2012, the year of…the baby boom? Take a walk past supermarket shelves and you will discover that all the tabloid magazines are racing to cover the hottest trend, pregnancies. It seems that our collective unconscious has chosen to trade guns and gas masks for bottles and diapers. Hollywood is all about babies. Daily television, magazines, and internet headlines have all been featuring the latest celebrity pregnancy gossip. As pregnancy is a hot topic this year, A-list celebs are racing to gain coverage on their decision to join the baby-making bandwagon.
In recent pop culture, the bigger the belly the greater the celebrity. Jessica Simpson, engaged to former NFL player Eric Johnson, gained much attention in the media for her seemingly never-ending pregnancy. The public couldn't seem to get enough of Simpson as she made appearances on late-night television talk shows and rose to the forefront of celebrity gossip magazine spreads. Another unmarried pregnant celeb that is making headlines is tabloid favorite Snooki, from the hit MTV series The Jersey Shore. Babies before wedding bands is hot in Hollywood. I just can't help but smile at the fact that we have chosen to embrace new life instead of an apocalyptic scenario.
When I lived in LA two years ago, I shared with celebrities a much different idea of trends for 2012. I was living in West Hollywood and working for a start-up magazine that had celebrity contributors who loved to talk about armageddon. There I was, writing a beauty column for a fashion magazine and talking to a famous actor about the emergency disaster kits he had stored in his Hollywood mansion. Strangely enough, as I continued to try and ignore the dark side to my own 2012 discovery, I found my own beliefs manifested in the collective unconscious of popular culture.
When I learned of 2012 and the end of the Mayan calendar, I was living in NYC and dealing with a dark period in my life. The year prior, I had suddenly lost my only surviving parent to cancer and found myself thrown into an entirely new world of adulthood with no place to fall back to. I had no family. I only had a constant flow of synchronicities which pointed me towards my next destinations. In 2007, I had just completed a four year long journal filled with unintelligible ramblings which included numbers like 4 and 11, two numbers with a significance I was yet to discover. So what did I do? Without a clue as to where to go or what to do with my life, I took a dart and threw it at a map. The dart landed on Park City, Utah. There I went, having never traveled that far west before. I checked into my hotel and meditated in the mountains. That's when it happened. One evening, I sat and meditated on my hotel bed. Suddenly something happened. I felt a flood of energy surge throughout my body and I saw green streams of energy streaming from my fingertips which connected to the mountains. That when I experienced my first out-of-body experience.
My "view," or consciousness, was in space. I was hurdling towards Earth at incredible speeds, flying through clouds until I smashed into the planet. I began to download information and visuals of what I believed to be the "true history of everything" about our human origins and technology, and I watched as ages passed upon our planet at incredible speeds. The timeline sped by faster and faster as I watched the progression of humanity from the late 1800's to today in what seemed like a second. Then, BOOM. I saw myself standing on a rooftop in Manhattan.
I watched in horror as the entire city around me was covered in smoke. I cried and said to myself, "I should have been in California. I should have been in California," repeatedly until all went black. Before I awakened back inside my body, an androgynous voice whispered, "Five years."
When I returned several weeks later I went to the mall with a friend. Walking past a Waldenbooks, I decided to stop in and look for a new journal. That's not all I found. As I picked up the journal of choice, behind it were two completely out of place books, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck and Zecharia Sitchin's The End of Days. Without hesitation I brought all three books to the counter and purchased them. It was only when I was halfway through the book that I realized that 2007+5=2012. Even though I used to browse the metaphysical section of bookstores, I had never heard of this whole 2012 thing before. I worried it all had meant an apocalyptic future.
Because of my scorpio nature and youthful mentality at that time, I had throughout my teenage years resonated with all things dark and mysterious. I listened to industrial music, acted like a punk, and felt intrigued by conspiracies. I now know those tastes were a product of my hidden abandonment issues I suffered after losing both my parents at a young age.
Although I had always remained motivated to pursue glamorous careers in beauty and entertainment, behind closed doors I had long feared what the 2012 wild card would bring. For a while there, I was probably on my way to becoming one of the doomsday preppers. I would spend endless hours on Amazon.com researching other member's item lists so I could plan to prepare a bug-out bag in case the shit hit the fan. I listened to Alex Jones and wondered how fast we could suddenly lose our constitutional freedoms. Watch Zeitgeist a couple of times and you can become convinced that this world is just totally messed up. Although I worried about a possible dark outcome of 2012, I allowed synchronicities to guide me towards finding a more positive side to it all.
I never put together a bug-out bag. Instead, I became inspired by continuing to discover a great network of artists and writers who offered spiritual tidbits of insights that slowly helped solve the many questions I had about life and this reality. Alex Grey's art, Alejandro Jodorowsky's films, and Daniel Pinchbeck's network through Reality Sandwich events taught me to become in touch with greater truths about the spectrum of our human existence. I continued on a magical path. I remained vigilant for little winks from the cosmos that to me, signaled that I was still on the right path. Today, I can reflect on the synchronicities that led me to discover the many creative beings who had offered me hope when I could have easily allowed myself to fall into a world of drug addiction and depression.
Although I had become addicted to self-discovery, there eventually comes a time when you have to stop seeking and start living what you've learned. I spent years bouncing around from place to place and searching for my identity. Each February, the month that my father died, I would always end up moving from wherever I was living. I grew up on Long Island, NY and after lived in NYC, Brooklyn, and LA in only five short years. I had a problem moving forward.
In the film Collapse, Michael Ruppert points out that when animals feel that they are going to die, they return home. That is exactly what I did. I returned home and began to tie up all of the loose ends I had left behind because my seeker-self was dying. As soon as I went home, my consciousness shifted. 2012 didn't have an apocalyptic feel at all anymore. I began to realize that the apocalypse had already taken place within my subconscious. That year, my only major traveling was inward. I finally discovered my voice and brought darkest feelings to light. My personal apocalypse was finally over.
Just as I learned how to release and let go of all of it all, that is when everything in my life fell into place. The saying is true. When you stop looking, all of the answers will come to you. So that is what I did. In 2011, I learned how to stop trying to control my fate and stopped looking for answers. Within a matter of weeks, my life became entirely different. One hot mid-summer day, I wore a tank top with no bra, camo shorts and flip flops. A dear friend of mine stopped by for a visit and insisted that I joined her for a drink in town. She drove me to an Argentinian restaurant. When we arrived, she told me she had someone coming by to meet me. My only reaction was to slam back a vodka and soda and head to the bathroom to curse her under my breath. Dating was the last thing on my mind. When I returned to my seat, there he was. As soon as our eyes met I knew I had finally met my other half. Less than a month later, we discovered we were pregnant. Making babies before wedding bands is a magical thing.
As I write this article, a little baby girl kicks within my belly. I can't wait to meet her this June. Today, I am happy to find that my life is still resonating along with pop culture. What a wonderful time it is to be pregnant in the world. For so long, I worried about the outcome of this year. Our collective unconscious has already survived the apocalypse. Together, we have chosen to bring new life to this planet after a tumultuous period of uncertainty. As we have all learned to let go of worry and release into the unknown, new life has begun appearing all around us. I hope that everyone feels impregnated with creativity, a sense of togetherness, and joy this year. While we have spent many years fearing the worst, we have forgotten the simplest yet most beautiful of all spiritual teachings. As Ram Dass once said, we have to learn to BE HERE NOW. I am here now in the year 2012, pregnant with a feeling of omniversal love and a positive outlook for humanity.
Image by Lars Ploughman, courtesy of Creative Commons license.
