Thanks everyone for contributing with your experience.
I hear what you're saying GoingUnder, and I'm not one to eke out a meaning from every little thing either.

I don't see anything to fear right now, though I imagine that people can always create something to fear. Since we are feeling an urge to "clean out the basement" of our subconscious, this would be basically having fear about knowing/expressing ourselves and also projecting our fears onto the world around us. This happens all the time.
So I don't look at life or this shift in terms of better/worse, good/bad, as much as more or less conscious. The brighter the light, the darker the shadow, meaning that as we gain in consciousness we will start seeing the contrast of where we are not aligned and in conflict. If we don't want to see that, if we have judgments, then life can feel like a draining struggle, which we project onto others. If we don't have any judgments then life gets more celebrative and effortless.
To me this shift is bigger than just 2012 because the affects will continue much longer than that. The Mayans pegged 2012 a line in the sand if you will, for the shifting from the expression of collective seperation into unification. This doesn't mean that we have to
wait for something to happen or for a certain time to come before we let ourselves express our totality! There are plenty of people who have blossomed before now - we're just getting an extra boost right now that can make it even easier.