Throughout this process I was reading mainly, I guess you'd say, academic literature. I wanted to really find the scoop on what their traditions were about. It was fascinating to me. But I realized pretty quickly there were certain unresolved questions, especially around this enigmatic 2012 date.
Kelly: Yes. 2011, or 2012?
John: Oh, well, that's pretty much a...
Kelly: It's a done deal now, it's absolute.
John: Well, your questions is, the correlation work that's done and the surviving day count in the highlands of Guatemala, it's not even really controversial. It's just a matter of looking, even just a little bit at the information to find the end date of the 13 Baktun cycle falls on December 21 of 2012. And that corresponds to the Maya day for Ahau in the 260 day sacred calendar.
So the clincher for this whole thing is that you can actually go and talk to a Quiche Mayan day keeper, one of those people who preserved the ancient, authentic placement of the day count. And they will tell you that today is such and such a day. I believe the Quiche preserve the authentic day count. And today would be 13 Imix in the 260 day Tzolk'in calendar. So we can actually count forward from today, 13 Imix, one Ik'.
Kelly: And what does that mean? 13 Imix? Is there a meaning?
John: Well, Imix is a day sign. It's one of the 20 days signs. And it basically means earth. So each one of the 20 day signs has a certain meaning. It's kind of like... And in the same way that our weekdays have meaning.
Kelly: Monday, Tuesday, right.
John: You know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. It's based, if we go back to the origin of the 7day week we find that they actually correspond to the planets.
Kelly: OK. What does the earth day...
John: So there's an astrological basis to our 7day week. In a similar way, there is a, I guess you'd say an astrological basis to the 20 day signs of the Maya calendar.
Kelly: So today is the earth day. And what is the meaning of the earth day? Just for fun.
John: Well, it's the, basically day keepers would say that this day has a certain meaning. I'm not a day keeper myself. You have to go through a pretty severe initiation to understand all the different meanings. Because it's kind of like each one of the day signs is a symbol. So a symbol is not like a sign, like a stop sign or a yield sign. A symbol is a doorway into many multiple meanings.
The Maya really use these day signs, the day keepers, themselves, when they count out the days. They're actually hearing the resonances of all the different puns. Word puns and meaning puns. And so it's really a rich tapestry that they utilize in their astrological readings when, say, a client comes to them. That's the fascinating thing about that, is they can actually divine information utilizing their techniques of divination.
Kelly: What's your Mayan astrological sign? I don't know for me.
John: Well, that's getting kind of personal.
Kelly: I know, isn't it? [laughs]
John: Well, it's really, I don't really mind at all, really. It's interesting how that works. My day sign is four K'ib. So the way this works is really interesting. But the 260 day Tzolk'in calendar is fascinating. My early work was delving into this. In the early 90s one had to look carefully at the information on the calendar to sort out the debris around the discussion and figure out what was going on with it.
The most fascinating thing to me, early on in my research, this is going back to the early 90s was that the Quiche Maya in the highlands, they were following the same day count, the same calendar that the Classic Period Maya followed over a thousand years ago. So that same calendar survived in the highlands of Guatemala. It's like an unbroken chain of counting through the 20 day signs up to the present day.
That's one thing that I've tried to put on the table through the years, basically. And what it basically means is that in the Quiche Maya day count, you can project forward to December 21 of 2012 which is the end date of the 13 Baktun cycle in their worldage calendar and find that it falls correctly on the day sign for Ahau, for Sun, the for Solar Lord.
So what we basically have, then, in the highlands of Guatemala is a survival of this tradition that points to December 21 of 2012 as the end of a big cycle of time.
Kelly: Why do you think the Mayan people were so obsessed with time keeping?
John: Well they believed that human beings are connected up to the larger cycles in the universe and to be able to observe cycles and patterns in nature, everything from, say, plant growth to lunar cycles to the life cycle of a human being or a tree or agricultural cycles throughout the solar year, all of these things were reflections of each other. Smaller cycles were reflections of larger cycles.
It's kind of a profound idea when you think about it. It's like the microcosm reflects the macrocosm. It's basically that "as above, so below" principle that we find in astrology. But the Maya really saw this principal operating in all domains of life, including the larger cycles.
Now, the did have an ability to track large cycles of time, and one of the largest cycles they can track is this great 26,000 year period called, we call it the Procession of the Equinoxes. The Maya saw it as a great cycle of world ages in which humanity passes through. They believed, basically with this world age doctrine that humanity passes through distinct chapters or phases in its development. Really a fascinating idea when you think about it.
Kelly: It's very advanced. I like what you said in your essay, you described it as a, something like a divine download of inspiration.
John: Well, that's true. And that suggests a very different way that the Maya were acquiring their knowledge. They were shamans, and they journeyed into the inner planes, the inner dimensions, in order to acquire real knowledge about the outer universe. This is because the inner world reflects the outer world.
Now this, of course, is very different than the way that our own science believes is the only way of acquiring knowledge, which is to take in data through the senses, the five senses, and make charts and graphs and make postulations and hypotheses and so on. That is the scientific method.
Science works perfectly well in its own sort of limited domain. But the fact is that human beings are not limited to five senses, as any person on a spiritual path knows. We have the ability to connect into subtler planes, you might say, subtler planes of knowledge.
Kelly: And it seems the greatest inventions, ideas, visions, they all come from the inner planes.
John: Yes, you're actually right, Kelly. Yeah, Kelly, you're absolutely right. That's an interesting thing and an important thing to remember. That even our cherished scientific breakthroughs have come through dreams and visions and angelic messengers.
Kelly: What is the key to understanding the Mayan time keeping system, or just the whole system? What is it that we need to know?
John: Well, I think one of the general keys is that the Maya time keeping system is a perspective on the universe that unites many different realms of experience. So it's a holistic paradigm. The 260 day calendar itself is kind of a key that operates in several domains of human experience from the human embryogenesis, the nine month period of gestation. That's 260 days. In fact, day keepers offer that as the reason why 260 is so important to them.
Kelly: I didn't know that.
John: But it's also used in the planting and harvesting of corn. It's the interval between planting and harvesting of corn in the highlands. So that's like an agricultural rhythm. And then also the 260 day calendar is used in the almanacs that predict the movements of Venus and Mars and the Moon. So that's a celestial application.
So we have the Maya calendar sort of being used as a key to these many different domains of human experience, from human biology to corn growth, agriculture, earth rhythms and celestial rhythms of the planets in the sky.
Kelly: Do you live by the Mayan calendar or the Gregorian calendar? Of course you have to live by the Gregorian calendar to function, but do you...
John: Right. Well...
Kelly: Do you think that we're out of sync, in a way, because of the Gregorian calendar?
John: No, I don't really think so. I don't really ascribe to the idea that an outer template, at least in my belief system, I don't believe that external circumstances really affect me on an internal level. If that was the case, then I'd really have to be doing some spiritual, I'd have to start doing some spiritual work.
Kelly: [laughs]
John: The Gregorian calendar is simply a secular template through which we can structure appointments and so on. It serves a function. It doesn't have to affect our spiritual life. In fact, the Maya, themselves, have a secular calendar. They call it the Haab'. It's 365 days, so it's roughly equivalent to the Gregorian calendar. But they integrated that with their sacred calendar, the 260 day calendar.
So the genius of the Mayan vision of time is that you can integrate secular, or mundane concerns, with sacred concerns. In fact, they should be integrated. To try to destroy the secular dimension, or the sort of mundane dimension of life is absurd.
Kelly: Well, religions have done it in a way. I mean we have Easter and that's the spring equinox, which is really the beginning of the year, in a way.
John: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's already sort of integrated with that. So, no, I don't believe that the Gregorian calendar is something evil that needs to be destroyed. I think when that is done away with or something...
Kelly: Oh, I want to throw my day timer out. I can't help it. [laughs]
John: [laughs] Right. Well I think what we hear in all of this is the need to place the sacred dimension in a higher position, where it belongs, rather than subjecting our lives to the demands of our nine to five work day and all that. The problem with modern civilization is that things are inverted, things are upside down. We've basically dispensed with the spiritual domain sort of relegating it to the realm of dreams and fantasies or something.
Instead, in our existentialist world of consumer materialism, we recognize only the hard commodities of...Think of how we use the term 'time' in our language. Time, you can spend time, you can save time, you can, they're all consumer metaphors. So the problem is that things are inverted and we just need to put the secular back in it's subservient position to the sacred once again. Which is sort of how the universe is structured anyway. So that's the way we should reposition things.
Kelly: We need to reverse it all again. The Hindu word Maya, not to confuse us here, but that refers to the world as an illusion. You know, in that it's all temporary, really.
John: Well, yeah, that's kind of an interesting idea, really. And I do believe that there are perennial wisdom teachings that one can find in the great world religions. In the Maya, the Maya cosmology around 2012, I believe, belongs to this perennial wisdom. And one of those ideas is that the world that we see through the senses, the world of Maya, is an illusion from the higher perspective of the spirit.
In other words, the things we see or perceive with our senses are sort of like shadow projections, and if we have an open third eye or an open spiritual awareness, we can see how everything that is created ultimately passes away.
But, behind the appearance of the forms lies this essence. That essence is undying. The eternal ground of all manifestation is the real thing, the real deal. That's what lies behind these projected forms that are called Sumsara or Maya.
Kelly: And physicists are now talking about it?
John: Yeah, it's a matter of consciousness, really. And again, it's not that we want to do away with the world in some kind of Gnostic sense, you know, like the world is evil or the body is evil or something like that. We just want to put things back into right relationships.
Kelly: And it goes back to what you were saying before about how the Maya had this incredible download of knowledge and wisdom and connection with the universe. We have looked at that culture and thought it was superstitious or it was not taken as seriously as more and more people are now.
John: Yeah, I really find that to be a sad situation that is kind of a continuation of what happened 500 years ago during the conquest in which the Mesoamerican people were denigrated and they tried to be destroyed. I think you have some serious kind of Freudian or Yunian psychological projection going on there, where instead of recognizing the innate genius of the Mayan people, they were brandished as being evil Pagans or something like that.
Kelly: Well, let's talk about that because there is a lot of confusion around the Mayan people and their culture. You know a lot about it and we haven't gotten into that in any of our other shows. I thought maybe we could talk about the Mayan creation myth and the ball game. I am particularly interested in how the Mayan creation myth relates to the galactic alignment coming up.
John: Well, yeah. This is the core thing, really with 2012. I think there's this very profound, spiritual understanding that is embedded in the Mayan tradition, especially around the Mayan Creation myth and how that relates to 2012 and this rare galactic alignment that culminates in 2012.
And probably, just briefly, that's probably why we have a continuing denigration of the Mayan in the mass media. You know, Hollywood movies, they tend to go for the clichÈ and the stereotype. It's almost like. . .
Kelly: Sacrifices and savages.
John: The western mind frame is threatened by the very likely probability that the Mayan people and their achievements surpass the achievements and the understandings that have been achieved in the West. It's a very immature sort of need to put down that which you sense is coming from a more mature or integrated perspective.
And just as an illustration of that, what my pioneering work has uncovered is a real profound sort of galactic cosmology. I was really interested in this enigmatic 2012 date when I was starting to do my research back in the late 80s, early 90s. And I started to ask the questions. You know, the questions that appear like, 'where was the 2012 calendar invented, and why, and where, and who did it?', and those kind of questions.
That led me on my search. To make a long story short, basically what I was able to reveal in my research is that the Maya apparently chose the year 2012 because a very rare alignment to the center of the Milky Way galaxy is happening in the years around 2012. I refer to it as a galactical alignment, or a solstice galaxy alignment.
It's basically, from our vantage point here on Earth, we are lining up through the December solstice sun, so we can look at where the December solstice sun is positioned in the sky, and it is lining up with the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Some of your listeners are probably familiar with the 12 Zodiacal ages, in Western astrology where. . .
Kelly: The age of Aquarius.
John: Yeah. We are supposedly approaching the age of Aquarius, and we've been in the age of Pisces for over 2, 000 years now. Well, that's a very similar idea. It's based on the factual astronomy of this 26,000 year processional cycle. It's a real thing. It's caused by the Earth wobbling very slowly on its Axis. It takes 26,000 years for one complete wobble.
Well, this phenomenon, it effectively changes our orientation to the larger constellations and stars, and the position of the galaxy as well. So, we can look up in the night sky and of course, I'm sure we've all seen the bright band of the Milky Way arching overhead. It kind of looks like a white road or a stream in the sky.
The position of the December Solstice sun has been slowly approaching the Milky Way, the bright band of the Milky Way for thousands and thousands of years. And when the early Maya created their long count calendar, and fixed its end date in 2012, they were apparently targeting this rare alignment, this galactic alignment.
They believed that the world would be going through a great transformation when this alignment would be culminating. It is culminating as we approach 2012, and the world is going through a great transformation right now. This alone suggests that the Maya were really tuned in to some deep and profound understanding of how these galactic alignments are really critical for human beings on Earth.
So they integrated it into their Maya Creation mythology. How this works is really fascinating. Their creation myth was like a mystery play and they saw the center of the Milky Way galaxy as the womb of the great mother deity, and the December Solstice sun was Hun Hunahpu, the father of the Hero Twins in the creation myth.
The creation myth is all about the twins trying to facilitate the rebirth, the resurrection of their father, Hun Hunahpu. He had been killed by the Lords of Darkness. And, so it is a metaphor for the rebirth of the sun coming into union with the womb of the Great Mother, the galaxy, at the end of the cycle.
Notice how the creation myth then is kind of like a mythological story that is telling the astronomy of the alignment. The creation myth is actually encoding the galactic alignment. That is just the tip of the iceberg. We could look at the symbolism of the ball game and so on.
Kelly: I want to hear about that. I do, I do. I want to hear about that. You're putting me into a trance, by the way.
John: Oh, I don't mean to.
Kelly: I'm loving it. I'm loving it.
John: It's very, very fascinating.
Kelly: It is. So tell us about the cosmic symbolism of the ball game.
John: Well, the ball game also symbolizes the galactic alignment in a very straight forward way. In the creation myth, the hero twins, in order to facilitate the rebirth of their father, they have to play the ball game with the Lords of Darkness.
So they have to journey into the underworld and play the ball game. Now, during this episode, the head of their father, he had already been executed by the Lords of Darkness, and his head was hung in the tree. The head of their father who again, Hun Hunahpu, is the December Solstice Sun. The head of their father was used as the game ball. So it becomes the game ball in the game.
The ball is being kicked around. That's like the sun, the December Solstice sun, moving through the sky. And now you really have to induce some study in Mayan symbolism I've got all the sources and citations in my book, "Maya Comogenesis 2012". It came out almost 10 years ago now. It's got all the citations in there it really broke the case on this.
You can find the ball court represented the Milky Way in the sky and the gold ring at the center of the court represents this interesting feature. Now this is kind of critical. There is an astronomical feature along the Milky Way that's called the Dark Rift. The Dark Rift in the Milky Way, the Maya thought of it as the Shebalba way the road to the underworld. And in the symbolism it is the goal ring in the ball court. So the ball has to be kicked into the goal ring and then that signals the end of the game and then the Hero Twins can then facilitate the rebirth of their father.
So we can see in the symbolism how the ball game also symbolizes the galactic alignment, it's the game ball going to the goal ring or the December solstice sun going into this Dark Rift of the Milky Way feature which happens to be right in the position where the galactic center is located. So the ballgame is basically symbolizing...
Kelly: This 2012.
John: Yes.
Kelly: December 12.
John: Yes, its all nicely integrated.
Kelly: What's going to happen? What is the end of the game here?
John: It's interesting, what it represents is there's astronomy and there's symbolism, but packaged in the creation myth is spiritual teachings. There's spiritual teachings of the dynamics that unfold during cycle endings and what human beings can do. What this basically represents when the December Solstice sun goes into the center of the Milky Way. It represents a transformation and a rebirth. All of the symbolism, all the metaphors, the world age doctrine, and creation myth, it's always repeating the information about transformation and rebirth into the new cycle. Its never about cataclysm. This idea that we get reflected back to us by our mass media. Just repeated endlessly over, and over, and over. It's almost like just trying to push that fear button.
Kelly: Hey maybe we won't have mass media after 2012.
John: Maybe not.
Kelly: We'll be free.
John: I'll pay attention to it. Well what it's really about is a reconnection. What happens is Hun Hunahpu's head gets placed back onto his body and gets reborn that symbolizes us returning to that state of unity consciousness.
Kelly: Wow I love this.
John: Reclaiming that holistic vision we lost.
Kelly: Well its also the mind body connection.
John: Absolutely.
Kelly: Unity and wholeness, and maybe our minds connecting with higher mind, finally.
John: That's right, with our true heart and source...The Higher Mind. So that's where that download happens. See these are interesting times because we can get connected back up to that higher wisdom that for some reason we've got disconnected. But that's also part of the Mayan prophesy, that disconnect. There are many interesting aspects of this, the Maya creation mythology tells the story of the rebirth of the world at the end of the age and how we can place ourselves back into right relationship with our true hearts, our true eternal infinite selves.
Kelly: John could we back up a little bit? You said that they tracked the disconnect that we had.
John: Yes.
Kelly: When did that happen and why?
John: Well I'm glad you asked that Kelly because basically the prophecy for 2012 follows from this Maya creation myth. They observe in the cycles of time all cycles have two halves. Say for example the day cycle. At high noon that is the supreme manifestation of the light principle. That is when all is complete its like the 'golden age' kind of idea and then in the afternoon it starts getting darker the light starts to wane. This represents for the Maya as well as other traditions like for example the Hindu tradition, they have the same idea that through successive ages there's a diminishment. We go from the golden age, to the silver age, then the bronze age, then finally the iron age. And in this process there's a diminishment where spiritual light is decreasing and humanity is forgetting their spiritual natures.
During this process then ego gets deputized as being the supreme arbiter and ruler of the world. So the end of this process when we reach the place of maximum darkness which would be like midnight in the day cycle. Ego has placed itself where the true eternal self should be. Everything's inverted, everything's upside down.
Ego has sort of deputized itself to be the true ruler of the world. You know we have this problem in the world today with self interest and greed in politics or even in corporate culture. The corporation is like the supreme example of the ego run amok. In the creation myth this deity, this character, this archetype is called Seven Macaw. Seven Macaw is the vain and false ruler who appears at the end of the cycle. And the Hero Twins actually have to do away with Seven Macaw before they can facilitate the rebirth of their father which is the true consciousness return to the state of unity.
So this is just a metaphor for ego having to be placed back into right relationship with its true self. That's kind of the dynamic that we have going on. And I just find this so fascinating. Joseph Campbell's one of my heroes and I feel when I look at the Maya creation myth, it's very possible to look at the archetypal structure in it. I see the universal principles and teachings that are inside of it instead of just thinking of it as a quaint fairy tale or something like that.
So I believe that we have everything we need right there in the Mayan creation myth to understand what the 2012 is about. There is no need to invent our own systems or postulate 13 dimensions or hierarchies or something like that. I guess I'm kind of traditionalist or purist. I believe what this is about, what the challenge is, is to give a clear voice to the authentic tradition and that's what I've been trying to do.
Kelly: Well I know for me I was in Cost Rica, totally off the grid, recently and saw the macaws, oh my God they're so beautiful.
John: And notice how they squawk.
Kelly: Oh yeah, I love them.
John: They think they're the thing don't they?
Kelly: They are the thing! [laughs]
John: Well that's why they're used in the creation myth its that self magnifying that ego can tend to do. You know look at me I'm squawking.
Kelly: But without the telephone, cell phone, fax, computer. Where we were staying there was no way to get in touch with us except through jungle radio and time changed.
John: Oh yeah that's for sure.
Kelly: It made me think about where I live in Santa Fe, a little tiny town and its quite private here and nature is everywhere. But still we've gotten so far away from that connection to nature.
John: Well that's when we could really sort of open up our consciousness to experience the eternal now. You know to let things slow down and becomes the moment.
Kelly: It was the longest week of my life. [laughs]
John: Yes.
Kelly: And I loved every minute of it, but it does. [laughs]
John: It's a beautiful thing nature, to just be immersed in unity with nature is the way that we can experience the divine for sure. Secret.
Kelly: As we get closer to 2012, what do you expect people, individuals, especially spiritually aware individuals can expect to notice inside themselves?
John: Well, I think there's a lot of, 2012 is signaling something to the collective. And there are responses inside of the collective. It's almost like we have this challenge and this opportunity to get reconnected to our true selves. Part of the spiritual work that is involved in that has to do with placing ego back into its proper place.
I think the spiritual work is often about sacrificing, or surrendering the illusions that keep us tied into limited states of consciousness. A lot of those tyrannical control systems revolve around ego and the various ways that we've bought into that. So there's a very personal work that I think spirituallyminded people can be engaged in.
I always think that meditation is a great and very simple thing to practice because it allows us to immerse ourselves in the essence of consciousness without feeling like we have to radically change our lives or move somewhere else or that kind of thing. That's the beautiful thing about it. It's really about transformation. A transformation that comes out from within the spiritual being.
I think that all change happens on the spiritual plane first, and then cascades down into the material world. I think that that's how we can transform our failed institutions as well. The many false assumptions that our civilization has taken to heart which are really damaging. Like the raping and pillaging of nature and so on. These kind of things are not boding a situation in which we're going to have a sustainable future to live in.
So there's a lot of challenges, because there's control systems that the Seven Macaws of the world, the corporations, for example. The world is sort of based upon this Seven Macaw system, and so there's going to be a lot kicking and screaming before a successful new orientation can take hold. But I think it has to come out of the spiritual work first.
So I think people have to be very wary of the kind of sensationalist fearmongering that takes place in the world, generally speaking, but especially around the Maya topic. There's two or three Hollywood movies that are in production right now. It's sad and hilarious at the same time that they're always about catastrophe and the end of the world. I find that to be a really sad debasement of what is really a beautiful teaching about transformation and renewal.
Kelly: And we can look at it as death of the ego, which has got to be ugly, right?
John: Right, right. Well, the ego thinks it's going to die, but it's really going to be transformed. I'd like to share an image with you that my friend Mike Hagen shared with me. It has to do with how a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. Do you want to hear it?
Kelly: Yes, I'd love to.
John: This applies to what you just said. It's really incredible. So the caterpillar goes into its cocoon and it's going to transform into a butterfly. But it's not just going to grow wings and fly away. What happens is that the whole caterpillar gets dissolved into this aqueous fluid. It turns into this complete fluid state. And then inside of that homogenous fluid state, emerge these little cells that biologists call imaginal cells.
And the imaginal cells, and this, I'm not kidding, this is true. The imaginal cells start restructuring all the different material into the butterfly. Now while this is happening, there are other cells remaining from the caterpillar state that experience the imaginal cells as being foreign bodies, so they're attacking the imaginal cells. Sometimes the antiimaginal cells win because there's a confusion that's taking place. It doesn't understand what's going on.
So precisely that thing that's going to transform the caterpillar into the butterfly, into this other state of being, are identified as threatening. But usually the imaginal cells triumph and then it turns into a butterfly and the butterfly flies away. But notice that whole process.
We have creative people on the forefront of this shift in consciousness, sort of on the vanguard, that are redefining what the world needs to be in order for there to be a future world. In order for us to transform successfully into the next phase of being human on the planet. And yet there are still stalwart gatekeepers that are attacking the imaginative people who are going to envision a new future and trying to do away with them.
So I think that's a good sort of metaphor for the process that's going on in the world today.
Kelly: And I think we can see the changes happening because of the Internet and people are thinking independently now about...
John: We're starting to see through the BS.
Kelly: Yeah. And just look at what's happening politically right now, and everything.
John: People are fed up.
Kelly: Oh, I'm so fed up.
John: Yeah. Exactly. Because of the Internet people have access to the real.
Kelly: The real stories.
John: But we still have to exercise our own discernment. You know discernment is like a muscle. And I don't mean it to mean like discrimination in a negative sense. We just have to discern using our own awakened inner faculties, our own awakened intuition. We have to discern what's true from what's false.
Kelly: John, are you doing any workshops, seminars?
John: Well, there is an incredible event actually coming up this weekend in Hollywood, California. It is a conference called, "The 2012 Conference." It's one of the first 2012 conferences that is being organized by a group called Cabaret Voltaire. And people can go to my website, Alignment2012.com, and check into that. Or at least check into my website for other events that I have coming up.
I'm going to be doing an event in Fort Collins, Colorado in April. And I'm also doing another tour to Mexico. This year it's going to be to Belize and Tikal. And it's going to be taking place in July and August.
Kelly: That sounds fun.
John: My friend Jim Reed and I, he was the president of the Institute of Maya Studies. Once a year we're basically putting together little minitours. Pretty small, like 16, 17, 18 people to visit the Maya villages and the Maya temples. So people can certainly tune in to my events page at Alignment2012.com.
Kelly: OK.
John: And find out what I've got coming up.
Kelly: Oh, thank you so much, John. This has been great.
John: Thank you, Kelly. I really enjoyed speaking with you.
Kelly: I did, too. And I only got through about half my questions, so maybe we can do another show.
John: Sure.
Kelly: Well, that'd be great. Again, your website is...
John: Alignment2012.com. Or people can just Google my name, John Major Jenkins, and it should pop up.
Kelly: OK, great. OK. We'll talk soon, huh?
John: Great.
Kelly: Thanks a lot.
John: Bye.
Kelly: Bye.