Anapa

One year ago, after passaging from Mexico to the Marquesas, I made the conscious decision to stay in French Polynesia rather than return to Hawaii. So I checked in with my Maltese Passport, rather than my US, and received a stamp validating a pivotal tack in my voyage through life. Founded solely on a feeling, I chose to imua (Hawaiian term meaning “to move forward”).

At the time, I had no plan, no idea what I was going to do, where I was going to go, or how I would get there. Vulnerability slid in through the cracks of insecurity, causing my cells to tremble and the plasma in my spine to surge. Existence itself seemed to quiver as I gazed out over the vast South Pacific. Yet, something inside me (and a lifetime of leaps) urged me to trust.

A part of my decision to stay in French Polynesia was predicated on parting ways with my boyfriend. After a series of attempts to solder our connection, I came to accept that our constitutions just weren’t compatible. Tired of holding on and ready for change, I took a deep breath, let go, sighed with relief, and free fell. My heart seared as it stretched into uncomfortable terrain and burned as it broke open to make space for the unknown. Alas, I knew the pain would pass and the fall would turn into flow. It always does, if I surrender to the process and allow myself to grow.

Heartbreak can be a blossoming rather than a breaking—magnified through a lens of gratitude, each salty tear is a drop of truth from the wellspring of love’s wisdom, ready to be released, revealed, and realized.

Tear by tear, my path forward became more clear. For, it was the tears themselves that cleared the way. They rose from my heart, welled up in my throat, poured forth from my eyes and followed the path of least resistance back to the silky sea beneath me. And there, at that very coordinate point of self-anointed presence, is where the expansive liquid territory of the South Pacific was distilled into a stream of sparkles.

Spanning from my heart to the horizon, a path unfurled before me like a golden carpet. It glimmered and glistened, accenting the water’s lure. Fractals of light danced on the surface and splashed the sides of the hulls. They yielded to the breeze and teased my toes as I swung my legs over the crossbeam.

I sat, mesmerized, amazed, in awe. Voilá.

Start here: presence

Follow that: the heart

Go there: towards the light

So that’s what I did. And, to my pleasant surprise, it worked. I was led to people and places and events that felt fated or destined or oddly familiar. Déjà vu, divine rendezvous, la vie en rose. Life became fluid and seamless and if there was a moment of stagnancy or radio silence, I embraced it, relishing in the lull, acknowledging the cue to take rest, trusting that clarity or a strike of inspiration would arrive in due time to ignite static momentum into affluent movement. It always did. It always does.

Of course there are nuances and occasional deviations and layers of dynamic interplay that comprise this technique. It may even be deserving of an instruction manual. But honestly, it’s simple. It’s easy. C’est facile. When I employ the tools or practices that bring me into presence, and then I tune in to my heart, and then I follow what lights me up, I’m guided in a direction that defies any preconceived notions of reality with the ease, grace, and frequency of miracles.

In retrospect, I’ve always used this navigation system to guide the course of my life. It’s a baseline, built-in part of my human design. It comes naturally, but requires general maintenance for optimal performance. For a while I lost touch with it, I forgot it, I allowed it to be overruled by more conventional and widely-accepted systems. But then, I started to remember. I started to reconnect the wires, the synapses and pathways in my brain. I reclaimed my inner authority and recalibrated my internal compass in accordance. And then, I started to tinker, to experiment, because even I doubted its efficacy. But now, after trial and error and ebbs and flows of doubt and belief and diligent application resulting in an astonishingly beautiful reality, I hereby embody this method of being.

As the full moon as my witness, I humbly bow in peace, presence and reverence. Pacific anapa (Tahitian for “sea sparkle”) soften the surrounding obsidian abyss. They tantalize my eyes, twinkling like black diamonds and twirling on the carbon fiber crossbeam like a kaléidoscope. C’est clair… c’est la vie.

Thank you to every person, place, pelagic creature, coral reef, shooting star, solar flare, squall, swell, wave, wisp of wind and tiaré flower— every expression of life that has pulled me into presence by giving me something to fall in love with. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And a special thank you to the vessels, their stewards, and the sea for moving me: s/v Ticket to Ride, s/v Eimata Va’a, s/v Ajax, s/v Runaway, s/v Synchronicity, s/v Te Marama… to be continued.