My Official Welcome...I had to study today and finish my online Biology class prior to next week's final. I expect that the week to follow will be fairly low key with the fact that I also have to do my Chemistry prerequisite required by my school to join the program. This next week is going to be fairly busy and rather ordinary. I'm glad I'm switching hotels starting tomorrow. Air conditioning, a proper mattress, and a secure room will do wonders. I'm actually very shocked that the
Kona Islander Inn was available for $49 a day. After this next week in Kona, I'll move to a
bed and breakfast near the town of Volcano to the south of Hilo for $35 a night till I move into my new place on the 14th.
I was trying to postpone doing my homework today for as long as possible. I was asked a question by a friend and former roommate from College. We hadn't spoked in many years and after connecting on Facebook he asked me what had me change careers from technology project management to Oriental Medicine. I found myself writing the answer out in full for the first time.
After sending the letter off, I decided to further postpone my homework by going to a local artisans arts and crafts fair at King Kamehameha hotel. There I found a beautifully carved fishhook necklace made out of semi-transparent pig's cartilage - yes, an odd medium, I know. The artist and his wife were displaying many of their fineries and this necklace was unique, quite beautiful, and symbolic of my undertaking. Upon purchasing it, the native Hawaiian artist got up and placed the fish hook Lei (a symbol of hard work, blessing and perseverance) around my neck with a native greeting. I walked out of there strangely moved by how this symbolic gesture was in fact my official welcome to this beautiful place and a new life.
The Crushing of the Spirit...For those who
don't want to hear my societal admonitions, and socio-political ramblings, please feel free to skip to the next post... this is more for my own purging than for anything useful for the casual reader :)
For readers who don't know me, I've been a Software Developer for the past 14 years. 8 of those years have been spent at one company. While starting as a Software Developer I knew that I wanted to work with people. This led to my progression into Project Management, Directorship, and later a Vice Presidential position.
My company had over 80 individuals when I started there in 2000. After two rounds of layoffs the total staff dropped to 23. I was one of the few who survived - a total of 6 in my department. With the layoffs we lost all of the administrative talent which theretofore had allowed us to maintain a rigorous, consistent, well documented, fully planned and vetted quality software development process - a process which resulted in everyone being satisfied, with stress level kept to a minimum. After the layoffs we had to cut corners and be extremely frugal with our resources to continue to deliver products very quickly. This required each individual's deep commitment to excellence under very stressful circumstances as the company was running out of money during the dot.com bubble burst.
Even after taking the company public on the Nasdaq exchange and growth to over 600 employees with several acquisitions, the technology team was severely understaffed in terms of administrative support. The dedication of the team allowed us to produce exceptional results under high pressure, the success of which became the ultimate thorn in our side. The business saw what we could produce and could not be convinced that the cost of production was unsustainable.
The business got the software they deserved under these conditions, as the team was marginalized as a support function, fulfilling the bidding of every small short-sighted change each user could demand, rather than the result of an integral part of a well though out decision making process
The years of stress over keeping all the balls in the air and taking personal responsibility for all problem resolution between the business and the technology platform while unsupported trying to develop consistent specifications eventually took their toll on my emotional, mental, physical and spiritual health. I had become the company's lackey and my identity was fused with the machine which I had become part of.
For years now I've been growing increasingly weary of solving problems which could have been prevented. This robbed me of my pride in the company, my sense of purpose, and a sense of true contribution to the greater whole. Furthermore, its not like my company was a Mother Teresa with some cause to help human beings have a better life, i.e., a cause worth suffering over. The company is a for-profit capitalistic enterprise with its own self-interest at heart. That is not to say that the people who lead it are themselves so - they are some of the most caring, compassionate, trustworthy, dedicated, and faithful individuals I've had the privilege to work with, all caught in the same mean grinder. After all, if it were otherwise, I would not have dedicated 8 years of my life to working with them. I will miss their encouragement, support, and camaraderie.
Technology was paying the bills, but it was only as rewarding as the people I got to work with in the amount of problems we could solve together while making each other's lives easier. This was the original reason I switched my career to management so as to have more direct influence in the decision making and problem solving process.
They made me VP for my efforts. I was thankful for the recognition, and I saw it as a gesture commemorating my years of dedication. This was not however a position asked or or wanted as its awarding was essentially meaningless. I came as a software developer and would always be regarded by the executive staff as having come from there. People only listen to new external talent because for some strange reason there is a belief that the external talent has more wisdom about what changes need to be made than the individuals who actually do the job day in and day out. This may be true if those that work there are resigned, cynical, and dead to the possibility of change as an external force can inject new life into such a situation. This has been the case with my new boss who has been the most impressive healing presence to the dysfunction of the organization. I knew I liked him when he and I first met. Little did I know how that I could expect miracles from a person who's committed to a healthy working environment where everyone succeeds. As a VP I felt impotent, having no budget, no staff. I never referred to myself as a VP with new people I met, because to me the title was a farce.
Individual and group health are values still respected in other parts of the world at the societal level where employers treat their employees like human beings - i.e. as a functioning unit and not just as individuals. This is by no means the rule. It is unfortunately an exception. This behavior is not a cancer within my particular company as much as it is the cancer of the so-called progress, globalization, and the quickening within which my company has to function in order to remain competitive in a marketplace which has fostered this devolution of standards of human well-being for the promise of a quick buck and instant fame. Entrepreneurs have to work their asses off to have a business succeed in today's age. This demands more and more of people with less and less return.
While my compensation was always great, it was all going into expenses to live into the survival game called 'The American Dream'. A game created by those who invented the game of "He who has most wins". Its a good game as far as games go. Its as good of a game any game we humans play. But in order for the game to be interesting, there have to be risks involved - i.e., you get to starve, be hungry, be shunned, or you can die. If there were no risks in the game, what would be the point of playing? All of my money went into frivolous purchases and hobbies which were aimed at creating a sanctuary out of my home, filled with things that were few, but of quality. Its interesting when you have a feeling of exhilaration at an initial purchase which soon fades when the reality of what you have to do to continue maintaining your ever more complicated lifestyle dawns on you. I tried to live as hard as I worked rather than hoarding my money all for a day somewhere in the unknown future where I would some day be free to enjoy it.
The Game of Life...At some point many years ago, I realized this game was being played and I had been convinced by everyone in my society that it was a good game, with lots of pretty shiny things as rewards which would make it worth playing. We as humans have nothing better to do with our time, so we invent these games and go around convincing each other than our games are better than other people's games. Those who unplugged from a particular social group's game must have been crazy in the head. They must have lost their bearings on what it is to be a functional member of society. Groups hate it when you leave. Groups are maintained through an agreement to play by certain rules. When a player refuses to play by the rules, the group shuns them.
If I didn't want the pretty shiny things as promised by the makers of the game, the prize at the very least would be safety and security and never needing to grow hungry. All these fears are founded in a notion that human beings are fundamentally bad and cannot be trusted to help each other, share in their abundance, and look after each other's interests. Its a game of everyone for themselves. It should be noted that this new game hadn't existed in cultures pre-globalization and pre-West. That is to say, people had families and cultural traditions. Everyone looked after everyone else.
No doubt every system has its problems but cultures such as the French offer their employees up to 3 months of paid vacation a year, and a 30 hour workweek so that people don't rush from the maternity ward to the office to the crematorium but actually spend time with their families. And imagine - France has remained competitive in the marketplace and its people are for the most part healthier as a result. Mediterranean cultures for example have a siesta system. What a wonderful concept!
I had to blow the whistle on my own life and declare "game over" to quit the rat race.
The Awakening...At a point there came the realization that this job would be like any other job in any capitalistic society which values individualized success over the success of the whole - 2.4 kids, a Mc Mansion and an SUV over paid vacation time, people's health, and quality of life with everyone living in little boxes, the construction of which today robs houses of their soul. Gone are the days of the family hearth, and multi-generational groups spending time with each other. Western society is primarily a society of lonely and isolated people living in groups as lonely and isolated people.
People who are convinced of playing the individualistic 'everyone for themselves' game are convinced that security is the reason they must conform to capitalistic games so as to ensure that their individualistic agenda is kept safe and secure through an illusion that income can provide one with 'freedom'. Freedom is a completely perverted concept in the West where the original beautify of the word has been lost and replaced with a cardboard cutout.
Individualism and Capitalism is fundamentally rooted in fear and mistrust of your fellow man. Scarcity as the primary motivator, rather than Abundance is drilled into every human being at birth, so much so that the fear of scarcity becomes a core part of one's subconscious functioning in within a society. People generally do not have control over that which is hidden from them, until they awaken to the insight. These bad news insights often come with a burden of comparing inconsistencies of your new insight's value system to the live you've woken up into. The responsibility for restoring integrity to one's belief systems then becomes the internal demon one must fight.
Its important to note that the game can only be fun if you've forgotten you've made it up in the first place. If you knew you made it up, you wouldn't have room to bitch! This is the reason why for many years I have personally chosen to remain ignorant of the true motivators of my actions. Instead, I would point fingers externally at the world stating that the problem is out there allows you to absolve yourself of the responsibility for your life completely. The opening of one's eyes and admitting that you are the creator of your own world is a most frightening and uncomfortable undertaking.
He who has no fear can become boisterous in the things they undertake in life as they realize that retribution is irrelevant and no longer a factor. This is what was meant by Jesus when he stated that you must first become as the child in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. A child is a boisterous creature with no fear. However, the child with no fear is a child that is intensely dangerous, because he or she can make and destroy anything he or she wishes without sympathy. It is only in the re-becoming a child does the adult get to keep the wisdom of humanistic conduct, while becoming the Shiva of creation and destruction. This is why children and sages are feared - they are unpredictable and refuse to play by the rules made up by society's agreement. You can bend the mind of a child as every society does to create conformity for the sake of the tribe's survival, but you can no longer break or snap a supple and flexible mind of a sage. It is this attained wisdom that allows sages like Gandhi, Nelson Mandela to love his captors unconditionally.
Why Hawaii...Liberation can be found anywhere. Of course not everyone can flock to Hawaii, as then the plce would be overrun. But there are places elsewhere in the world - Alaska, Montana, or Colorado, or somewhere in old Europe which provide the same level of spiritual nourishment.
For me, the place was Hawaii. I visited the islands 2 years ago and fell in love with the culture, its people, and the land. I knew I wanted to move here. At the top of the Haleakala, at 4:30am I was amongst a group of people who had come to see the sunrise. There I met a photographer who had sold her law practice in Boston and moved to the island 3 months after having visited for the first time. She was going to work as a pro photographer. I kept wondering why I didn't have those balls. About a year ago, a good friend of mine at work, the Director of Marketing decided to quit her position and go to culinary school to learn to be a pastry chef. She's now enjoying a life she loves. I kept seeing evidence of people checking out of the game. Its what happens when you take the red pill, Neo.
Moreover, I see what the cost to my friends who have risen to the top of their games, or worked very hard at their various degree programs, or have being bought to do jobs that do not truly nourish their lives. Some become alcoholics, or weekend warriors or develop other forms of compensatory dysfunctions. In western society with are at the mercy of the sympathetic nervous system which constantly has to keep the body on alert with the release of corticosteroids and adrenaline. Many cultures believed that the adrenal grands which produce these hormones - if depleted through stressful conditions and 'fast life' would eventually lead to your death. There is only so much adrenaline that your body will be able to produce. People who take speed or coke essentially purge the contents of their adrenal glands in living a speedy life. This leads to the premature aging and loss of life you can see in the drug users. A stressful life bears out the same results.
Its never really the work that people do that is the problem. It could be in technology, in law, in politics, in the arts, etc. Work may have various levels of reward, but if it does not speak to one's basic human needs for love, health, fulfillment, and true contribution, then the perks can only bribe your soul for so long, before your soul starts turning dark. Its that fact whereby today's workplaces have become completely dehumanizing. If one dedicates themselves to doing something they truly love, then what they get back in positive energy is the life force that makes life worth living.
Blowing the Whistle, Inventing a new Future to Step into, and the Doorway...I grew very tired of hating my so-called life and needed an exit strategy. What I didn't have was 'something to do' after I left. I had become so disconnected from myself that I had forgotten how to dream. Something kids do regularly.
I didn't want to simply consult in the same line of business which I grew so tired from, nor did I want to find work for another company out here doing a similar thing. So for the past 2 years I've been questing for a dream to follow. In the past two years I had taken the Landmark Forum, started a T'ai Chi practice, Qi Gong, meditation, and became extremely interested in Asiana and traditional medical practices of many cultures.
All of this was birthed from my love of the the mysteries in life, and the realization that magic is not only possible, but very real. The power of human potential was known to the ancients before being buried or crushed by those who feared its power in the political climate of their day. Various traditions have an end of the world myth. Many of which state that in the latter days, where man will consume the earth with his greed, the earth will revolt in protest at our custody of it. Then the awakening of the people will take place. Many will bring the hidden arts of healing to help restore balance from the places where the knowledge was hidden and secretly passed on so that it would survive. It is in globalization that the many secrets of the ancients from the Yin of the East have surfaced to balance the Yang of the West. The world and all creation is duality. All balances itself and swings to opposing poles in its own time. In the latter days we have an opportunity to start the swing back in the other direction. Unfortunately for us as a race, the destruction of our own planet will bring about the apocalypse on its own, and that's ok, because after another ice age or two, the planet will once against bare fruit to humans.
Why Acupuncture...I became a Reiki practitioner to aid in my meditative and internal alchemy practice and to integrate it into my healing. I had been going to acupuncture treatments and became very interested in a degree program at
Tai Sophia institute in Maryland. The catch was, I had left college 10 years ago with 61 credits and most acupuncture schools required a bachelors.
I realized that my passion for problem solving and leadership could only be rewarding to a certain extent where I was working. Yes I got to help people in my job, but now I realized that I was playing a game which was too small for my potential to help people. My love of helping people could very easily translate to medicine - where in a holistic context I can work with people in the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual realms together through coaching skills I learned and developed over the years, coupled with natural healing, and a peaceful disposition a personal buddhist spiritual philosophy and practice afforded me.
The Call of the Siren...Four months ago I was sitting at Starbucks while casually browsing and daydreaming of an education in traditional medicine. When I came across the college in Hawaii, it hit me that this was the answer to my disquiet, and a new focus for my energy. I looked at their prerequisites, and they required only 60 college credits. I couldn't believe it. Their program is an intensive 4 year program that combines into a very thorough training, which more than compensates for the lack of a completed bachelors.
After I'm done I may open an acupuncture and herbology clinic. From there, I hope to grow the clinic into an integrative medical practice somewhere, and turn it into an energy medicine and integral medicine research institute and potentially a college of my own. I'm not really sure what will happen, but the wonders which I have personally discovered could restore our corporate office, homes, and personal lives back into homeostasis. I have no illusions of changing the world. I think our race's time has come. What I can do is help those who seek their own path bring forth their own miraculous potential in whatever form was granted to them or developed.
Going to Japan to live in a Buddhist monastery for a while wouldn't be out of the question either :)
The Preparations & The Decision to Leave...After making my decision 4 months ago, I put my house on the market, and started selling all of the crap I had managed to accumulate over the years. I handed in my notice with a transition strategy which would keep me employed on a consulting basis. My boss freaked out because I was leaving during another major growth spurt of our company, but after reading over my proposal he saw a potential in my leaving. Its funny how you only get to do what you really want to do for a company after you say you're leaving.
Right now I'm doing strategic business concept design for a new unifying architecture across the company's many divisions. Its very dry technical writing, but offers me an outlet for sophisticated levels of creative thinking, but its the first time that the company will actually have a document describing what it does in detail, while describing the concepts we need to engineer our business processes for if the company is to sustain its growth.
All Cycles End...I'm not sure what I'll do when I finally do leave the company. I think we may part ways in the next 6 months to a year. Mainly because either mine, or their appetite for employment will cease, and after I finish the major deliverable, my 8 years worth of business knowledge will soon become replaced by people who will be there on the ground to take on what I left off. Of course I can continue to review all project briefs to ensure they all attempt to implement the overall strategic vision. I'm not sure how much work is in that, but it can be considerable given our undertaking.
Over time I will cease being useful to them and we'll mutually agree to separate. Its how it should be I suppose, but in the mean time its a good transition plan, one that has made my move easier. I am very thankful to my boss who has been so gracious and generous in helping me transition.
Who knows what the future will bring :)
And so I'm here at Fujiyam's in Kona, eating some of the best sushi I've every tasted. Small things now fascinate me, like the green lizard which came along for the ride on my car, and the yellow canaries that twitter and compete for crumbs with the sparrows.
Today's errands...
