The Kernel

The kernel of my book Voyage to Destiny: Sailing to Success is the question: how do we realize our full potential as human beings?

Abraham Maslow said, “In practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby … there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization of human potentialities.”

Yet experience shows me that so few realize our human potential and live our dreams.

I certainly was far from realizing my full potential and living my dreams until I had a wake up call. I had been three sheets to the wind too long. The ship of my life was broken and upon the rocks, stranded upon a deserted island. I had to rebuild my ship from the ground up. This horrible near-death experience is one I would never wish upon anyone; at the same time, it was the most powerful experience of my life.

The secret that was revealed to me in that experience is to live life to its full potential by inhabiting the present moment. If you can become totally aware what you are thinking and feeling right now as you sit and read this entry, you are on course to your dreams: You are living your dreams.

There is so much sublety in the present moment. Start with your breath. Feel you breath enter into your lungs, watch it leave. Feel the sensations in your hands, feet, legs, abdomen, chest, neck and head. Become aware of what you feel throughout your body. What are you thinking? This incessant stream of unconciousness, your thoughts of the past and the present, is your ego. It is your ego because you identify with your thoughts. You think you are your thoughts. You are in a sense possessed by them. In reality, you are something so much deeper and so much larger than your thoughts. You are Being. You just ... ARE. Gently, without judgement, let your thoughts go. Become aware of the moment. What do your hear? What do you see? What do you feel? What do you taste? What do you smell? Listen. Really listen.