In 2012: The Odyssey, filmmaker Sharron Rose investigates humanity’s much-heralded 2012 evolutionary turning point.
Catastrophe or ecstasy?
Rose interviews visionary scholars about 2012 as she travels across the country.
New York Times best-selling author Gregg Braden says that the end date of a Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012 signals the sun’s alignment with the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This occurs once every 26,000 years.
Earth’s magnetism reaches its lowest point at that time, says Braden. The magnetic fields will then shift 180 degrees. The North Pole will become the South Pole, and vice versa.
Braden believes that we will not experience the physical devastation or “apocalypse” that many predict.
Creating change from within
A shift is happening now within each one of us, Braden asserts. “People are truly ready for a change, for an end to the suffering.” As we make “life-affirming or life-denying choices, we’ll either experience the rapture or the ascension.” He calls it a “beautiful yet painful unfolding.”
We can align with these new energies “by living lives consciously with intent, by being kind to one another, by acts of kindness.”
In the Golden Age everyone lives by love and heart-centered values like compassion, say spiritual teachers. This replaces the world’s Iron or Patriarchal age with its emphasis on power, money and status.
Divine Feminine perspective
As 2012: The Odyssey opens, Rose decides to stop watching television news. She spends more time in nature “to think about who we are, the way we relate to the earth, and to the people around us.”
Commercialism and technology contribute to a “cultural trance,” says Rose. By breaking free of this mindset we can remember how to live an “epic life.”
From a perspective of honoring and love, Rose reveals wisdom and reverence across cultures. This documentary may be the only feature film about 2012 directed by a woman.
A window of opportunity
Braden tells Rose that “We all play a vital role in where we’re going.” According to quantum physics, “If you change your life you’ll change your body, and if you change your body you’ll change your world.”
The world around us, Braden says, is “nothing more, nothing less than a mirror of what we have become collectively from within.”
This time is “a window of opportunity,” he says. “We’ll be more of ourselves than we ever have been before, without the magnetism of the Earth holding our perceptions and our beliefs and our preconceptions and bias in place.”
Iron Age turns to Golden Age
When you align with love and service, the darkest possibilities of millennial change don’t have to happen, says Braden. Right now “we’re re-writing the code so disaster doesn’t have to occur.”
Earth’s magnetic reversal has happened “only 14 times in the last 4.5 million years,” said Braden. “Magnetic fields also act as the glue in consciousness. As the glue gets weaker, we have greater opportunities to transcend beliefs.”
You can see the new age unfolding with increasing unrest as “things not in integrity collapse upon themselves,” he says.
Post-modern world lives
Psychologist and medical anthropologist Alberto Villoldo tells Rose that “We live in a post-modern world of sustainability, of deep ecology, of great reverence for the Earth.”
The modern world, he says, was founded on “greed, on ever-increasing economies and growth, on readily renewable resources.”
We align with Divinity
“It’s really an initiation of the Western world,” says author and teacher Jose Arguelles. “The real nature of the Divine is synchronicity. It’s a metaphor for us in our limited ego states coming back into connection with our Divine, eternal selves.”
Arguelles says we “must dissolve all the old identifications and attachments about who we have to be to be successful.” He predicts we’ll experience the Noosphere or “telepathic mind of the earth” between December 2012 and December 2013.
“The human experience is the main event,” author Terence McKenna says. “I believe what is in fact going on is that we are burning our bridges one by one, freeing the mind, empowering the imagination.”
Indigo children
Rose interviews a friend named Jewel who holds her baby Armand. Armand, who will be 7 years old in 2012, smiles, shouts and looks directly into the camera. He seems to underscore each point his mother makes.
An indigo child is “a powerful, intelligent, independent child who is believed to have an important spiritual impact” according to Dictionary.com. Indigo children challenge authority, Jewel says. They are system-busters.
Deep mysteries
“The global currency of our planet is four things: earth, air, fire and water,” says Rose. The “buy now, pay later” practice has threatened the sustainability of life on Earth.
Watching 2012: The Odyssey invites you into deep mystery. It is a mystical film that “changes” every time you watch it, giving you deeper insights and perspectives.
More adventures
Producer and author Jay Weidner speaks about alchemy, masons and the great Gothic cathedrals throughout Europe. Traveling Incan elders pray and share a message.
Rose visits the Georgia Guidestones (known as the “American Stonehenge,”) and reads the message left by the mysterious R.C. Christian in modern and ancient languages.
“Avoid petty laws and useless officials,” it says in part. “Balance personal rights with social duties.” “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.”
Both McKenna and Arguelles have died since this film was made. The teachings of McKenna, Arguelles and others interviewed are posted online.
The Odyssey continues
Rose is the author of The Path of the Priestess and a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in World Mythology, Religion, and the Sacred Arts of Dance, Music and Theater.
Film represents “the dance of light” in our times, Rose says. (4 out of 5 stars)
If you like 2012: The Odyssey, you might enjoy: 2012: Time for Change; Thrive; Timewave 2013: The Future is Now.
2012: The Odyssey / 2007 / NR / 1 hour, 39 min
Cast Overview: Jose Arguelles, Gregg Braden, John Major Jenkins, Terence McKenna, Sharron Rose, Geoff Stray, Moira Timms, Alberto Villoldo, Jay Weidner
Director: Sharron Rose
Genres: Documentary