Tuesday 11 / 11 / 08

From the Sapphire Princess along the Mexican Riviera, a brief update just for the sake of keeping you informed! (Updated 11/12 with pics!)

 

 

SAILING THE SEAS

I’m happy to say I’ve really been able to relax on this cruise ship, even though it’s technically a working vacation. However, I am totally cut off from normal email access, as I wrote on the contact page, so there’s going to be a very serious bottleneck when I get back to LA, I’m sure. Therefore, if you’re writing me or my discussion forum, I’m not seeing it, and will not until at least Saturday night.

[Update: I have since solved this problem by plugging the laptop into a hard line at the Internet cafe, but am still not going to worry about email until I return… I don’t want to use such expensive donated Internet time for this purpose when I SHOULD be on vacation.]

 

 

Princess is by far the best cruise line I’ve done so far, and thus I’m really happy about our having chosen to go this way. The decor is nice, the music is great and our balcony room works well, although we can rarely go out there or leave our door open due to the number of smokers on the ship.

This is typical for every cruise I’ve been on, unfortunately. My room is right below the big window in the front of the ship, on the port side, about five doors back from the front — so the view is very nice.

Although I was vegan / vegetarian for seven years I do now use animal protein — predominantly because I work so much and run my body so hard that I rapidly get weak without it. That being said, the main disappointment thus far with the food has been that most of these dishes are cooked beyond the best point, though exceptions do happen, particularly if you make a special suggestion about it.

I’ve managed to stay on the no-fruit, no-sweet diet I’ve been running for the past two weeks even in the midst of this cornucopia of delicious food, and part of the trick is getting up from the dinner table before they even offer us the dessert menu, and chewing on my cinnamon xylitol gum after dinner to get a taste in my mouth.

 

LOTS OF SYNCHRONICITIES

Yesterday — 11/10 — was my 12-year anniversary of when the readings started in 1996. It seems really cool, and very appropriate, to be here on this ship, with these lovely people, as exactly one cycle of the Chinese Zodiac completes itself.

12 years does seem to have significance as a grand cycle, if you believe the ancient traditions. One of the fascinating connections between Edgar Cayce and me is that we were both born in the Year of the Ox. 

Now a full Chinese Zodiac cycle completes itself on this cruise, right while I’m on the brink of having all the things I’ve worked on, for so long since this connection started, finally coming to fruition. It’s nice!

We’ve had lots of cool synchronicities like this almost from the beginning. It started at PF Chang’s the night before we left. I had a vegan dinner and knew I had to grab the fortune cookie on the right.

I popped it with my hand inside the plastic, not wanting to eat the cookie itself, and was shocked to see that there were three different fortunes tucked into one cookie! In my entire life I’ve never seen anything like this before… so I knew some cool stuff was going on.

Again, I knew no one would believe me unless I photographed it, so here it is: 

 

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Here’s the order that the three messages read once you opened the cookie and flattened them all out. I found the messages to be very internally consistent, and that was also cool:

 

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Obviously the point is for me to open up more and relax my phobias and boundaries around public speaking and interacting with my audience when not onstage. And that’s exactly been what’s happening. I’ve had a really good time!

 

QUITE PAINLESS

After all the flying I’ve done to and from Austin, Texas and other areas, it was wonderful to have a departure out of San Pedro, just south of LAX. It was completely painless to get to Pier 93 for the cruise. We deliberately got there at about 2:30 pm, (last check-in was 3, and they said it would get a lot easier after 1PM), and they were right — there were no lines whatsoever.

We just breezed right onto the ship and our room was all ready to go as soon as we boarded. The entire trip has had that easy-going vibe and it’s been very nice.

 

 

THE LECTURE MATERIAL

I knocked out two full days of lectures while we were at sea, five hours per day, in the Vivaldi dining room on deck 5. There’s a lot more space in there than we need, but the lavishness of the decor has given it a certain “je ne sais quoi” that I find appealing, for all Four Seasons. 

We didn’t get the LCD projector we’d asked for, so I had absolutely nothing scripted or pre-planned to run through. We ARE going to have visuals for the final day at sea, and I will use what I’ve got at that point.

This, of course, means I had to come up with new material that was NOT in the presentation for the first… er… ten hours.

All I had was an exasperatingly quick-drying black magic marker, a pad of large white sheets of paper to scribble on, and whatever I felt like talking about.

Nonetheless, I filled up the talk with a rich array of amazing material that had everyone’s head reeling, and I tried to monitor myself so I didn’t go so fast as to shoot over some people’s heads. Not everyone made it nonetheless, so by the second day I turned the end of it into a big meditation so they could phase out as their attention levels required.

I do many of the same concepts in my various talks and lectures, so that’s part of why I’ve been reticent to put out the next video. Believe it or not, “2012 Enigma” is a collection of ‘extras’ rather than what I would consider to be the core material. That’s part of why I let it go as my first video… it didn’t interfere with my normal material.

Nonetheless, in the next free video I come out with, we’ll be drilling down into this stuff I keep sharing with audiences, and I’ll have to challenge myself to put new things together for future public appearances. Using the production value of Final Cut Studio 2 should make it an even finer product than the last one, and I’ll finally be able to go through that learning curve in late December when I’m in New York.

 

TOPICS AND NEW DIRECTIONS

In the case of this cruise, knowing there were five people in the audience who knew almost nothing about me — and were therefore ‘skeptics’ — made my talks much stronger.

I spent a lot more time than usual setting up the Great Pyramid / Atlantis / Ra connection before ever discussing the Law of One series, and am now convinced this is the best way to approach the material. Start with the solid data — stuff I’ve studied ever since the early 1990s — and then move forward from there.

I’ve also decided to focus in a lot more on dreams, since they remain the principal means by which I maintain contact with my Higher Self and receive guidance. It’s a discipline and a language to learn, but once you get the hang of it and start using it, you’ll very likely decide you want to keep going as often as possible and work with it.

So, that’s one of my new directions. I’ve been documenting dreams for 16 years now and I know a thing or two about the language. It’s time for me to go into more detail sharing it, and that will likely be part of the next wave of my public lectures, because everyone wants to hear directly from their own Higher Self — and this is the best way to do it, in my opinion.

Most people give up far too quickly on the initiation of understanding their dreams, and / or they send me what amounts to a reading request by email, expecting insightful analyses for ridiculously thorough dreams. That falls under the category of paid counseling, which I’m not doing anymore.

The trick is to “teach a man to fish,” so to speak, and this is probably the biggest deficiency I’ve now identified in my work that I can begin turning around. So there will be a lot more coming in this pivotal area.

 

SOCIALIZING

I’m the first to admit to being a social phobic when it comes to conferences. I often have said that I don’t like doing them and that’s not an exaggeration… not because of the lectures, which I am fine with, but because of the management of everything else that comes with the package.  

Truly, I don’t mind meeting people in controlled circumstances, but at large events it can be really overwhelming to have people trying to pull you aside everywhere you go. It’s not that I dislike anyone… far from it. It’s the sheer volume of experiences crashing into your field of view at once, and the fact that you still have to live your life in the midst of it.

When you speak at a large event you never know who’s going to recognize you, and it happens so often that you really do have to plan everything out in advance. That’s why it’s a good idea to have at least one person traveling with you for backup.

Here, I’ve really been able to let my guard down. I know everyone in our group, have met and spoken with each of them personally, and therefore I’m not feeling oppressed in any way. Quite to the contrary, by allowing myself to take in the positive energy I’ve been able to really enjoy the process.

I even had a dream where a birth was about to happen, I was the father, and I realized at the last minute I needed to be there for it to appreciate it. Clearly the dream was talking about opening up with everyone at the conference, and it has indeed felt like a homecoming and “family reunion.”

Kevin has gotten everyone afraid of talking to me in the times where I’m not in public meet-and-greets, which is kind of funny. It’s taken the ‘sport’ out of practicing healthy boundaries and not having anyone feel upset or disappointed… they’re doing the work for me!

I’m glad that everyone’s been able to get the personal touch. I could see this open style working at a maximum of about 100 people on a cruise and that’s about it. I’ve heard of other personalities going up to 700 on cruises like this, and at that point you’d be back to a lecture-only situation, like I have to run with most conferences.

We are planning on doing another one some time next Spring or so, and I feel more comfortable now saying I can reasonably assure each participant of some personal time beyond 30 seconds of quick chatting and handshaking.  

 

GOING TO EXTREMES

Today is one of my three ‘days off,’ even though we’re doing an informal Full Moon ceremony on the top deck of the ship at the stern tomorrow night, and a 1.5-hour lecture after we board from Cabo San Lucas on the last port day. Hopefully at that time we’ll have the LCD projector and I can lay out more of the 2012 case with the appropriate slides.

I was going to sleep away the day — which has been a fantastic experience when available — but my assistant pressured me into doing a shore excursion. Next thing you know I got talked into the most radical thing you can possibly be doing, and paid good money for it.

Yes. Just a few hours ago now, I was “zip-lining” on ropes through tree canopies that were 300 feet high at times, finally rappelling a straight 70-foot drop down to the ground at the end. YEAH!!!

It was really intense… and I had a great time!

None of my conferees happened to be in our touring group, so I had anonymity — no one was asking me “what are you getting”, in classic metaphysical fashion, as I shot through the trees. I’ll answer the question nonetheless… I was getting a serious rush!

This is a shot of me coming in for a landing on the very first run across hundreds of feet of canopy distance, hundreds of feet off the ground. I was the first in my group… and I can honestly say I’m the only one on the CD who doesn’t look terrified as he or she’s coming in for a landing on this first run:

 

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I shelled out the 25 bucks for them to burn me a CD of all the pictures at the end — just so you can admire how much of a dork I look with my little white helmet on and the ball-crushing harness between my legs.   

After going through this and feeling so little fear, I’m ready for sky-diving. Bring it on. Nothing scares me anymore as a result of all I’ve been through. I trusted the ropes and the harness, having friends who did vertical rock-climbing back in New Paltz, and it all went very smoothly.

Even when I was staring 70 feet down from the treetops and about to make the drop, I felt no fear. I told someone who was panicking about the heights that “it’s only psychological fear, there’s no actual danger.”

Then I plunged… WHOOOO!!!! Here’s an image of me, hurtling straight down at top speed. You can see the wind resistance pushing against my nose and upper lip, making it look like I’m sneering: 

 

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A split-second after this picture was taken I landed, and said, “Yeah, it’s great. No problem at all. Go for it!!!”

Despite my anonymity (there are 2800 passengers on this ship and only 50 attending my event), I ended up leading our entire rappelling group by being the first one to subject himself to each stage of the initiation as it went along, from the first ride to the last.

We did a total of nine different zip-line rides across thousands of feet of open, free space above the jungle tree canopies — and I can honestly say that with all the very real concerns and issues I manage in my daily life, doing these “extreme sports” activities was all fun, no fear.

I never had a sense of vertigo or terror of heights, even while standing on waffle-like platforms on trees hundreds of feet above the ground, with nothing but a rope harness holding me there.

 

THANKS FOR THE DONATION!!!

Unfortunately I cannot access the Internet except on the ship’s computer, and this update is coming to you courtesy of one of my conferees who donated 276 minutes of Internet time to me — which around here has a street value of several thousand dollars. (OK, it’s a little over 100, but still…)

Synchronicity! Just as I mentioned the man who donated Internet time to me, he came walking in and we just had a conversation. He was planning on logging on but is going to give me as much time as I need to finish writing this up… so here we are!

The most dangerous part of the rappelling trip, actually, was the truck ride to the place as we headed up through this rocky road in the mountains, strapped in only with lap belts as we rocked and swayed through the water-damaged roads.

On the way back from the canopy rides, I noticed a motorcyclist and felt a strong energy around him. I pointed him out to the others. They kept watching him and he got struck by a bus and knocked off his bike, but was unharmed. He tried to pass it on the left as it made a lane change, and he wiped out into grass. I saw him get up just as we went out of view.

Despite Larry’s love of his Goldwing, this came to me as another synchronistic sign not to get involved with motorcycles, as the possibility of “random catalyst” that could seriously damage my ability to function, if not end my life, is just too high. So I took that lesson very seriously.

Tomorrow we’re not too hip on any of the shore excursions — they want your @$$ out of bed at 9AM at the latest in most cases and I want to sleep — so we’re going to play it by ear. Nonetheless, this is the most fun, and the best sleep, I’ve had in a long time. The athletic rush from the rappelling was awesome and the community vibe we’ve created is great.

I’m looking forward to finishing Wanderer Awakening when I get back… and hopefully we’re closing in on the final financing of CONVERGENCE, so we can get started with production very soon!

I hope this message finds you well… just some ‘tales from the trail’ while I’m on vacation!

 

UPDATE 11/12: OOPS!

I was in such a hurry yesterday to get out of here once my Internet donor showed up that I mis-typed the comment code for this post, meaning no one could leave comments as they usually would. My bad. C’est la vie.

Anyway, I’ve fixed the problem, so if you want to comment on this little rambling connection of personal thoughts, by all means… be my guest! As always, we thank you for your ongoing support.

I got a LONG night’s sleep last night — some nine hours in a row — and we’re taking the day very slowly, not pushing any shore excursions. I may just sleep some more. I’ve been thinking a lot about Wanderer Awakening and am really looking forward to finishing it!

 

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