The Wet Edge: January 2014

Hunter and Kai play under the Rainbow at Kailua Beach

At the risk of sounding like a New-Age Ninny, I'm gonna admit it…

We've been listening to Deepak Chopra.

Now, normally, neither Jon or myself are inclined to jump on any spiritual/self-help bandwagons…

we usually try and blaze our own paths to self-realization.

The past few years, my pathway to inner bliss was simply waking up everday as we bobbed on our anchor in a secluded cove, or watching our kids free-dive and hunt for lobsters on the reef, or sipping a margarita at sunset while having a laugh with Jon and of course, there was always a whole lot of staring at the ocean to bring out my inner Buddha-nature.

Bliss was in no short supply.

Coming back to the "real world", however, brought new challenges to what had become a laid back and simple life, where it didn't matter how much money we weren't making, or the fact that between the four of us, we only owned three pairs of flip-flops (Kai and I were sharing until he outgrew me a year or so ago)…

Tying up to a dock with running water and power is super-nifty, so is buying fresh produce everyday and having hot showers at the yacht club (where they have kindly given us a "social" membership) and its so wonderful to be able to call our families whenever we want-but these things come at a price.

You gotta have da cash, bruddah.

Man, can that ONE little detail, suddenly snap you back in the world in a way that a WHOLE lot of issues start popping up again.

Doubts that sat, snoozily dormant in the back of your sun-kissed brain while you filleted your freshly speared grouper for the beach BBQ now came springing to back to life with anxious veracity.

All the highly-tuned, "trust" in the Universe, self-sufficiency, commitment to making Life about loving and exploring… kinda starts seeming a little shaky, and like, maybe, we might have lost our minds out there just a little bit.

It was time to get phone plans! Re-instate our health care! Deal with insurance companies about the recent mishap in Lahaina! The kids needed check-ups! All our clothes have holes in them and dammit…what kind of crazy people only have three pairs of shoes between four people???!!

We had to do something. We had to make things happen. Get back in the game and REBUILD!

We had a two year adventure and within four weeks, we were once again stressed, doubting, wondering, worried, sleepless, anxious and seriously broke.

What were we doing wrong?

Could we maintain our happy place AND fit back into the world?

Enter Deepak.

I'd never read any of his books before, but I was familiar with some of his philosophies. We once owned a CD of his, on Transformation, that we used to listen to in our car whenever we were stuck in traffic in LA. It had been a particularly hard year then, with many close-successes that ultimately had not panned out and both Jon and I were pretty shaken and needed a jolt of positive thinking….the CD was great, it encouraged one to meditate, if only for half a hour a day, to find the space within yourself and enter the mysterious "GAP" as Deepak calls, the realm of "pure potentiality", a place between thought and stillness…where you can let go and allow the universe to "roll in ecstasy at your feet"…

Groovy -sign me up for some of that.

( it's also really, very helpful to listen to it when you are stuck on the 405 freeway at rush hour)

Anyway, it was only a few months after practicing hanging out in this "gap" that we began divining that maybe we should just cut out of LA for awhile and get on with this Bliss thing in a fresh direction…so, fast forward to 15,000 sea miles and several years of Joy later-we're here in Hawaii and its incredible but I'm starting to freak out a little that we have like less than 4 digits in our bank account.

Around Christmastime, one of Jon's agents forwarded us a link to

"Deepak & Oprah's free online 21 day meditation"...

"Are you kidding me?" Jon said,

when I showed it to him one night.

"I don't mind, Deepak …" he head waggled in his spot-on imitation,

" but there's no F-ing way I'm meditating with Oprah Winfrey".

Fair enough.

( he doesn't know Oprah like I do :))

" I think its just Oprah talking for a bit and introducing the ideas to people who might not be into meditation and then Deepak leads the actual practice so that they can expose more people to it and that's a cool thing, right?"...

I went on and on and on and on-

until I badgered Jon into agreeing to do it with me.

For 21 days…

We listened to Oprah introduce Deepak's theme for the day and then we closed our eyes and listened to Deepak lead us into the daily meditation and every day we head some version of…

"Trust, Love, make Life an expression of Joy, follow your passion, offer yourself and your unique talents to the service of the greater good, be in harmony with your bliss and abundance will flow to you…."

Hang on.

Hit me with that last one, again?

Deepak and Oprah, inarguably, extremely successful people by pretty much any standard you want to measure by, are telling me over and over, that if you totally, explicitly, utterly, commit, to a path of making your entire life an expression of joy, for the greater good of others…

You can count on abundance flowing to you.

Well, that's pretty much exactly what I needed to hear because that's pretty much exactly what we've been doing out here for the past few years, so…

maybe I need to just chill and trust it.

So we did.

I swear, as soon as I stopped worrying and really put it out there to "trust" this path of doing what you love, a paying offer came in to write a screenplay, I got a letter in the mail that a dear old aunt had passed and left me a piece of art that has a bit of value, a lump of unexpected residual checks appeared for Jon, our good friend JR came out for a visit and spoiled us rotten and treated us to all kinds of fun we couldn't have afforded right now, and all this while tied to a dock in one of the most gorgeous cities on Earth, where you can surf everyday and are constantly surrounded by Aloha spirit.

It began to dawn on me, that it might actually be possible ( and even Oprah said so!) that following your Joy, utilizing your unique talents, making and spending more Love than Money and living everyday that you possibly can in complete AWE of nature and this extraordinary Universe we get to live in…

will somehow, also, end up covering the bills.

Maybe owning three pairs of flip-flops between four people IS the definition of sanity?

I haven't posted in while because I've been working on another writing project-but here's a few from xmas until now…