Total True Love = Reconciliation, A New Earth Discussion Part 17

Discover The Secrets To Finding Your Soul Mate

When in graduate school studying applied behavioral science, we often spoke of congruence between your inner self and your outer actions. Our goal was integration of the two, so we would live and practice our specialty with authenticity.

We also talked about specific events in our lives as a microcosm of our larger lives and the world at large.

Tolle takes even a larger macro view and speaks of the purpose of the universe is ‘the reconciliation of outer and inner purpose: to bring the essence – consciousness – into the world of form and thereby transform the world.’

Several years ago, I had a crisis of self – who am I in the world. Until that point in my life I had pretty much achieved whatever I had attempted with determination. However, my chosen industry was changing, and I knew the change did not include me. I went to work every day, not liking it, yet not knowing what else to do. So, I did the same old stuff.

Then, an opportunity appeared that for some still unknown reason, I seized. I get sea sick in a big way and one of the things I had always said is that I’d never do any open water sailing. Yet, I sign up to crew on a 40-foot sailing yacht heading from Tahiti to Hawaii. I was one of four women aboard. What was I thinking?

I was so stuck in my indecision about my life that I had to do something more scary than my everyday life to put my everyday life in perspective. So I spent 20 plus days out of sight of land, much of that time alone.

I will tell you just ‘being’ on that sailboat was some of the hardest times of my life. Physically, I lost 3 cloth sizes – the food wasn’t great and the seas not all that calm. I exercised 24-7 for nearly one month. Even sleeping was exercise because I had to brace myself into my bunk at night to stay in my bunk as we rocked and rolled with the swells.

I remember one night when I couldn’t tell where the boat stopped and the ocean, the rest of the world started. This was one of the most eerie feelings I have ever experienced. We only saw one other ship the entire time we were at sea, but I was on watch that night and I couldn’t see anything. It wasn’t foggy, it wasn’t clear. It was as if the little boat that I was on was suspended in something that I still can’t explain.

There was no difference between the inside and the outside. There just was existence. I wasn’t comfortable with this feeling, this experience. I adjusted my safety harness and went to the bow, I could see nothing. I was looking into nothingness. I remember stretching my arm out to see if I could see my hand – I could but…

Was I looking into my own soul? Was there emptiness, nothingness in my soul? Was this the universe saying to me ‘Colleen, live in the now, let the future go, experience yourself NOW. I, the universe, am here to help you do this.’ Experience yourself now, there is nothing else.

I don’t remember exactly enjoying the experience because I kept envisioning a huge ship looming directly over me as I sat in the cockpit of our tiny boat the person responsible for our safety of three sleeping people. I was the person entrusted with their very lives.

Did you ever read ‘Dove?' It’s the story of a young man who soloed the globe in his small sail boat named Dove. The one passage I remember is when he woke from a deep sleep to a low rumbling that quickly registered as engines. He frantically rushed on deck in time to see the side of a multistory wall of metal slide nearly close enough for him to touch. Another two feet and he would have been dead.

In my 20’s, I crewed on a two-person, 48-foot salmon fishing boat in northern California. The skipper, Henry, took great joy in telling tales of how boats went out and were never heard of again. No I wasn’t in the Bermuda Triangle. At night the entire salmon fleet turns off their engines and drift for 8 hours while they sleep - just inside the commercial shipping lanes. That’s big ships – big ships!

Well, my imagination was in full gear even while I tried to sleep on my first trip out on Henry's salmon fishing boat. The result was several trips to the head (bathroom) every night for awhile. Of course, I would stick my head outside the cabin and look around; GOING to the head was just a convenient excuse.

There it was… I could have thrown a softball onto the deck of a fishing boat just like the one I was on. We were too close I was sure, so I woke up the Skipper. He, on the other hand, was sure I was exaggerating. He knew he had told me a lot of sea stories – greatly exaggerated but true none the less. He too started thinking and about ten minutes later I heard him put on his boots and climbs up on deck to have a look for himself.

The engines lurched to life. I was out of my bunk in a second, into my boots and on deck. Skipper said “We’re probably okay." But just to be sure we motored off for about twenty minutes before we again turned off our engines to continue our nightly drift/ sleep. I slept really well the rest of that night. Smug in knowing that I had averted a disaster.

So the night I couldn’t see five feet in front of our little boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and international shipping lanes, I was a bit nervous. Actually, a lot nervous.

I tried to keep my ‘thoughts’ in check and enjoy the experience that I knew was rare and special.

I knew this experience was about me. I knew it was especially for me to stop looking outside of myself and to start looking inside in the present moment. I was more afraid of this than of any big ship.

But, wasn’t this why I had come on this trip – to sort out my life, to figure out who Colleen was (inner purpose), to figure out what Colleen wanted to do with the rest of her life (outer purpose)?

I returned home having survived the rough seas, the shapeless nights, the loneliness of inner drifting, and the loneliness of not having like-minded comrades.

I think the universe was conspiring for my good. On that trip, I was lonelier than I had ever been in my life even though I was on a 38 foot boat with three other women. The universe gave me exactly what I had wanted – space and time to think about who I was to the point where I couldn’t think anymore. I could just be. And believe me this was painful.

I believe I was so lonely because I was learning how to be a friend to myself. Now, years later I enjoy being alone, I cherish my alone times like my mornings. I do crave other people too, but now it’s different. I’m not always looking to others for answers.

In fact, I’ve gone a little overboard in being self-contained. I’m now relearning how to ask for help.

I am bringing the equilibrium back between my inner and outer purpose. I’m relinquishing the self-imposed worldly values and re-embracing the values of my essential self, the self that I laid aside to become ‘successful’ in the eyes of the world.

This is funny in relation to Tolle’s statement that you can not become successful – you can only be successful.

I’m having to give up, surrender and be.

A friend of mine, Intimacy Coach Jeannine Hall, said to me ‘I think you should use the same process you use in the Total True Love system, to figure out how you want to be in the world. Step 2 is surrender and Step 4 is to be. The last step (#5) is to do.'

Thank you Coach Jeannine for reminding me to practice what I preach.