Reporter’s Notebook:

Two weeks ago, my personal search for a definitive answer to the question, “What does the year 2012 really mean?” ended when I was offered the chance to attend “Women’s Earth Ways.” This was a day of ceremony to discuss the role of women in the upcoming year of 2012 with Native American Apache prophecy keeper, Maria Yraceburu, and her partner, Linda Yraceburu.

Although I jumped at the chance to meet Yraceburu — considered a 13-generation Quero Apache Diiyin or “Holy One” — many women might recoil at the thought of spending an entire day talking about women with women, believing lessons learned in the “estrogen tank” don’t get one very far in the material world.

This attitude, shared by some women, and men, I see as a product of our off-balance world that conditions us into believing that cultivating the feminine qualities of receptiveness, intuition and nurturing are a waste of time when compared to the prized masculine qualities of action, logic and competition. So I can’t really blame another woman for resisting processes to heal parts of herself that have been deemed by society as inferior.

Often a reporter entering into any situation makes people feel uneasy, so I agreed to the request made by Yraceburu’s handler for the day, Kym Sawtelle-Castuera, to participate in the ceremonies with the other women in order to make everyone feel more comfortable.

Maria wasted no time in getting to the point of why we were all gathered together on a Saturday morning at the United Methodist Church in South Laguna.

The Great Year of 2012 is commonly attributed to the prophecies of the Mayan timekeepers in conjunction with the Mayan calendar, but Maria points out that this year was also prophesied by the Incan, Hawaiian, European Celts and African cultures as well.

According to the Hopi Nation, the manifestations of the Rainbow Prophecies have come about as the universe is now leaving the Fourth World of human depravity and entering into the Fifth World of coming together. The Fourth World — characterized by the left logical brain — excludes the heart and the intuitive right brain, causing an unnatural separation of the divine masculine and the divine feminine energy that exists in everybody.