This is my first post on Steemit!
I'm super excited about what's happening right now in the technology space.
And I am equally excited to meet some of the highly activated geniuses who are working in this arena, creating Heaven on Earth.
That being said, I'm not happy with this reality and my new goal in life is to implement sustainable change.
Image compliments of @samstonehill who has kindly been guiding me here on Steemit
What I'm focusing on right now at the moment is how to recreate the most amazing thing I've ever experienced in my 32 years on Earth
The power of Permaculture
The picture at the top of this post is a very special one for me. I took it on a Sunday morning at an undisclosed location in rural Maui. It was a place that I fell in love with because it taught me many lessons and showed me a NEW WORLD available to us ALL.
I will tell you more about this story as I get to know you.
But what I can tell you now it that this place changed me forever!
I have dreamed of being an inventor since the age of 4!
Having always loved the idea of creating, I felt as if my calling was to create things that people would use. I was told I needed to go to engineering school which I did... and my lasting memory from this experience is feeling suicidal towards the end of my final semester after 2 nights of no sleep and a monumental load of stress!
Welcome to THE CONTROL SYSTEM!
After school I gained corporate employment as many do and worked really hard to get to the top. Within 2 years, I was managing people 25 years older than me and I found myself in a myriad of uncomfortable situations. I did everything all of my elders told me to do that would produce the formula for ultimate fulfilment.
Even though I had a classy' spot, a nice car, a really expensive road bike and took my girlfriend out of town every weekend to throw money around on expensive dinners and nice destinations; I wasn't fulfilled at the core. I had started dabbling in the realm of being an internet entrepreneurship at some point and found this fulfilling at some level, the idea of freedom. But I decided to end my 5 year partnership with my girlfriend and a month later I got fired from my job and right after that found out my closest guy friend was getting married and I wasn't even in the wedding. Ouch!
I decided to work as a snowboard instructor in Lake Tahoe and get out of Fresno where I grew up.
source
While there, I met 2 people who inspired me to go to Colorado for the next season, these were baby steps I needed to expand. In Colorado, I met a woman who just came back from teaching English in Thailand, so naturally that was what I did next.
Coming back to the U.S. after that was hard, I had major falling outs with people I had been close with for years and realized there was a deep rooted problem. I didn't know what was going on and I could hardly articulate it.
Then, a friend of mine said he was heading to Hawaii to go woofing (working on organic farms). I had typically thought of Hawaii as some silly tourist island, just another part of the U.S.
And this lead to the most profound experience of my life...
Farm Life
The first farm I lived on, I got to experience the amazingness of eating most of my food from the land and I met the original founder of the company Seeds of Change, he inspired the daylights out of me. Then, I was asked to move on as happens a lot when working on farms and I stumbled into a retreat center/community.
Even though it was a very confused place, it was my first opportunity to live this ultra healthy lifestyle and live in community with super amazing people. While here, I got very plugged into the community because we hosted so many events, yoga, cacao ceremony, dance, etc. While here, I went to the Hawaiian tantra festival which was a surreal and heart open experience.
I ended up moving to a vipassina meditation community for the next 3 months which was really hard for me because I'm very social and like connection; the opposite of what this place represented. I was told I needed to find another place after 3 months here, I went to a community I was told was one of the most cutting edge ones on the big island known as Gaia Yoga. I was less than overwhelmed. It was gross and unrefined to me and they were completely raw, and they ate meat.
Sorry to my vegan friends, but I killed a chicken and ate it raw including all the organs!
One of my friends I really connected with at the Hawaiian Tantra fest invited me to the Ram Dass retreat on Maui and offered to sponsor the ticket as it was quite expensive. I accepted and went to Maui with intentions to return to the Big Island for a job opportunity.
Getting to meet Ram Dass was amazing and inspiring. I lined up a stay at a small 1 acre banana farm for a few weeks. A guy I met at the Ram Dass retreat offered to take me there after the retreat and took me surfing before dropping me off. He told me, if I do 1 thing while on Maui was to go to this farm to table cafe on the most remote side of Maui.
My last Saturday on Maui before flying back to the Big Island, I went to this musical gathering and connected with this guy named Josh and told him about this farm to table cafe. He had been living in Maui for over a year and said he had heard of it and wanted to go. He decided to go the next day and offered me a ride in his van with 3-4 other people that smelled like they hadn't showered in about a week. It was a 3-4 hour car ride and I got completely sick. When we finally got out, I knew I was somewhere incredibly special.
The lighting was very well done and there was a touch of class I hadn't experienced on any other farms quite like this. I was immediately greeted by this 62 year old woman who I felt attracted to. I had never felt attracted to a woman this much older than me so I knew I was somewhere special.
My first question was if she offered work trades and she immediately said no. I didn't have any money so I offered to do dishes to the cook, this beautiful young woman and she agreed. The evening was fantastic, there were songs about the future of the Earth and how we would all live on the land just as the people did here. It was obvious to me that I needed to be here, so I did all of the dishes after dinner and just kept helping.
There was one point when one of the guys who appeared to be a hard worker offered to sponsor me which presented itself as an "in" to me. He was happy with me until he asked me to put water on the fire at what must have been 3 or 4am. I filled up this large kettle and dumped it on the fire and he began yelling. He meant for me to heat it up which didn't register at such an odd time.
What was so unique about this community?
- 100% of the food came from the land
- The community was made of up travelers, successful entrepreneurs and incredibly talenetd musicians
- The land was more beautiful than any other land I had seen
- There was a tipi and moloka for ceremony
- It was consistently immaculate
- It was incredibly abundant (It fed the entire community plus 70+ people each week)
Long story short; I ended up getting in here, becoming a community leader and I even got to facilitate the weekly logistics meetings which was the biggest honor of my life.
I could have stayed there forever, but in the end I was asked to leave because I met a woman I fell in love with who was flown out by one of the original investors of this community who had "immunity".
That was almost a year ago and I've thought about this place on a minutely basis ever since.
I know now it is my life mission to recreate this place somewhere else and I am currently looking at locations in Indonesia.
Please follow my posts for more info on the ongoing development of my dream, which I hope in time will benefit the lives of many.
It is my intention to teach about how YOU CAN DO THIS TOO through steemit.
Thanks for reading!
Image on top: Source
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Welcome and Thank You for being with us!! Following your Blog now
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Welcome to Steem @onecliffd I have upvoted and sent you a tip
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Welcome Onecliffd its good to see more new users around. Have fun in this community. I wish you many followers and new friends :-) Cheers @chrisx
Thank you @chrisx
Hello @onecliffd. Welcome to Steemit. I am David. I wish you have a happy journey here.
Thank you @davidzach!! :D
COOL! :]
Y E S ! !
Welcome to Steemit my friend. It a great place and I think you'll fit right in!
You've been some amazing places. I am getting into permaculture hopefully we will share some thoughts of this at some point.
Great to connect :)
@vibeof100monkeys Thanks for the warm welcome, glad to hear you already know some about permaculture. This is really starting to get big!
Sure is and it makes so much sense. Look forward to learning more.
Hello @onecliffd, welcome to Steemit! Thank you for your article.
Quite inspiring to see such soulful places still exist on earth.
Hope to read more from you.
Here is My STEEMIT Purpose
Thanks for reading @zachjohn, yes there is hope for us humans!!
I love Gandhi and the pumpkins make me happy.
Time for Thanksgiving.
Awww, yes indeed!
Welcome onecliffd to Steemit.
Thanks @wayfaraway
Hi man, awesome post and great thinking
I will definitely follow you and wait for your next post
Upvoted
Thanks @jordan1982
Welcome to Steemit onecliffd.
Thanks @hackerwhacker
A really strong intro post here. Great work ;)
Looking forward to learning more about permaculture!
Thanks @samstonehill
welcome to steemit @onecliffd
Thank you @evimeria
Welcome and Thank You for being with us!! Following your Blog now
Welcome! Followed. Follow me back 😘
Welcome on steemit
Greetings @onecliffd, nice move joining steem!