What is the significance of the Dec. 21, 2012 date in the Mayan calendar, or your intuitive sense of it as a Mayan priest. There was a program about it on the History channel, referring to the Doomsday in several cultures coinciding on this date. Is this a passage into a new way of life, rather than an end? What can you tell people about this fast-approaching date?

Nothing is going to happen in 2012. There is no Mayan prophecy about 2012. In addition to the Chol Qij the Mayans have various other calendar counts of lesser mantic importance. One of these is the Long Count, which is a continuous count in days since August 9th, 3114 BCE. The Long Count will reset to zero-zero-zero-zero-zero on December 21, 2012. But this is just a major calendar change – their equivalent of Y2K – with no more spiritual significance than the change of millenium had for us. This 2012 thing is being touted by some non-Mayans as a kind of New Age version of the Rapture: a miraculous transformation of human consciousness which sweeps humanity up into the clouds to escape the coming tribulation. But things don’t happen that way in real life. If there is a fundamental transformation in human consciousness, the way it will probably occur is that the environment and civilization will deteriorate over the next few decades. And then people will draw together and open their hearts to one another, as they do in the face of any natural catastrophe such as an earthquake or flood. When people lose their faith in the system and start listening to their own hearts is when the system will change.