Finally Friday Week 21: Purging in Paradise

There's something I didn't mention. I came down with a pretty bad cold. The kind that keeps you in bed with a stack of Kleenex on your belly, a good book, cough drops—the works! Yes, you can get sick in paradise. I am :)

But the interesting thing is, I'm still enjoying my time here. Sure, night time is a bit rough with the coughing and such, but I usually feel a bit better during the daytime and have enough energy to go on one adventure. Luckily, I think the cold is on its final stretch to the finish line, thank goodness.

We are in the most gorgeous setting, so it's actually rather healing. We are way up in the hills of Kula at the base of the Mt. Haleakala farm sitting for friends. Yoon says my body is purging out all the impurities in this high vortex place. I'd like to look at it that way. It's given me an opportunity to slow down. In fact, whether I have a cold or not, this place makes you move very slow. It's not the kind of place where you are surrounded by tourists and you feel the need to check activities off a list.

Here, we feel we are not tourists. We are locals. I even went to the clinic here and Yoon drives a big truck that says Practice Aloha on the bumper. I have a CVS card and everyone thinks we are local.

This place calls us not to go out, but to sink in. It sings and vibrates and moves. A whirl of energy mixed with the fragrance of flowers, fluttering birds, trade winds from the coast, plants, vegetables, sun and light. It's really all about the light and the air and the stars. They make you stand still. You can't move. You don't remember what you planned to do, because you are just right here.

I'm right here.

No agenda.

Just wake up and see what happens.

And peacocks happened actually. We were up on the Hana Highway where we decided to stop off at Garden of Eden. We couldn't resist the name. Wow, what a gem of a place! The first thing I saw as we entered was a large male peacock. Peacocks have been on my mind for months now lately. The peacock began to follow me. Later we found a female and her baby and then the same thing happened. Around and around we went together near a picnic bench. I would think she'd want to protect her baby, but she wanted to scope me out. Maybe she was looking for food? I decided it was a sign. I needed a sign anyway. I decided that peacocks are my "spirit animal".

I looked it up online and it said that peacocks represent immortality and rebirth. They also represent royalty and prosperity. On a website called www.universeofsymbolism.com I read this quote: "With a peacock as your animal guide, he will tell you the power of believing that all things come in perfect timing, just trust the process and allow the Universe to do it's magic working on your behalf."

So with all this purging in paradise, perhaps I'm going through a kind of transformation. Maybe I'm becoming a peacock? No, in all seriousness, I do feel like something wants to work itself out of me. It could be just the cold, but I feel like it's a bit more than that. I feel I have been becoming a different person for a very long time, but I'm still holding on to old patterns and beliefs. These pull me down, really. So this purging, if I were to look at it metaphorically, really is a pulling out of who I used to be. It's not always easy to let that go. There's lots of fear in letting go of the identities we create.

I'm going to "trust the process," as the quote says. At times, up here, it feels like nothing is happening, but I know so much is going on. More than I can even comprehend.

Finally Friday Week 20: Living Wild in Maui

A rainbow on our journey up to the farm

"Nana ka maka;
ho`olohe ka pepeiao;
pa`a ka waha."

"Observe with the eyes;
listen with the ears;
shut the mouth."

—Hawaiian Proverb

We are tending to a friend's farm for several weeks out here in the wilds of Maui, Hawaii. It's an outdoor living style. The kitchen is outside and we sleep in a geodesic dome and use the outside shower. We are taking care of two cute pups, 6 chickens, an amazing garden.

Life moves at a slower pace here. I'm sitting in the open air kitchen sipping Hawaiian ginger tea with fresh picked limes from the lime tree. Every now and then a hen comes along and plops down in front of me and then gets up, cackles and pecks at something in the rocks, and then wanders off. We don't feel the need to do too much out here except tend to our farming duties. We aren't farmers at home, except for the little garden we have in the front yard that a dear friend is watering while we are away.

The kale and Swiss chard here put my kale and Swiss chard to shame. These are not plants, these are TREES. I've never seen a kale tree grow anywhere else, so my husband and I figure it must be all the Aloha out here on this island in the middle of the Pacific. Here's what they look like:

Besides gathering eggs from the hens everyday, there are plenty of fruit trees bearing lots of fruit right now. The avacados are humungous and delicious and there are also bananas, mangoes, limes, tangerines and peaches all growing right above our heads!

And the flowers...well, there's nothing like the flowers on Hawaii: hibiscus, bird of paradise and, my favorite, plumeria.

The tropical rains have moved in, so I've moved the pups inside the dome where we are hiding out until it passes. Rains last a very short time here. The big chimes are blowing gently in the wind and birds of all varieties are singing their songs. Out in the pasture beyond, past the goats that graze in the gulch, I saw a pair of spotted dear. The male had huge antlers. And a few days ago a bright orange cardinal flew into the open air kitchen and kept trying to fly out the window rather than out the other side which was open to the outdoors. Yoon had to catch him and set him free. 

We feel so fortunate that our friends are willing to share their piece of paradise with us and we are tempted to live out in the wilds of Hawaii too someday. There must be a reason why we keep coming back to these islands every year. When you get away from all the tourists and the hoopla and really sink into Aloha, let it enter you and feed your soul, things really start to shift. They say the islands magnify everything and change happens super fast. It you set an intention here, it's bound to take hold much faster than it normally would. I think I believe that.