Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Detachment on Nusa Lembongan

As of my last post, I had decided to postpone my departure to Nusa Lembongan and stay a few more days in Ubud to meet up with Afi from Big Tree Farms and Simon, a sharp Israeli businessman, to show them how I make chocolate and to talk business... It was 50% a huge success, 50% total failure from one potential perspective, but from my perspective, a 100% success!  I originally say 50/50 because we made chocolate, but never got to business... The reason being that my chocolate, which included superherbs like astragalus, chaga, reishi, and shilajit, got everyone so high that nobody could stop laughing and joking around and licking chocolate off their fingers!  We were having the best time ever, no question about it!  I think this goes to the ancient business wisdom that the most important meetings are those that have nothing to do with the business at all.  We were all totally in the moment enjoying a high unknown to 99% of the world and we're planning to all meet up again before I leave later this month.

The next morning I left early to catch a boat to Nusa Lembongan, a small island 12 miles off the southeast coast of Bali.  Before leaving, I bid farewell to Dani and Elan, my friends who I had been staying with in Ubud. I was now back to traveling alone, which I think is really important.  Traveling with other people is great fun and almost all of my travels in recent years, with the exception of about a week during my Bali adventures, have been with friends.  (I don't count Australia as a solo adventure, as I made so many close friends there almost instantly.)  I haven't always traveled in a  pack, however, in fact most of my travels when I was younger and exploring Costa Rica were solo adventures.  Its great to share adventures with friends, but there's a different dynamic to traveling with a group.  With a group, your well being- mental, spiritual, and physical become strongly pulled to the direction of the collective well being of the group. (I say physical too because when other people start complaining about mosquito bites, mine, which weren't itching a moment before, suddenly start to itch!)  Being alone allows you to really be present with yourself and assess where your well being really lies.  Most importantly, this solo time allows me to make sure that I am 100% happy with myself and complete on all levels and that my social interactions with others don't come from a place of any attachment or need.  I want my interactions with others to come from a place of simply wanting to enhance everyone's experience of this enchanted reality.  I think I'm relatively close to this already, but this week alone allows me to really examine whether I'm 100% there and to do the necessary internal work where the need for it arises.  I think when we can interact with others with no attachment to them, essentially not requiring that person's energy or love to supplement our own lacking of spiritual/universal energy or self-love, all of our interactions, from the most mundane day to day exchanges to moments of deep love, become more powerful, beautiful, and enlightened.  Good things happen when we're not attached to them happening.  Great high energy interactions happen when we have so much energy of our own that we don't require the other person's energy, but can celebrate in the experience of universal energy together.  Great love happens when we have so much love of our own that we don't require the other person's love, but can celebrate in the experience of universal love together! :)

Oh yeah... my first few days here had fantastic waves too!
Right now I'm in the middle of a great book, The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire- Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence by Deepak Chopra- highly highly recommended!

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Back in the Water!

Before my chocolate making plans for tomorrow were created, I was originally planning to leave Ubud today for Nusa Lembongan to chase some perfect waves.  Now that I'm staying here until Saturday morning, I really felt I was missing out on surf- so I took a 40 minute taxi down south to Kerama's this morning.  I've heard of this spot and how rippable it is, but also that it can be extremely crowded.  You can imagine how blown away I was when we pulled up and saw a perfect seven footer roll through the lineup and as it died out, I could see that there were only three people in the water!  I ran as fast as I could down the beach and was right out there!  Some of the bigger sets were up to ten foot, with most in the six to eight foot range and powerful!  It felt so great to be back in the water.  With so few people in the water, I got heaps of excellent waves and also my fair share of beatings, sometimes getting caught inside by a big set, sometimes take off too late and ending up cartwheeling down the face of the wave and rag dolled under water.  The wave looks playful, but packs a serious punch!  I've got a sore neck, knee, and hip, but also a big smile on my face, which makes all the pain go away!

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Good things come with chocolate!

I love life! Its totally incredible!  Two days ago I took a group of friends and friends of friends out to the Gunung Kawi temple and waterfalls where I had an incredible experience last year.  It was really sweet to share it with all of these people and see their eyes open so wide when they came up to the waterfall.

That was pretty cool, but yesterday was totally epic!  I was finally going to see the Big Tree Farms (big raw Balinese chocolate company) production facility.  It was only twenty minutes outside of Ubud, but my driver had absolutely no idea where he was going and it took us a full three hours to get there! Quite an adventure of its own!  I just stayed mellow the whole time and let the driver handle it.  As you'll see later in the story, this delay was perfect to set up what is about to happen.  I walked into the all-bamboo building and they informed me that the owner Ben Ripple was in the middle of a meeting, but that I was welcome to sit in.  As it turns out, he was making a major presentation to representatives of the Indonesian Trade Ministry on the worldwide trade of cacao, past, present, and future.  Two veteran European businessman, Serge and Simon were also there just checking out the production facility and sitting in on the presentation. It was really fascinating to learn about this side of the chocolate world that I really didn't have that much knowledge of previously.  Then as the presentation wrapped up, one of the sales ladies, Afi took Serge, Simon, and I on a tour of the whole facility.  It was really cool to see all the machines used in the processing- everything from peeling beans, to crushing them to nibs, stone grinding them into cacao paste over 15-20 hours, and then either packaging it from there or pressing it into powder and butter.  Along the way, I started sharing some of my cacao knowledge with the group and they were pretty stoked with me to say the least.  Pretty soon Serge and Simon were adamantly trying to convince Afi that Big Tree absolutely needed to hire me right away :)  I planted a few seeds of some business ideas I had in the chocolate and tonic bar world with Serge and Simon and they were quite enthralled... 
I was planning on leaving tomorrow to go chase waves on Nusa Lembongan, but the Big Tree crew and Serge and Simon invited me to come make my chocolate for them on Friday and talk business... So I'm going with the flow and hanging in Ubud until Saturday morning... who knows what will happen, but it will be great!  Then I went to a fantastic kirtan last night... it was dark in the room and the man next to me wasn't wearing his usual hat... I realized only at the end that I was sitting next to Dave Stringer the whole night!  So funny!
The adventure continues!