11:11

I can’t say that I know what it all means, but in honor of the day, here’s how it happened for me:

I was feeling profoundly restless. I was looking for something I could sense vaguely but didn’t understand. Mostly I was casting around in the dark, but I was trying to follow the chain of synchronicity that was just then returning to my life after many years of absence.

On September 11, 2002, I was driving home from work when I happened to look down at my odometer – not something I do often – and saw that it was showing all ones across. I thought it was a coincidence that my car should hit such a milestone on the first anniversary of 9/11 and that I should happen to look down just then to see it. Then my mind moved onto thoughts of the previous year.

Barely two hours later, my sister was telling me about her recent vacation when she mentioned that the friend she had visited was “into portals and the eleven-eleven.” Huh?!

It felt like there had been a radio playing a half-tuned station in the next room for a long time – just white noise to me – and then, in a flash, it tuned in and I registered it consciously.

“Wait, what is this eleven-eleven?”

My sister said it had to do with “ascension” and “portals.”

“Portals to where?”

She didn’t know. The idea of portals was tantalizing to me even though it made no sense. Now I know that there is a range of interpretation on 11:11, but then my ignorance was total . . .

“But why is it ‘eleven-eleven’?” I asked.

My sister explained that her friend sees elevens everywhere -- the number comes up synchronistically for her. I had goosebumps. I told her about how I caught my odometer showing all ones across on the way home from work that very day. I said it was four ones – 1111 – because at the time that’s what I thought, but actually it was five – 11111 (shows how little I pay attention to my car’s mileage).

The odometer turning to all ones on that particular date . . . me noticing . . . then my sister mentioning “eleven-eleven.” There was a convergence of coincidences that felt powerfully synchronous to me. And that was the beginning. Elevens started turning up everywhere. Bill totals, receipts, license plates or signs on cars and trucks cutting me off, email time stamps . . . Odd little things -- and some big things -- started occurring at 11:11 to draw my attention to the clock at that moment. Some nights I found myself jolting from a deep sleep to look at the clock at exactly 11:11 p.m. Elevens were speaking a secret language to me through the random details of my life.

I did some googling and became familiar with various things people say about the phenomenon. I used to be more interested in reading these theories and speculations, but I’ve lost track of that research. I guess eleven-eleven was indeed a portal and it has led me to other mysteries.

Some say that 11:11 is a wake up call that we coded ourselves with prior to this incarnation. Maybe that’s true. It certainly worked as a wake up call of sorts for me. Whatever the case, I felt the onset was an invitation to the grail quest. I accepted and have been traveling that path ever since. I see the elevens in my life now as little breadcrumbs along the way.

On 11/11/04, at 11:11 PST, Uranus stationed direct in the sign of my Ascendant, Sun and Moon, beginning a long series of transits that are now lighting up my chart like a pinball machine. On 11/11/06, unbeknownst to me, something happened a few hundred miles away that ended up bringing a major crisis into my life for the winter and early spring. When I learned that it all started on November 11th, I knew that however bad it felt at the moment, it would somehow be a transformative experience. It would be a portal to the next level. And it was.

And as many have observed -- per the U.S. Naval Observatory -- the Winter Solstice will occur at exactly 11:11 UT on December 21, 2012 -- which of course is the date posited by people like John Major Jenkins as the culmination of the Mayan Long Count . . . and the end of the fourth age.

I don’t have the answers, but in my experience, the elevens mark the doorway. Approached in a mindful, heart-centered manner, they can lead toward positive transformation. Let’s go through.