From the perspective of being the manager at a spiritual bookstore witnessing the New Age 2012 craze at ground zero in West Los Angeles, I feel it incumbent to take the opportunity to lay out some observations regarding this period in time because all too often, I meet people like this:


Hello and Namasté dear New Agers,

Well... Here we are.
Dec 21st, 2012 has come and gone.

Are you "enlightened" yet?
Was there a "global awakening"?
Are you still in a human suit, marooned in Monkey Land, where governments kill, steal, and oppress? Where cultures distract and ensnare you with lies and myths to coerce your obedience through empty promises, convolution, illusory Left/Right paradigms, and fear?

Yep.

So, do you realize what it means?
It means these MANY YEARS of flashy "You Create Your Own Reality" and New Age marketing leading up to the "Awakening/ Ascension of 2012″ was a MANUFACTURED LIE. The planets were never going to "align" and there was never going to be a worldwide global enlightenment on Dec 21, 2012.
"Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretence. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true."

~ Adyashanti
Sorry to "harsh your vibe" or "lower your frequency", but the fact is that you've been lulled in to a sweet dream, away from reality. The reality that awaits you is the result of generations of people who chose to cling to comfortable ideologies (religious and political) that DIDN'T have the fortitude to see beyond their programming.
"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves."

~ T.S. Elliot
Like so much propaganda throughout history, people were AGAIN emotionally hypnotized and pacified by vague notions of "hope" and "change" while their futures are swindled by the Military Industrial Complex, Wall Street, corporate mainstream media, and Puppet Governments. To further suppress critical thinking, people were sold the illusion of Enlightenment by "Thinking with your heart", focusing on "positive"/feel-good things, and "Not giving your attention to 'negative' things". All the while, criminal oligarchies have made the most drastic power-grabs perhaps in all history (Corporate Personhood, Codex Alimentarius, Wall Street Bailouts, Indefinite Detention, and the list horrifically goes on) since the implementation of Centralized Banking.

2012
© Unknown
In a very real sense it IS the end of the world, because while you were "following your bliss" and ignoring the "negative" things, you passively enabled the complete control of society by psychopaths. There is no more democracy, no free and open scientific inquiry, no justice, no countries, no government - only corporate media manipulation and unfettered financial plunder by private interests that control all levels of government and society. And through their influence, the "New Age" culture was steered to disguise vain hedonism as "creativity", narcissism disguised as "self-empowerment", and superficial, pacifying Make Nice Programs disguised as "bliss" and "spirituality". You were tricked in to being the perfect, obedient, oblivious, distracted consumers so that your future and the future of your children could be stolen from right under your nose while blocking out all the "negative people" who tried to warn you with those pesky facts.
"People convince themselves of their own lies, becoming victims of their own inventions as they begin to direct their lives by standards of behavior, ideas, feelings, or instincts which do not correspond to their inner reality. What is truly serious in this matter is that the individual loses all points of reference regarding what comprises truth, and what comprises lies. He becomes used to considering as true only that which is convenient for his personal interests; everything that is in opposition to his self-esteem or in conflict with already established prejudices, he considers false."

~ John Baines
And now, dear New Ager, the much idolized 2012 has vanished much like a bad date who seduced you with alluring rhetoric, empty promises, and cheap flattery, now no more than an embarrassing stain on the mattress. You fell for it again...

Just like Santa Claus, Religion, Nationalism, the Return of Jesus, and the "savior" Obama, it was just another disappointment in a laundry list of false saviors that promised to give you everything you were brainwashed to crave. It's about time you faced the objective facts, dear. Your mind has contracted yet another STD (Socially Transmitted Delusion)- 2012.
2012 Conference
© Unknown
Who gave it to you? Daniel Pinchbeck? Gregg Braden? Richard Hoagland? David Wilcock? José Argüelles? John Major Jenkins? Drunvalo Melchizedek? Doreen Virtue? Barbara Hand Clow? Giorgio Tsoukalos (the big haired guy from the spurious show "Ancient Aliens")? Lawrence Joseph? Terence McKenna? Or was it that emotional orgy of unquestioned wishful belief, pseudoscientific word salad, and a lot of partying at Burning Man & Lightning in a Bottle?

Don't be embarrassed. Seeking Obective Truth is a process that requires sifting through a lot of B.S., within and without, and everybody stumbles a bit.

After your latest binge of cultural intoxication to avoid anything "negative" that "lowers your frequency", you're perhaps still clinging to the "Insta-Enlightenment" afterglow, trying to save face by stringing along further speculation with lies and logical fallacies. You may be trying to defend the years of delusional nonsense that your worldview revolved around with vague Deepak Chopra-esque "quantum" terminology and New Age pseudospiritual "feel-good" over-generalizations that allow you to avoid the cognitive dissonance which comes from your subjective illusions falling to the inevitable confrontation with objective reality.

But in the months to come, as the days fall off the calendar, and you realize that nothing has really changed, the afterglow of New Age hype will begin to decay away like every other social illusion that has come before it. Most, if not all, of the New Age hipsters of today will silently fizzle out as a cowardly parody of the hippie generation- clouded in the same wishful thinking, lacking fundamental human knowledge of cognitive psychology, lacking any lasting foundation of sincere esoteric, spiritual self-work, yet without the social virtue of their predecessors- not having taken a massive, unified stand against the wars and social injustices of its era.

"We're very much grounded within the counter culture of the 1960s of which this festival is indeed a legacy and an extension historically, and talk to you about some of... I don't really want to talk to you about the similarities because you know what the similarities are...the similarities are mainly cosmetic. And there are some other philosophical similarities which I'll discuss but one of the things that I'd like to talk with you about are some of the differences.

In the 1960s, the counter cultural movement had at its core, we have the music yes, we had the drugs which was not in all ways a high side of it. There was the music, there was a definite sense of counter culture, there was a definite repudiation of certain values which people deemed to be obsolete and unsustainable. But it bears noting that there was also at it's core the repudiation of a war and ultimately the ending of a war, which means that the counter culture at that time was making a serious stand against something new on the planet; something horrible on the planet called "American military domination of anything it cared to dominate". And that gave a moral authority to the counter culture of the 1960s...

[...]

Dream and I were having an interesting conversation... we were talking about this festival and she said people "just wanted to be in the light for a few days"...But I say to you as your sister, as your spiritual companion, embedded in the principles of "A Course in Miracles" and in my own spiritual search, but I know that there is only one truth spoken in many different ways...There is a difference between transcendence and denial...and if the consciousness that brings you to a festival like this, is one in which we feel- as Americans, as men, as women, as citizens of the planet- that we can be here, that this can be anything with true gravitas or moral authority and we are forgetting the fact that our country has turned into a permanent war machine, then there is something very sad about this festival rather than happy for me.

[...]

And the fact that collectively, not in terms of our hearts, our hearts are good, and I know that the heart that draws us to a place like this today is good, but we have to ask ourselves at what point, whether you're in therapy or your at a festival like this, at what point do you stand in that place which is not comfortable, do you stand in that place which is not comfortable and not turn away? Because if a counter cultural movement, such as this - at least externally - represents here today, is one, I asked earlier, I said "Hmm. Is there anything political going on here today?" and I was told "No, these are just people who are ready to transcend." And let be very clear once again about that difference between transcendence and denial because if the counter cultural movement in 2011 is one in which it is deemed for whatever reason acceptable to look away from the fact that tremendous amounts of unnecessary human suffering occur on this planet and in this country for no other reason than that so a relatively few people on this planet and in this country can have all the money they want. That is not service, it is NOT counter cultural, it is the the epitome of being co-opted by the very culture that we seek to counter.

Now you might say to me "What do you want us to do?" I don't know what your supposed to do... None of my business what your supposed to do. But I'm asking you as Jesus said to the disciples the night before the crucification in the garden of Gethsemane, "Please do not go to sleep. Do not go to sleep in the hour of my agony. Remain awake!"...That's what they do to you. They put you to sleep! The system would love this festival! The system would love this festival because its not saying "Fuck you!" to anybody. And there's a sense that that is somehow spiritual. There's a sense that that is somehow spiritual.

If there was a starving child here...somebody tell me... if there was a child here or if anyone- god forbid- let's just talk about our deep humanity... Let's say right here right now- god forbid- somebody, uh, had a heart attack or something. Well the fact that I'm speaking up here would be irrelevant. Somebody would yell out say, "Is there a doctor here?" We would all get deeply human very quickly wouldn't we? Are you with me? Now this is an interesting thing about our country, if you look and see, I always say that if I'm if I'm on an airplane somewhere, anywhere in the world... I love to sit next to an American ...I... characterologically we're cool people and we care. We're not, you know... We're human beings and there's a spunkiness and it's a coolness. But our collective capacity for denial and grandiosity is frightening and perilous...."

~ Marianne Williamson
One day (if cyclical cosmic dynamics don't relegate humanity back to the dark ages or extinction), some time after the bong resin and body glitter clear out from your system, you may humbly come to admit that you were duped. You may stop trying to identify yourself with social trends and see through the program you've been brainwashed by. You may stop lazily rationalizing the propagation of disinformation (through New Age ideologies, pseudoscience, politics, etc.) as "part of the process because we all have to start somewhere" and instead realize the importance of discernment, integrity, objectivity, and upholding the standards of critical thinking, even when those closest to you fall away for not supporting their lies as you used to. Then, when you are sincere and brave enough to do this, you may be ready to birth yourself in to the light of True Being.
"According to the Great Work, a friend is one in which you support and encourage the others expansion in either the mind or the spirit.Otherwise they are people you are sentimentally attached to it because they would eat cinnamon bun with you. And they will say 'hee, hee, hee' aren't we having fun". Drug addicts do the same thing. Drug addicts want to be around people who will support them and be away from real friends. Do you know why? Because it feels good. To be a member of a mystery school can be catastrophic to the ego and to the ego's habits and to the propensity for mediocrity. No one ever cried striving for excellence. They only cried when their mediocrity was taken away from them and pointed out to them."

~ Jerhoam
When this moment dawns, you'll realize that subscribing to ideologies (especially ones advocated through mainstream media, which should have been your first clue...) without extensive critical analysis based upon the Trivium, objective research, and personal healing through a healthy diet, catharsis, and knowledge of fundamental human psychology will only lead to more "STD"s. You'll realize that your world view, your relationships, and your identity were and are based on lies and feeding mechanisms. You'll realize that for the sake of your health and the health of the world (if you are, in fact, sincere about gaining knowledge, spreading awareness, and healing through Truth) that it's time to stop living life directed by "what feels good" according to social conditioning and, instead, do what's NEEDED, finding fulfillment in the knowledge of an objectively factual path to enlightenment which truly uplifts oneself and the world.

Humanity may not be undergoing a "collective awakening" on Dec 21st, 2012, but the necessity to awaken is as imperative as ever. Be sure to pay attention and learn.

I urge you to take the time and watch the following video, made by Bernhard Guenther and I, which sheds light into the nature of love, relationships, the "New Age" movement, reality-creation, quantum physics, objectivity vs. subjectivity and how it all relates to the topics of "conspiracy theories", psychopathy, and the importance of esoteric self-work.