THERE IS A TZOLKIN LIVING INSIDE MY HEAD

by David Goodman, PhD.

You will think this is a fairy tale. You will think that I have an overactive imagination. Yet what I am about to tell you is true. It is true because it is my life, and how I became enthralled by the 260-day Mayan calendar. I became enthralled because since December 2000 I have been aware that inside my head is a Tzolkin.

This  is how it came about. I had been a professional writer under contract to a New York book publisher to write a book on the far future of the human brain. My book projected to be 108,000 words had to be delivered in ten months. That is 10,800 words a month for a book that would be sold avidly around the world.

Only one problem. I was amazed that as many words as I wrote and was happy with them, two weeks later my mood had shifted. I looked at the words, and could no longer write in that style. This meant constant attempts at rewriting the words until the style matched how I felt. Certainly this made me fall behind schedule.

Ten months later I did submit the 108,000 words to the publisher who noted that the book was written in two different styles, and would I agree to spend five weeks with his editors to smooth out the book so people could read it. The short interpretation of what happened next is that I was paid in full for my book, yet it was never published.

Aware that I shifted between two mood settings and writing styles during the month, I decided to become more like a Leonardo Da Vinci  living now, the subject of my proposed book, and to keep detailed daily journals of my moods, samples of my writing styles and much more vital information, including my dreams during every night.

Soon I became aware that I experienced a mood cycle lasting about thirty days. I seemed to be two people. One that had bad dreams and was sometimes tongue-tied during the day; the other self was seductive and eloquent. This I recognized as a monthly emotional cycle, familiar to me because my scientific professional life is to detect biological cycles in adult humans.

What began as a Leonardo notebook project around 1979 would continue to grow in scope and breadth until now thirty years later, I own notebooks containing more than 32,000 dreams. This is an unintended consequence of notebook keeping enabling me to remember and correlate dreams with my emotions experienced during the day. This is how I discovered that there is Tzolkin  living in my head.

You have heard -- incorrectly -- that monthly emotional rhythms in men last about 28 days. You have heard that they are perfect sine waves, like you expect from an electrical generator or dynamo. Also you have been told that the waves begin at birth and do not change in frequency or amplitude over a lifetime, and that they never interact. These statements are intriguing, but I believe they are the real fairy tale or myth.

In truth, since 1979  my monthly emotional rhythm has shifted in frequency and amplitude. It was first detected as a 30-day cycle, then over time, and what seemed to be in harmony with sunspot cycles, it shifted frequency. Being aware of the personal rhythm, I was able to discern when it when it slowed to 28 days and then 18 days, and then in the year 2000 at five days.

Now here comes the incredible part of my story. During December 2000 what seemed to be a slight increase in the frequency of the cycle caused it to drift until after much concern I detected it again as an emotion-and-dream cycle lasting exactly 260 days! I say exactly because the cycle has been absolutely stable between December 2000 and July 2009 -- eight and a half years..

The cycle divides into five intermeshed sub-cycles, each one comprises 52 sequential states of mind. Or to state this more clearly, there are 52 dreams that in each of the five sub-cycles appear in a predictable sequence. Having five sub-cycles, each with the identical 52 states, they ride within the 260-day major cycle which I refer to now as the Tzolkin in my head. The presence of the 260-day cycle amazes me.

When people ask about the Tzolkin in my head, I tell them that I am a scientist, and it is my duty to provide for colleagues and the public the evidence for the 260-day cycle. I will present the data to neuroscience colleagues at the next Society for Neuroscience convention, on October 19, 2009 in Chicago. To persuade colleagues, I intend to have the dream data analyzed blind.

This means that someone unaware of my hypothesis will read hundreds of dream cards, and independently score each of them on a quantitative scale. Then the dream data will be sent to a major university in the Midwest to be analyzed and the results printed out graphically using their computers. I believe the evidence for the 260-day cycle is so robust that I can turn over the scoring and analysis to a member or members of Mayan Majix.

Which is why I am writing these words. If you are fascinated by the Tzolkin calendar and are interested in the 260-day cycle, and want to become involved in an exciting project in Neuroscience, I invite you to email me at mayan260brain@aol.com. This becomes the first step towards alerting people to the October 19 report on the 260-day cycle at the Neuroscience convention.

If you can rise to the challenge, and become the best of the best, know that a great deal more can grow from your interests in the 260-day cycle. After all, this is only 2009, giving us more than two years before the fateful day in 2011 when a new age emerges from the womb of the heavens. Thanks to our efforts, cannot the new age be a time when our biological cycles, gifts from the heavens, can leap to top-flight importance?

The best of you working together with me can help make our dreams of a better future come true. Let us work hard together for at least the next four months, and they will come true!

David Goodman, PhD.

mayan260brain@aol.com

1-760-736-1975

David Goodman
Postal Box 803
San Marcos, CA
92079-0803