Winter Solstice

Why the Winter Solstice Arrives Thursday

Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 21 December 2011 Time: 08:07 AM ET
The winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year, when the sun is at its lowest point in the sky.
CREDIT: Stockxpert.

Winter officially arrives late Wednesday or in the wee hours of Thursday, depending on the time zone you are in.

The official time corresponds to 12:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (5:30 a.m. Universal Time) Thursday (Dec. 22). This is the point when the northern half of our planet will face directly away from the sun.

This means that days, which have up until now been growing shorter in the Northern Hemisphere, will begin to lengthen.

This happens because the Earth rotates on an axis that is tilted by 23.5 degrees, so the planet leans one way or another as it travels around the sun. This doesn’t make much difference for folks living around the Earth’s equator, but for those of us farther north, or south, this tiltcreates seasons.

The winter solstice marks the end of fall and the beginning of winter. During the solstice, the northern half of the Earth is facing away from the sun, hence it will experience its shortest day of the year as the planet rotates.

The effect of this tilt, and of the solstice, depends on your latitude. Everything above the Arctic Circle will remain shrouded in darkness, with no sun that day, and to the north, the North Polegoes without sunlight for months. Farther south in the Northern Hemisphere, the solstice day becomes longer.

The opposite occurs in the Southern Hemisphere. There, the December solstice marks the arrival of summer.

For those of us in the north, the days may begin to grow longer, but the coldest days are still to come. This is because ocean temperatures drive much of the weather on the continents, and they continue to cool in the relative lack of sunlight this time of year.

from:   http://www.livescience.com/17575-winter-solstice-science-2011.html

Owen Waters on 2012, Solstice, etc.

The 2012 Gateway Trajectory

Owen Waters
a message from Owen Waters
Sunday, 27 November, 2011  (posted 9 December, 2011)

Recently, I related how a senior member of the spiritual hierarchy – a global spirit who functions as the Lord Protector of The Shift – took me under his wing to act as a messenger for urgent spiritual information.

Under his guidance, I have learned about a principle called the 2012 Gateway Trajectory. This states that the pattern of consciousness that you have on December 21st, 2012 will influence your trajectory through experience for many thousands of years into the future.

The 2012 gateway is rather like a vortex. You enter it from one side, pass through the eye of the vortex where your pattern of consciousness is stamped or fixed within your aura, then you exit the vortex into a whole new set of multi-millennia cosmic cycles bearing that pattern.

Last week, I talked about how your challenges in life are not all that they seem. As a spiritual seeker, you are a lightworker and therefore a leading thinker in the advancement of consciousness. You may have adopted one or more challenges to work through in this life so that you could create a pattern in the mind belt to make it easier for others to follow and heal their own lives.

You’ve borne those challenges, not so much because you need the experience, but because other people need pioneers to resolve the issues that are important today. The more the pioneers succeed in resolving their issues, the easier it becomes for the rest to follow.

The point of knowing this is so that you may resolve whatever challenges still face you before December 21st, 2012. As you head towards the 2012 gateway, it’s time to take inventory and see where you stand on matters of unfinished business.

Whatever gives you discomfort – even so much as a nagging doubt that all is not right – now is the time to address those issues. Anything that gives you a feeling of being out of harmonious alignment of mind, body and soul should be addressed and resolved.

Remember, you’re not the challenge that you are facing. You adopted it as something to master in order to make the way easier for others to follow the pattern you set in the mind belt. The average lightworker has already mastered those challenges in previous lives. They took the same challenges upon themselves in these critical days because they knew they could rise above and resolve those challenges in time to help set a pattern for others to follow and set themselves free.

As I said last week, if you are currently working through a major life challenge and feel as though you’re going round in circles and getting nowhere, stop and look for the gift in that challenge. The gift is that, by loving yourself and others more, you can rise above the challenge and become more of who you really are. Then, the experience changes from one of challenge to one of self-empowerment.

The solution to a challenge in the material world is typically not to be found in the material world at the level of the problem. The answer is found when you rise above that frequency and gain from the resources of the higher aspects of your mind. Fear-based challenges, for example, are always resolved by connecting with the strength and security of your inner being.

Real strength does not lie anywhere in the outside world. It lies within you. Once you find that inner power, you rise above any limitation and stand as a self-realized way-shower in a world desperate for spiritual freedom.

We can look forward to December 21st, 2012 as the gateway that marks the close of many cosmic cycles and the end of the old way of doing things on Planet Earth.

The 2012 gateway is the beginning of a whole world full of opportunities. Positive action will come very easily when all the cycles begin anew and are running in their constructive, ascending mode.

Most of all, decide before then to make Spiritual Growth your number one priority and you will harvest an ever-increasing joy in the years ahead.

Make the 2012 gateway everything you want it to be. Make it a beautiful event opening into a wonderful future filled with joy and enlightenment!