For years leading up to 2012, spiritual-types who were sick of the way the world was heading could take comfort in the promise of a new era that was predicted to begin on December 21 of that year. The Mayans, known for their astronomical expertise had supposedly predicted it. In addition, St. Malachy’s famous Prophesy of the Popes, which predicts when the world as we know it would end, also correlates to about the same time period. The Hopi tribe, Edgar Cayce, a book attributed to Nostradamus, hell, even The History Channel’s countless specials all pointed towards 12/21/12 as the beginning of the end times. The details differed, but whether you believed that Earth was due for a major cataclysm, a spiritual awakening, a religious reckoning and rapture, an alien visitation, a new dimension, or just an enlightened age, most people seemed somewhat excited that a major event was on the horizon. When the day finally arrived, we instead got something that came as a shock to many: absolutely nothing. Or so it would seem.

As skeptics, atheists, and agnostics gleefully like to point out, people have been predicting the end of the world since the beginning of recorded history and probably much longer. The reason is because for most people, life is hard, the world seems unfair, and a lot of us would like to see a major change which we presume would benefit the good, hardworking people, that we take ourselves to be.

To paraphrase a friend who wrote to me back in January 2013, our government seems as corrupt as ever, corporations are just as greedy, and the masses are still shallow, entitled, and fairly unconscious. Add to this the dreadful economy, our crumbling infrastructure, the disappearing middle class and the widening gap between the have and have-nots and you have the correct zeitgeist for a world wishing for an end to how things are.

While even in my lifetime I’ve heard quite a few end-times and world-cataclysm rants before, this time, something seemed different. The predictions seemed to correlate from so many different cultures and time periods. And the end-times date had become so well known, it was already a cliché. At the very least, with so many people believing that something was going to happen on December 21, 2012, wouldn’t that at least bring about a self-fulfilling prophesy? And yet, the day came and went without so much as even a chicken nugget shaped like Jesus Christ.

It’s been over a year since the great day of nothing, and many of us are left wondering, “What now?” So, is this it? Life is just going to be a constant struggle with things continuing to get worse and worse for the average person…with no hope of anything changing? I agree that life gets harder. I think the reason is because most of us get stronger as we get older and so it takes more and more to challenge us so that we can grow.

The same is true for society as a whole. In the days of ancient Egypt, a drought almost brought the entire civilization to an end. Today, it wouldn’t affect us that much. But our climate challenges now are on a much more global scale and do affect us. Even though the challenge is far greater, because we are now stronger the level of difficulty is the same—a bit more than we are equipped to handle. Still, it is up to us to decide whether we suffer from these challenges or use them to grow. As we grow there is less and less that can take us out. So there is hope that things will be changing. At the very least, we are.

In fact, it seems to be a rule of our world that the only constant is change, that change always seems to get increasingly harder, and things that are harder either kill us or make us stronger. For the most part, humanity has gotten stronger from our constant barrage of challenges. So instead of seeing the future as a place where things will only get worse, we have the choice to see it as a place where we’ll all be stronger and more evolved. In addition, I think that humanity has overall become more tolerant, enlightened, understanding, open, educated, and forgiving, and less violent, aggressive, and selfish. And I see no reason for that trend to discontinue. Have we also become more egotistical, shallow, lazy, materialistic, rushed, and frazzled? Probably, but I expect that all those traits are a result of temporary growing pains and will eventually lessen with time.

Another thing we’ve become is impatient, and unfortunately, we may not live to see the aforementioned personality changes let alone the great enlightenment that 2012 promised. While I too had hoped for some kind of massive event or sign that would force us to grow, my happiness wasn’t contingent on something occurring on that day, or any day for that matter. I do my best not to have expectations about anything since, if there’s anything that life has taught me, things rarely work out like you think they will. In this case, the massive, sweeping change that many had expected has seemingly brought us something else. Something that is difficult for many to see because we’re too close to see it: the slow transition into a new age.

Much like entering a new level of a video game, entering a new age isn’t necessarily immediately apparent. There may be little changes going on that most of us aren’t noticing because they are happening very slowly. One of these changes is how time seems to be gradually speeding up. I had predicted (http://thelaymansanswerstoeverything.com/?p=2053) that time would feel incredibly fast the week leading up to 2012 and for me, it did, and has continued to feel even faster ever since, which I did not predict. I thought it was going to begin slowing down after reaching a peak that we apparently haven’t hit yet.

Since time is an illusion, it could be speeding towards one eternal moment, which is the true reality. Once there, we could begin to learn to have experiences in the various dimensions of space, but all during one moment. The fact that this is hard for us to comprehend is probably why it hasn’t happened yet. But once you live it, it would probably be easy to understand. Try explaining a multi-player online game to someone just a couple hundred years ago. Or even fifty years ago. Or even, your parents.

If you aren’t feeling time speeding up or just equate it to growing older, there still may be other aspects of your life since December 21, 2012 where you’ve noticed strange happenings. Take dreams for example. On Dec 22, 2012, I had a dream where I saw myself as a child walking with my parents in the 1970s. This was very usual for me since I can't recall ever having a dream that’s taken place in my past. I approached my parents in the dream and told them I was their son from the future. I then took out my business cards that feature photos from when I was a kid (this is true in my waking life) to prove it. When I awoke, I called my dad and asked if he ever had an experience—in a dream or real life back when I was little—where someone had approached him claiming to be me from the future. He didn’t recall but said he rarely remembers his dreams, so who knows? I could’ve traveled back and connected with his dream from 30-something years ago!

An even more bizarre incident happened in January of 2013. I’d woken up early and wasn’t sure if my alarm had gone off yet or not. I didn’t feel like putting on my glasses to check the clock but recalled that the alarm had gone off because I remembered The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” was playing on my clock alarm. So, I decided to go back to sleep, figuring that I must’ve hit snooze and the alarm would go off again in a few minutes. But I don’t think it did. It went off awhile later—and it was my initial alarm, set for 8:15am. And the song was The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.” Shivers.

And all this was just a few weeks past the end times date. Since then, the experiences have become even more bizarre and the coincidences more serendipitous. Seeing shadowy figures out of the corner of my eye, my baby daughter’s mobile suddenly starting to play music by itself, the same number—108, continuing to pop up over and over again. 108 is a number considered sacred by many Eastern religions and it’s a multiple of 18, which gematrially represents “life” in Judaism. It’s also the combination of the sequence of mysterious numbers that always seemed to pop up on Lost.

Despite the lack of cataclysms, messianic returns, or alien visitations, I believe that we are now in a new reality—one where the veil between our illusionary world and the real world is thinning. In reality, there is only one moment, we are all connected, and our thoughts directly influence our experience. And as our experience of time becomes quicker and quicker, our thoughts and the events they create will begin happening closer and closer to one another, until their connection is obvious. But again, despite our impatient collective consciousness, this could happen over a period of many years or longer.

The Mayan k’atun, or time period, that we’ve just entered lasts about 20 years—until 2032— so we may have awhile yet to realize the full implications of this new time. There are also many who believe that the Great Pyramid of Giza is actually a gigantic calendar, whose passages and chambers combine to form a prophesy of events to come. The various passages were constructed according to a chronological scale of a geometric inch to one year, so every inch you move represents one year forward. While considered a pseudo-science, this correlation between measurements and time has come to be known as pyramidology. And according to its findings, the final date symbolically depicted within the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid is 2033. So perhaps the period we’re in now, possibly beginning in 2012 or even earlier, is sort of a transitional period. One where we will slowly be introduced to this enlightened age with effects that won’t be fully apparent for another twenty years.

I can hear the sarcasm of the skeptics now, “Sure, nothing happened in 2012, but that’s only because it was supposed to happen in 2033 all along…and when nothing happens then, you’ll just push it forward another 20 years.” But has nothing really happened? Hell, lower Manhattan was underwater right around this time. That was a pretty big deal even if you don’t live anywhere near NYC—hell, it shut down the stock market which affects the world economy. Hurricane Sandy crippled the tri-state area, and while it wasn’t anywhere near a catastrophe nearing doomsday proportions, I do think it holds clues about what our future may hold. And I’m not talking about clues about climate change.

Some of the things I was hoping for on and around Dec 2012 were signs of things to come. I believe that these signs don’t come from God or spirit, but from ourselves. They are the energy signatures of our collective thoughts that bleed through time much like the loud parts of a song on a 90 minute cassette tape. (For those that aren’t old enough to know what I’m talking about, listen to Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” which owes its echoing middle-section to this effect.) Since I’ve already devoted an entire article (http://thelaymansanswerstoeverything.com/?p=2086) to explaining this phenomenon, I’m not going to get into the mechanics here, but rather, the clues since there have been more since that article was posted.

The current series of clues all began with the July 20, 2012 Century movie theater shooting in Aurora, CO during the Dark Knight Rises film. Was it just a coincidence that the theater was named “Century” and the town was Aurora? "Aurora" are the lights that appear above our world. This contrasts to Dark Knight. So the message is about the contrast or battle between light and dark, and “century” is a clue that the message correlates to a major time milestone. The battle between light and dark happens most notably on the solstices and equinoxes when the balance between these two forces change.

Aurora is also the Roman goddess of the dawn, signifying that this message is about a new age. Put it together and the event is a message about the coming of a new age that begins during a major time milestone on a solstice or equinox, i.e., December 21, 2012. Just as conscious thoughts and emotions manifest as archetypes and symbols in our dreams, so too do the emotionally-charged messages from our future conscious minds appear to us in our illusionary present.

After the Aurora shooting, we had a series of devastating events—a hurricane named Sandy (Oct, 2012), a shooting in Sandy Hook (Dec 2012), and a bombing in Watertown, MA (April, 2013). As I explained in more detail in the previously mentioned article, (http://thelaymansanswerstoeverything.com/?p=2086) "Sandy" relates to "sand" or "earth." It is a Greek name, meaning protector or defender of man. As explained in other articles (http://thelaymansanswerstoeverything.com/?p=1521) , when the clues found in different movies or events share common links, it means they connect in some way. The Watertown bombing happened during the Boston Marathon, and marathons got their start in Greece. This connects to the two Sandy events. Can it connect to the Aurora shooting as well?

To read the rest of this article and find out more about how Hurricane Sandy, the Aurora movie theater shootings, The Boston Marathon bombing, and the Sandy Hook shootings, all provide clues about our future, click here: http://thelaymansanswerstoeverything.com/?p=2497

Author's Bio: 

Marc Oromaner is a spiritual author and speaker who teaches how we can discover our destiny using clues found in the media and in our lives. His book, "The Myth of Lost" (www.themythoflost.com) deciphers the hidden wisdom of the hit TV show and explains how we can use this wisdom to overcome our own challenges.

Marc's twenty years of experience working in advertising and promotion has given him a unique insight into what makes products--and people--tick. He graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Television & Radio and went on to complete a two-year advertising copywriter program at The Creative Circus in Atlanta. Working in on-air promotions at Lifetime Television and CBS News, and then in advertising with clients such as NASA, The New York Botanical Garden, and Affinia Hotels, Marc developed a talent for uncovering the soul of a brand. This skill was sharpened after he began studying at The Kabbalah Centre in New York and exploring many other spiritual philosophies including The Law of Attraction.

Today, Marc lives in New York City where he combines his background in advertising and spirituality to help people and brands find their path in an increasingly convoluted world. His blog, "The Layman's Answers To Everything" (http://thelaymansanswerstoeverything.com/) points out the patterns that run through all great stories including our own. These patterns are clues which are meant to guide us towards a life full of love, light, and fulfillment.