Daniel tries to fit into society’s norms, and fails repeatedly. It is only after a “chance” meeting with the teacher who would connect him to his intuition and his guides that he starts on the path to wisdom and awakening. In a magical experience reminiscent of Indiana Jones, he experiences complete surrender to divinity and is transformed by it. The apocalyptic visions of 2012 become a time of testing for all humanity. Daniel becomes the mirror of our divinity to anyone who has the courage to look and accept it. Will we look in this mirror and see our divine selves and choose the way of love and paradise? Or will we reject this reality and see only chaos and despair? Either way, we will be right, so let us choose wisely.
Rating: 5 / 5

The author has written a tale about a fairly stock character. Daniel had a good corporate job and a wife, but a part of him was looking for something else (aren’t we all?). He loses his job, and his wife leaves him (sound like a million movie plots?) and he happens to meet a woman who has psychic abilities. She takes him under her wing and teaches him that he has a mission. We are told that other strange events have happened to him which seem to be signaling some important new direction for him.

The scene shifts to Daniel in Mexico, where the book actually began. The “old” Daniel, before his life was changing, is revealed in flashbacks. Through most of this slim book we are on a magical journey involving shamanic ceremonies and a climb up a sacred mountain. Daniel is made to understand that he must reach the ledge of Quetzal.

Quetzal is a huge serpent who later turns into a huge bird. Before Daniel gets to the ledge of Quetzel, he meets an invisible spirit wearing a hoodie who gives him information about his journey. Daniel is not daunted by the long solo climb up to the ledge, and picks up a snake (which has later significance) part way up and carries the deadly snake with him. Once on the ledge, the huge serpent materializes. This is apparently based on Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god of the ancient inhabitants of Mexico.

The serpent engages in a dialogue with Daniel, who has not yet made the full transformation he is seeking. The serpent’s message is that at the end of the Fifth Age (which is now), humans would realize their divinity and become one with the universe. Sounds good, but does Daniel do that? How does this transformation come about, and why is it related to events involving our planet and our galaxy?

The book progresses to its conclusion with Daniel back in the US, having a new wife and a new career as a speaker, telling audiences the serpent’s message, that they are divine. I found this a bit jarring, a possible invitation to egomania for the less spiritually-enlightened types. I also wondered why the author had Daniel’s personal change begin during his “old” life, while attending a corporate seminar in which the speaker challenges the audiences with “What is important?” Having been stuck attending too many of these “motivational” business events, I have trouble believing anyone was ever really enlightened at a corporate seminar. Coming full circle, Daniel goes on the lecture circuit himself, propagating Quetzal’s message.

The problem I have with the book is that any form of breakthrough insight into the meaning of life is highly subjective. Daniel may have been enlightened with Truth up on the ledge of Quetzal, but that doesn’t mean he can pass it on to any of us. While the book is somewhat in the mold of The Celestine Prophecy, I feel it did not do its job as well as James Redfield’s classic tale of seeking. Daniel’s experience is both a cliché and an individual epiphany that does not illuminate truth for the reader.

What I did like about the book is the lovely illustrations and the fact that it addresses humanity’s slide from center of the universe (back in the ignorant Middle Ages) to unimportant creatures on a tiny spec in an overwhelmingly huge and bewildering universe. Can we recover our place of importance through understanding our spiritual nature? Mankind needs to find his place in the universe, and the answers to questions about our purpose and our nature won’t come through science alone.

Perhaps the Mayans did believe that 2012 signaled an opportunity for humankind to shift to higher consciousness, as this book tells us. Or maybe the winter solstice of 2012 will come and go and we’ll perceive nothing different at all. Maybe we are all making the changes each day, and each of us is searching in our own way for our place in the universe.

Rating: 3 / 5