People often ask me 'how is it possible for the stars to affect our lives?' An innocent question, to be sure, but one that contains a multitude of ancient mysteries and stunning spiritual revelations.

Thousands of years ago, after primitive man first tamed fire, he gazed longingly up at the sky and told stories. Eventually seasonal stories became calendars punctuated with epic descriptions of star constellations and the reoccurring moon patterns that held the life-giving promise of abundant crops. Culture was the result: culture, language and intellect. These are important things. These are the very human things that have since defined every civilization and activity on earth.

No easy trick that. To understand that repeating cycles define the very cadence and nature of time itself is no innocent observation; it is a fundamental leap toward self-knowledge, insight and spiritual awareness. And, when coupled with human intellect and wisdom, approaches a very definition of God. Calendars and the stars, therefore, are the stuff that points our compass to the heavens and separates us from the beasts.

I must admit, however, that I am having some trouble with this Mayan Calendar thing.

Everyone seems to think that the Mayans, a naïve and simple people, could in no way have invented their own calendar. Nope…couldn't happen; their calendar is too complex, too mystical and professes a knowledge that is…well…beyond human understanding. Aliens must have given it to them. Yep, that's it…aliens.

Okay, fair enough, but I have questions.

If the Mayans were so simple and so backward, how did they manage a culture that dominated a massive continent for hundreds of years? How do an ignorant and primitive people build monuments that perfectly echoes the cosmos and even today are unthinkable? Where does this ability come from?

Never mind that cultures all over the world have done precisely that; never mind that Egypt chronicled the actual physical pathway of life after death. Never mind that the ancient Chinese mapped the heavens and built gigantic pyramids in effigy. Never mind that thousands of years ago, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of years ago, Hindu scholars studied the Milky Way and charted the galactic center of the universe. And never mind that an ancient stone calendar pre-dating the Mayans by 2000 years was recently discovered in Canada. None of it matters…right?

Is it so crazy to think that some Chinese or Egyptian or Hindu traveler many centuries ago wandered into a Mayan village? And is it so impossible to think that this ancient explorer, after discovering a culture fascinated with the heavens, may have shared their knowledge? Perhaps the aliens that brought mystical cosmic knowledge to the Mayans arrived in wooden sailing ships and birch bark canoes?

More and more, it seems to me, we are discovering that ancient man was not so stupid. He could think, study, travel and even build; and may have done so with precise wooden cranes, clever pulley apparatuses and sophisticated mathematical systems. If these ancient cultures could build such marvels, which clearly they could, isn't it also possible…in fact probable…that they could also build a boat, travel widely and trade freely?

I think what we are missing here is an appreciation of ancient knowledge. We have become so full of ourselves, so separate and self-possessed, that we brazenly assume we are the final destination of humanity's hopes, dreams and aspirations. Any fool can see that the magic lays within the wisdom of the ancient calendars themselves, not within the people that used them. Over the centuries, I suspect we have lost the most important part of ourselves; the visceral, mystical part…the collective wisdom that inspires, enlightens and moves us closer to our true home: the heavens.