2012: Crossing the Bridge to the Future is an engaging personal narrative through Mark Borax’s apprenticeship with master astrologer William Lonsdale, who teaches him how to access a source of great power and creativity buried within the human soul.
2012 begins in August 1987 on the slopes of Mount Shasta as author Mark Borax witnesses the Harmonic Convergence. This famous astrological event sparked a 25-year countdown to 2012, the year that marks the “end of history” in the Mayan calendar. Borax tells of his apprenticeship with a master astrologer to study how the period between 1987 and 2012 can be used for a cosmic purging of negativity to release humanity’s core forces and restore universal balance. Borax and his fellow students discover truths about life after death, karma, reincarnation, past lives, human evolution, and the purpose of existence on Earth.
The following interview with Mark Borax gives an inside look into what inspired him to write 2012, how he became interested in astrology, who his mentors were and how they shaped his life, and what he hopes readers will learn from reading 2012.
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2012 is a unique title that holds appeal for different kinds of readers. Which audiences do you think respond most to the book? What will readers find?
I’m surprised by the diversity of responses I’ve received from readers since the book came out last month. I’m hearing from people in all walks of life, each of whom seem to find something different in the book. It’s quite striking—they might almost be describing twenty different books! Stockbrokers, artists, photographers, astrologers, people in the deep South, in the country, or in big cities, old and young, living many different lives in many different countries are emailing to tell me how the book is changing their lives. Many of them are folks who don’t necessarily know much about astrology or metaphysics, but are open to new ideas. People all over are responding excitedly to the book’s message of hope, to the main theme of our need to become fully embodied and fully human before transcending our humanity and departing the material world for higher planes. It’s very satisfying to me as author to see that my struggle to bring cosmic principles down to earth seems to be working.
What is the significance of the year 2012? What does it mean for different cultures and religions?
The Maya view 2012 as the coming of a new Sun, which marks the start of a whole new cycle of time-keeping. I think time is of the essence here. I haven’t studied the prophecies of all the different cultures, because my book presents a very here-and-now personal human being’s journey through these mysteries. Nevertheless, I believe we’re all being offered a new way to think about time, to conceive time, to use time, that isn’t so limiting. For our culture and many others who live in the present, the present is becoming more than the present. Obsolete ideas about how to use our lives, and about how life itself flows, how earth moves through time and space, are going to give way to radical new forms of perception.
Ultimately I see 2012 as a vital choice point in human evolution. We’re all being asked to find a life that honors our innermost truth, rather than living life at the expense of our inner truth. It comes down to asking yourself: What world am I creating with my thought forms and acts? Is it the world I truly dream of, or am I settling for less? What the hell am I doing with my life? Instead of being hamstrung by the dominant paradigm, can I dream some new dream here, and get to work on it, recruiting others who see similarly?
You are an astrologer by trade. Are there specific planetary events and physical hallmarks that will mark 2012? How is the universe preparing for this transition?
In March of 2010 the transcendent planets Alpha-Omega (Chiron) and Neptune come together in late Aquarius, a strong harbinger of the Aquarian Age. The Aquarian Age is where the slumbering consciousness of the collective awakens and realizes it has power to change things, power to redirect civilization along more enlightened lines. Alpha-Omega unbinds time and ushers multi-dimensional awareness into the normal perception of linear events. Neptune stretches the personal human ego to become more in service of collective evolution. When these planets conjoin in Aquarius, the low ceiling on species awareness that keeps us going around in circles is raised. High dreams flood into our normal consciousness.
Suddenly we’re aware of more than we used to be. Our vision of what we’re capable of as a mass organism expands, and this is very contagious. The more people band together to challenge the status quo, the more support we each get from the awakening Aquarian force of the collective.
Then, in 2011, Neptune enters Pisces, sounding a great collective cry for the human being to take its rightful place in the unfoldment of world policies and events. The machine-like existence that has replaced human beings in recent centuries will be challenged by the deeper need to speak up from the soul and be heard. This Cry for True Belonging will no longer be content to be swept under the rug, but will seek out its true place in the role of world policies.
Finally, at Winter Solstice 2012 a yod is formed with Jupiter at the point. A yod occurs when two planets, 60 degrees apart, each form a long pointer toward a third planet which is 150 degrees from both of them. Yod means “Finger of God,” and is the word for the pointer Jewish scholars use when studying the Sacred Texts. In this yod, Jupiter (Species Awareness) is hurtling into fresh territories of seeing and being that serve the living future, while Saturn and Pluto yank back hard, reminding us of everything in the way of change. This will create a powerful wrestling match between those visionaries who know the world is changing and all those who say it can’t be done. Evolutionary forces will wrestle with ego.
The purpose of these three planetary timings, in 2010, 2011, and 2012 is to create a three-stage upending of our limited assumptions of normality, and usher in a more optimal future. At the same time our species stretches toward inhabiting its higher consciousness, the low end of humanity will cry out for belongingness in a world that’s becoming very isolated from its own heart force. This drama of species alienation and isolation is going to play out to its fullest before giving way to something new. It won’t come easy, though. There’s always a price to pay. We have to be willing to sacrifice who we think we are, in order to become who we really are. We have to challenge our own assumptions. Most of all we have to get past archaic belief systems that pit this against that, you against me, all things divided up in opposition against all other things. The next five years will be a very juicy, frictional, and potent period on Planet Earth!
How do you interpret and understand the meaning of 2012? What does the bridge to the future look like?
In 1987 when I witnessed the Harmonic Convergence, I learned of the twenty-five year purging period from then to 2012. In order to bridge our time to the post-2012 future, we’re being asked to clear everything in the way of Truth. We have to purify. We have to be bold enough to face our fears and develop a heart-centered, mystical and very real way to care about this world we live in. Let’s face it—very few of us are living the lives we were born to. To usher in the optimal future for humanity, which awaits us on the other side of 2012, we must confront ourselves rigorously and get out of our own ways. I mean, what are we all doing here anyway, spinning our wheels, making money at the expense of the soul? How has humanity gotten stuck like a dinosaur in such a tar pit? Isn’t there a whole other way to be that uplifts the soul toward the rapture of being? To create a bridge to this future, we have to overcome deep set feelings of helplessness, underlying depression at not being able to live a life that matters. We have to get past our clinging to the idea that someone somewhere is better than someone somewhere else. We have to bust through the Trance of Normalcy that each day leeches soul force out of us, that leaves us drained and numb at the end of the work week.
What began your apprenticeship with Ellias Lonsdale? What about this teacher encouraged you to follow through with the entire apprenticeship?
In 1979 in Ashland, Oregon, for my twenty-fifth birthday a girlfriend got me a surprise astrology reading with a female astrologer who blew me away with the truth of her perceptions, and made me take a deep long look at the ancient art of astrology. In 1984, a later girlfriend, in Burlington, Vermont (called “Elizabeth” in the book) gave me my first astrology book, for my thirtieth birthday, which I studied for four years. At the end of that time my friend Susan (called “Sita” in the book) got a reading from Ellias, (called William then) which astounded me. I stood in line to get a piece of what she’d just received. At the end of that reading, soaked in tears, I got into my car and said, “I want to do for others what this guy just did for me.” Within two days I performed my first professional astrology reading. Ellias led me in a “graduate” course in Star Genesis, the new branch of astrology he was then birthing. I couldn’t get enough. For seven years we pushed the envelope of all that astrology had been. There was revolution in the air, in that little cabin under the redwoods that worked underground in me for twenty years, until I finally found a way to let the genie out of the lamp and spill the story, let others in on the mysteries we studied.
Ellias is one of those big men who carries an enormous resonance in the things he says. You get the feeling that his truths bubble up from some bottomless well of the ages inside him. It’s hard to resist the lure of those teachings at source point, when they come from such a profound place. I hope that the retelling of these mysteries in my own voice does them justice. I labored for six years of rewrite to get the manuscript right in this regard.
Also, and perhaps even more to the point, since the day we met, Ellias has stood guard over my right to take forever to become who I am inside. I’ve seen him do this for hundreds of others over the years. This is what he taught each of us to do—locate a center point, a soul source in each person that deserves to find its place in the sun, no matter how long it takes. No matter how many times through the years I came running to him for insight, he never gave up on me, never lost sight of this soul place. He taught me to paint pictures of the soul, to get past the endless posturing of ego, and expose the deeper version of who we each are. Every person has their own favorite ways of hiding out from themselves. At this point human nature has become a distorted fragmented version of something unified and whole that lies within.
Ellias became the champion of my inner nature. He held out in front of me a soul picture of who he saw me as. He holds out a clear depiction of the man I’d be if I was fully being who I was meant to be. This form of star work is addictive. It’s given me a powerful self-image to live up to, a magically real life to inhabit. No matter how long it takes, no matter how many backslides occur in me and you and all of our species, that stubborn wizard will not give up on humanity! It’s uncanny, how deeply he’s pulling for our race to win through its blindness, and become the species we were born to be. And he holds this picture in such a deep place that heaven and hell themselves could not move it. Could you walk away from a teacher like that?
What practices and teachings did Lonsdale encourage? Who were his teachers and mentors?
Ellias and Sara Lonsdale didn’t encourage any practices, so to speak. It was rather that they themselves were the embodiment of the teachings. The one thing they grinded into us, over and over, is the need to dig our heels into the dirt and release the vast creative force locked inside us. They hammered it into us that there was a soul purpose we had in first choosing to incarnate into these bodies. That each of us has a role to play in the Grand Design.
Ellias, along with his wife Sara—who was very instrumental to the teachings—lived and taught in a way that was positively infectious. Their beliefs were their lives, and everything they did partook of this. Cosmos was infused into earth, and life inseparable from cosmos. Whether you go far enough out into the stars, or plumb deep enough down into your own inner nature, you always get to the same place. The mysteries were brought down to earth, and as such, did not require any special practices to make use of them. Unless my whole life became the spirit practice, in other words, what good was any of it?
The Lonsdales’ belief in alternate planes of existence that coincide with our plane, was immovable, unshakeable, completely contagious and inspirational. That level of faith rubs off on you. Just to be around such devotion to the mysteries once a week gets into the blood and stays there. It got into me so deeply that it took twenty years before I could write about it.
As far as influences, Ellias was greatly influenced by the massive body of spirit work of Rudolf Steiner, who, along with Ellias’s dream of Atlantis, forms the main basis of Star Genesis. In mystery school we studied the twelve senses discovered by Steiner, and linked each to a different sign of the zodiac. Steiner had a vast incomparable intellect that ranged far and wide through physics, metaphysics, education, color theory, chemistry, economy, dance, theater and politics. His contributions to each of these fields were of genius quality, which is hard to fathom.
Ellias was also influenced by his personal work with his former teacher Ann Re Colton, a highly developed psychic who lived and taught in southern California. He also mentioned Sri Aurobindo occasionally. Then there were his two astrology mentors Marc Edmund Jones and Dane Rudhyar, whom he worked with closely for a short time in the 1970s. Beyond these key figures, there’s the usual gang of suspects from spirituality and metaphysics: Krishnamurti, Rumi, various historical Christian mystics, science fiction writers, philosophers, Herman Hesse, Gurdjieef, playwrights and filmmakers of various kinds. Ellias wasn’t just influenced by metaphysicians but by all kinds of writers, thinkers, and historians. He was also very shaped by 1960s spiritual vision, poets, musicians, Beats, and others.
What do you consider the most important things you learned during your apprenticeship? Could you have learned them any other way?
The key piece of my apprenticeship was the idea that the more important part of becoming enlightened is the human part, rather than the transcendent part. Many spiritual teachers get this one backwards, accenting ascension over simply being human. The Lonsdales taught us that it’s all about incarnation rather than transcendence—that in order to evolve we have to become more, not less, fully human. Over and over we kept coming back to the crying need to embody ourselves, to find a way to fully show up in the physical plane, rather than trading Earth for some higher plane. We probed the idea of a limitless source of power hidden inside even the most commonplace human being, which can remake the world. The best way to tap this source power is by daring ourselves to dream bigger, and to learn how each personal dream can link into a cosmic design.
I suppose I could have learned these things in other ways. I was already hot on their track through my personal studies of writing, art, music, love, sexuality, and metaphysics. But the fact is that just as Ellias and Sara were bringing a whole new form of star wisdom into the world, I was hungry for mastery, as a man, a spiritual seeker, and an astrologer. They were in the right place at the right time for me, and I rose to the fullest of my abilities to make use of their teachings.
It has been twenty years since your relationship with Lonsdale first began. How did you know that 2007 was the right time for a book about your spiritual apprenticeship?
I began conceiving this book way back when I was still in mystery school during the time periods in the book. In the years immediately following I tried, once or twice, to put everything into words, but it was too big and unwieldy. I wasn’t sure what story I was trying to tell—a karmic bugaboo that’s haunted me on and off during the years when I’ve picked up the pen. I tried again somewhere around 1995, but it didn’t come out right then, either. Then I took another crack at it in South Starksboro, Vermont, where I was about to become a father, in 2002. It took six years to go from that initial draft, which was later completed and thrown away, to a couple following drafts that also ended up being canned, before I was able to zero in on what became the final draft and published version. In the final years of rewrite, the more I sank into my story, creating and destroying and then composting down whole chapters, bit by bit separating the wheat from the chaff, the more I was captured by the link between 1987 and 2012. As I sifted my own personal experiences for meaning, a greater arc of history took shape in my mind’s eye, stretching even further back through my entire life, and the life of our species. Things we’d discussed in class took on new meaning. Certain statements of Ellias or myself or classmates began to haunt me. Atlantis and modern politics became linked, as I recalled the Lonsdales’ tale of our first fall from grace that set human karma in motion—the karma of the corrupt few lording over the many. I began to feel that I could draw these threads through from my own adventures as a young man, into some clear body of work that could be of service to readers currently striving to make sense of some of the same things.
How do you hope that reading about your journey will provide instruction and inspiration for readers?
There are two main ways my book is intended to work. Firstly, I met Ellias and Sara at a time of great turmoil in my life. The cosmic paradigm they offered me framed life and time in an elegant pantheon of planet gods and historical significance. They kept coming back to a sense of divine order. That cosmic design has fueled humanity’s crazy-quilt journey through the ages. They turned astrology into a fascinating star art with layer upon layer, dimension upon dimension. One of my aims with the book is to ignite the same force in readers that my teachers ignited in me. To inspire others to break out of modern apathy, numbness, isolation, and alienation, and take an active hand in the course of the future.
Secondly, any reader who is left inspired by my tale and hungry for more is welcome to contact me for a soul level reading, so they can receive the legacy of my apprenticeship in the form of deep counsel for their own life. Ellias taught me to champion the right of others to fulfill their place in the grand design, just as he championed mine. And so the cosmic tale of the book can leap off the pages and be of service in your own personal life.
Do you have any recommendations for readers who are inspired to begin or continue their own spiritual journeys in earnest?
I pass on Maestro Rudolf Steiner’s advice: for every step you wish to take to achieve psychic mastery, you must take three steps toward becoming a better human being. Early in my apprenticeship I stumbled upon this saying, which has been my approach to metaphysics and spirituality ever since. I’m firmly convinced that the purpose of magic and metaphysics is to make us more, not less, human. I learned from William and Sara the truth of what this means. In the last twenty years of applying this to my daily existence, it’s true I don’t always succeed. I still tend to get caught in my own karmic traps, and then freed. I’ve been spending less and less time in the karmic tar pits, lately, though, and have come to enjoy life more than ever, especially my role of fatherhood, which has become more satisfying to me than everything else I do. I love my little boy!
Apart from this, read Herman Hesse – his nonfiction is as good as or better than his more well-known novels, and Miracle of Love, by Ram Dass, and Autobiography of a Yogi, by Yogananda. Read anything you can by Rumi, and The Duino Elegies, by Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell. Seek out what the sages have said through the ages, but don’t settle for anyone else’s truth. Wrestle with those high concepts until you make them your own.
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