Volcanos & Vaccines

Photo credit: Devin Hume @dhfilms

Part I

Once upon a time I stepped on the stern of a boat and felt a wave of resonance roll up my spine. That boat carried me into horizons more expansive than this earthen planet seemed capable of, into an existence that awakened my senses as if they’d had no prior purpose. However, in the throws of falling in love with sailing, I also casted my ties to land. In fact, as the polar opposite of my liberating new life, I acquired a disdain for land. For, land came to represent all the things that once held me captive. 

I began to pride myself on how long I could go without stepping foot on land. A week spent suspended between a boat, surfboard and swimming became normal. While the beach was a safe zone, a space where the waves were still close enough to calm society’s frenetic frequencies, anything past the sand was deemed dirty— in all senses of the term. I preferred the crisp, clean, crystalline energy of an elemental existence. 

Out on the ocean, I found a lifestyle that fit, even though I hadn’t even been searching. It was all right there. The fabric of my environment was composed of pure mana, prana, life force, chi, or whatever you care to call it. I learned to read the waves and receive messages woven into the wind. I discerned the clouds to determine the ETA of an incoming squall. I desalinated the sea for fresh drinking water. I jumped overboard with a spear or casted a line for food. And I redirected the rays of the sun straight into a converter for electrical charge. 

Because I had found something that felt so right, I consequently associated everything else with wrong. Years back, I had done the same thing with health and alternative medicine. After questioning the pills, the practices, the prescriptions en masse, I embarked on a journey to the origins of our conventional medical system. Enthralled by the empowering plant medicines that clearly contained the answers, I dove head first into natural healing. I sank my hands into the fertile soils of organic farms. I grew my own food. I made my own teas and tinctures and salves.

Living off the land taught me to listen, to heed the subtle cues of nature and trust in my body’s innate intelligence. I learned that effective medicine is that which is aligned with our true nature. And since nature is always changing, so too does our medicine.

Before that, I was an avid vagabond. I soared around the world, acquainting myself with airport customs as much as foreign cultures. Taking flight was my medicine, my freedom, and I found solace in surviving simply out of a backpack. Traveling across borders and trekking along ancient trails led me out of my comfort zone and stretched my mind beyond that which I was conditioned to believe. At that time, the thought of rooting into the ground or sequestering myself on a sailboat seemed insane. For, I had found a lifestyle that suited my soul. I welcomed my wings as they began to sprout and set flight when the wind was right. Like a bird or a butterfly or a whale, I migrated along an invisible path, pulled by a gravitational force that I learned to trust. 

Part II

I now find myself two hundred feet above sea level and five miles from the coastline, looking out over a sea of billowing breadfruit leaves and scrap metal. Telltale clouds coast overhead, generated by the magnetic mountains of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Black lava rock sizzles beneath my feet, absorbing each solar ray that pierces our atmosphere. As the ground temperature rises, thermal convection ushers a shift in the wind, indicating a light on-shore breeze that would be ideal for a lovely day sail. 

Alas, the helm I’m sitting at is disengaged. The sails are rolled up and tucked away safely in their bags. The rudders are removed, the sail drives are bare, and the daggerboards are serving as a temporary workbench beneath the bridge deck. Resting horizontally on deck is the mast, while the boom and spreaders are suspended beneath the nets— all sanded and primed and ready for their final coat of awlgrip paint. Inside, the galley is gutted, rolls of fiberglass and cans of resin occupy the cabins, and there are a few gaping holes where there should be port lights. At a glance, this boat is even farther from sailing than the mere five miles downhill to the sea. 

Farther from anything I’ve ever experienced before, this environment exudes a distinct elemental quality. It’s crude and crass and metallic in nature. The crisp edges of copper and corroded steal pipes protrude from piles of forlorn vehicles and obsolete machinery. Grocery carts filled with cans and layers of aluminum roofing line the passageways of a perilous labyrinth. You could get lost in here forever. Some, if not most items have already succumb to rust and eventual stardust. Others, however, are patiently awaiting a spark of passion to revive their purpose. 

We were curiously pulled to this yard six months ago. Dulled by time and mangled by neglect, a slight sparkle on the galvanized stainless steal stanchions drew our attention to the camouflaged catamaran in the corner. Carelessly blocked on barrels of toxic waste and iron I-beams, she teetered on the edge of demise. But something drew us in just close enough to reveal her true nature as a diamond in the rough. 

For six years this boat has sat landlocked in limbo. And prior to that, she sustained a lot of damage. We wince with each layer peeled back, as most uncover dis-heartening hints of water damage or fiberglass de-lamination or a half-assed previous repair. The task is a formidable saga. The environment is edgy. So far off the beaten path, the junkyard is self-sanctioned as a sovereign land governed by a clan of kanaka uncles who sustain themselves on Aloha and Budlight. Every day is a scene beyond my wildest dreams.

I’m a bit out of my element here. But something about it all feels right. The more I sand away at the gritty surface of this life experience, the more I discover layers of myself in need of restoration. And here, on the Big Island of Hawaii, where magma churns beneath my feet and erupts forth into the leading edge of existence, is the perfect place to relfect the reality of my true nature. 

Part III

Here, on the Big Island of Hawaii, magnetism is emanating from the very veins of the land. Charged minerals in the form of magma arise from earth’s mantle, heaving and surging, creating waves of attraction and repulsion. These molten currents orchestrate the location of our geomagnetic poles, and generate the electromagnetic forcefield of our planet.

Magma is comprised of different variations of minerals, including: iron, silica, magnesium, calcium, potassium, and magnetite. It’s the blood of our earth, propelling circulation and regeneration. Burning liquid red until it breaks the surface, it transforms into ebon solid black, creating a fresh slate of earthen flesh. And the laden veins are the very lines that birds and butterflies and whales use to guide their migrations. For, their blood, their mineral composition carries a magnetic charge too, calibrated like a compass to determine direction. 

A similar magnetic pull is what guided me here, to this boat in this yard on this island. It’s the resonance of something in alignment with my dreams, my desires, my passion. For, those desires are so alive within me that they generate their own charge, and by the laws of attraction, I’m magnetized to their manifestation.

Attraction, to me, feels like elation, elevation, expansion, freedom. Repulsion, on the other hand, feels like constriction, confusion, contempt, captivity. So I use these feelings as indicators that guide my course of action.

It’s a strange, curious, sometimes illogical approach to life. But, it always guides me to treasures and gems and realities that are, in fact, even more perfect than my wildest dreams. It’s how I ended up on a boat, and in my quaint little cabin, and with a well-worn backpack. And as my environments change, I change. My cells change. My mineral composition changes. I adapt and am pulled forward into the spiral of evolution.  

Sometimes, however, I’m resistant to change. I can be quite stubborn. But neither stubbornness nor resistance are sustainable. Resistance to change can only be sustained for so long before the desire of life to evolve causes the ground beneath our feet to quake and truth to erupt from the core of creation. 

Part IV

Once upon a time I immersed myself in the modality of natural medicine. Inspired by the very laws of nature, it just made sense to me. It resonated. The concepts were so right that I formed an entire belief system around them. That belief system was fortified by opinions and, over time, became a part of my identity. 

That belief system served a purpose. Until it became a limiting belief system. 

The story I had built up around alternative medicine became so stalwart, that my opinions solidified into judgments. And those judgements created a gap between myself and the next step on my life’s path. For, my desires were manifesting as superlative sailing opportunities. However, those opportunities required the COVID vaccine. And vaccines were NOT a part of my alternative medicine protocol. 

So, I felt limited. And constricted. Because I was resisting the magnetic pull of my passions to stay put in a paradigm. And even though sailing felt right, resonating in every cell of my body with a tremor of elation, I couldn’t get around the mental construct that deemed vaccines wrong. 

Thankfully, I worked it out. I spent hours scrubbing, sanding, sweating, swearing, blasting System of a Down and Rage Against the Machine. I peeled back the layers of my story, sifting through the thoughts that contributed to my beliefs and created my perception. And there, buried beneath heaps of mental shrapnel and incongruous conditioning, were the gems I’d once discovered about medicine. When I uncovered them, they still glistened, reflecting back to me the answers I’d been searching for— true diamonds in the rough.  

And as the magma churned beneath my feet, the blood in my veins began to boil. Because a current was erupting forth, correcting my course of action towards true magnetic alignment. And my heart lit on fire. Because it took courage to transmute the resistance. 

When studying naturopathy, a mentor once advised me to pay close attention to the remedies I have an aversion to, because they contain as much medicine for me as the ones I have an affinity for. 

So I swallowed my pride, surrendered my story, and embraced the liberation of unbiased terrain. I got vaccinated.

The vaccine itself didn’t matter so much as what it represented. My psyche had been torn apart by separatism and, as a remedy, accepting the vaccine restored my fractured state of being to a more coherent true nature.

The side effect is a fresh perspective. Out here, on the leading edge of my life’s evolutionary path, there’s no obstruction of rights or wrongs, or shoulds and shouldn’ts, or resistance to the activating force of change. There is, however, a more pronounced pulsing of passion. And a clearer view of what’s pure and true. And, a deeper resonance with the churning, burning reality of unlimited elemental potential.