Have you been wondering about 2012? What’s happening in 2012 that everyone keeps whispering about? Here’s the answer: the world is coming to an end shortly. 
You’ve heard that, right? December 21st, 2012 some ancient calendars (Mayan, Incan, others we’ve never heard of) all come to a crashing halt, leading highly-paid predictors of these things to state that the world is going to follow. Now, my personal opinion (and I’m pretty spiritual these days, so I should know) is that the world, to misquote REM, is coming to an end as we know it—and I feel fine.
If anything actually happens, it will be more of an internal shift in our consciousness and less cataclysmic earthquakes, brimstone and such. We have, after all, entered the new age, the Age of Aquarius, and it’s been quite a long time since anyone was around for this kind of cosmic shift in planetary alignments, so we’re really not sure what to expect.
Speaking of which, there is another that come up before then, which has (depending on who you talk to) either tremendous spiritual significance or absolutely none at all. Funnily enough, it’s the humans who believe in the spiritual meaning; the actual spiritual entities I am in contact with point out that the Gregorian calendar is both imprecise and a relatively recent institution, making it accurate to within around fifty years. The date is 12/12/12, the last number in the repeating series we’ve been experiencing for the past dozen years. This is on top of 12/21/12, its near twin, when we will either experience a date of strong planetary alignment or the apocalypse. In other words, if we make it past Christmas, we’re golden.
- Sailing the Nile
For both of these dates, and almost the entire month of December, I will be in Egypt, sailing down the Nile with a small band of intrepid travelers who are smart enough to avoid the drum beats of recent “sky is falling” news from the Land of Khmet. If the world is going to come to an end, better that I be in a place where the Great Pyramid has stood for at least the last 6 millennia, where ancient Pharaohs to modern farmers all could sense something striking and beautiful in the land, a peculiar rhythm that thrums under everything like a heartbeat. I feel lighter in Egypt, more grounded and ready to take on any new challenge, even the end of the world as we know it.
The best news for me is that Egypt is nearly empty right now; abandoned by the millions of American and even many of the foreign tourists who usually visit; they have all been frightened away. So our group will have all the wonderful ancient sites to ourselves — the Valley of the Kings, the famous temples of Luxor and Philae — plus the freedom to do our spiritual ceremonies uninterrupted by the whirring of camera shutters and guides droning in multiple languages to their groups. We will have the Nile to ourselves, with our views of its timeless banks unobstructed by the cruise ships that normally fly past us on their way to keep their busy schedules.
- The Temple of Isis at Philae
We will sit on our private dahabeya(a smaller luxury cruiser), enjoying our own chef and our beautifully appointed staterooms, and discuss how lucky we are and how silly the world is. Then we will get off our ship to experience yet another of the world’s most incredible sacred sites. Who knows? If the world should come to an end on one of those days, perhaps we won’t even notice. We will already have floated off into infinity, protected by the ancient souls that lived, breathed, and walked in Egypt long before we ever landed on its now-vacant sand.