The Great Shift Has Begun

The message that came to my heart for all of us to receive, dear sisters and brothers, is that it is time. The moment we have been waiting for, preparing for, has come. The Great Shift has begun … a shift from sectarian self-interest to global awareness … a shift from dogmatic beliefs to spiritual experience … a shift from religious entertainment to divine empowerment … a shift from false individual salvation to true collective enlightenment.

And this Great Shift will increase and expand until it culminates on the Winter Solstice of 2012, after which there will begin a great opportunity for Global Awakening in 2013 and beyond. It is not that every person will become enlightened at that time, but that enough of us will — enough to re-direct the course of history to come — toward a planetary awareness of our Oneness, toward a Global Awakening to universal wisdom, love and true power.

These next six years are our opportunity to prepare ourselves and our world for this Global Awakening. These next six years are like the six years of Siddhartha Gautama's search for the transformation of suffering at age 29, culminating in his becoming the Buddha, the Enlightened One, at age 35 — on a global scale. These next six years are like the symbolic Six Days of Creation culminating in the Sabbath of rest, but this time as a New Creation culminating in the Great Work of planetary transformation.

Every religion, every spiritual path, is being called now to align itself with the Great Shift, to support this Global Awakening. There is much in every religion that must be shed during the Great Shift. Every spiritual path worth being called a spiritual path is invited now to find the core essence of its gift to the world and let that shine without the obscurations of what is not its core essence.

This admonition is loving but firm. Any religion or spiritual path which chooses merely to make superficial, cosmetic changes to its outer presentation, rather than to do the deep inner work of total transformation, will share a similar fate with those who find themselves re-arranging furniture on a sinking ship. What is called for now is not mere religious reform, but true transformation, a radical and revolutionary shift in spiritual consciousness.

There will be some who will distort the significance of 2012. These are ones who will take the ray of Revelation that they stumble upon and refract it through a narrow, limited and unrefined mind, bringing interpretations of doom, disaster and damnation. Literalism, fundamentalism and extremism have no place in this Revelation. The purity, the truth of this Revelation is available to everyone, but it needs to be received by minds and hearts purified through meditation, consistent spiritual practice and communal harmony. Otherwise, instead of a message of an inner revolution, what we will hear of are forecasts of outer calamity, cataclysm and chaos which are not at all the main import of this Revelation. This is a spiritual wake-up call, not a prophecy of the end of the world. Yes, there will be strange and dramatic events occurring in Nature, and they will increase in frequency, but they are only signs of Earth's compassion toward us, urging us to pay attention to what is really going on in our world right now. The signs are all around us, and Gaia will continue to help us shift our priorities.

There are, symbolically, twelve main spiritual Paths which are available to us now to follow, practice and support (the number twelve is a biblical allusion and is symbolic of "unity-in-diversity"). It is time to find one of the main Paths and align ourselves with it fully and deeply, completely committed to the One Path of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. And we must not presume that we are really practicing a Path simply because we attend church, synagogue or temple for an hour once a week. We must not think that sitting in a restaurant, singing songs about the menu, listening to sermons about the cuisine, and engaging in nice small talk with the wait staff is at all the same as eating the food there and truly and deeply receiving its nourishment.

The time for religious window-shopping and spiritual dabbling is coming to a close. The time of following lesser sub-paths is no longer appropriate. This is the time for listening deeply to the Heart and finding one of the main true spiritual paths and devoting ourselves fully to that practice. It is time to open our eyes to the genuine teachers and paths that are truly available and deserving of devotion and support. We are to leave behind forever our obsession with those lesser teachers and sub-paths which now will only distract us from the Great Shift and Global Awakening that are at hand before us.

How will we know which teacher and path to follow, you ask? It is not for me or anyone else to tell you who and what to follow. Your heart will guide you if only you will truly and deeply honor the truth of your own Heart. Any genuine teacher and path would tell you the same. And if they do not, then have you cause to doubt their genuineness and purity.

Listen, listen. Brothers and sisters of every religion, if we seek within our heart, we will surely hear the Voice of Divine guidance. There is a message from Heaven for each religion. Let us not allow it to go unheard. Within the essential messages, myths, metaphors and meanings of the world's sacred scriptures are the six or seven essential practices we are to study, follow and share, as we prepare in this Great Shift for the Global Awakening. Since Buddhism will be playing one of the major roles in this Global Awakening, we have been offered the "Six Paramitas" from that tradition as an example (Generosity, Discipline, Forbearance, Energy, Meditation, and Wisdom). However, it is up to those in each religion to listen to Heaven's Voice within the Heart and to find for themselves what are the six or seven practices in their own tradition for just such a time as this.