"Walking That Line" - Notes From the Path
SUMMARY:
The seventeen-day adventure at sea alone was a journey of two segments. Segment one was an eight day sail from Wilmington, North Carolina in the United States to the tiny island of Bermuda. Bermuda is approximately 750 miles off the coast of the United States in the Atlantic Ocean. Segment one began the morning of June 9, 2011 and ended on June 17, 2011. Segment two was a nine day sail from Bermuda back to Wilmington after Hurricane Season was over during late November/early December of 2011...again alone on my thirty-foot sailboat, the S/V Cuddy.
This video was shot the evening I flew back from Bermuda to Wilmington at the end of segment one. I had left my boat in Bermuda for repairs incurred during the storm referred to in this video. This marked the first day of a five month wait before I would fly back to Bermuda and begin segment two.
Transcription from the video:
DEAN: It's crazy, man, crazy.
GREG: The whole thing just seems...
DEAN: It seems distant, doesn't it?
GREG: It seems distant and it doesn't seem like it really happened. Even the day after the Gale, I was lying on the deck of the boat because the winds were calm. It was like five knot winds. I took that camera and put the auto pilot on. The sun was shining and I just laid down on the deck of my boat next to the mast, and just snapped some pictures, and then put the camera down, and I just laid there. I tried to think about what I'd gone through the day before and it just didn't seem real. It was like watching a movie in my head. Right now, I see the images of what I saw and I didn't ... It just doesn't seem real.
DEAN: I know. Did you get that message I sent you about walking that line?
GREG: Yeah.
DEAN: Yeah. There's only a handful of people that really understand that. Up to that point, Sky diving and all those things. That's all one thing. You had never walked that line 'til that day and now you have. You have that appreciation now that a lot of people are never going to have. It makes you, it changes you inside. Some people, it's for the good and some it's not so good. I think that you know how to file it away into that place to where it needs to be. Now that you understand that, you'll never forget it, and you'll always be changed because of it. Regardless of where this thing goes. It's true, man. I'm proud of you.
GREG: Thank you.
DEAN: I am proud of you. I really am.
GREG: It's a hell of a thing, man.
DEAN: I'm glad you're back.
GREG: Thank you. Glad to be back.
We all make choices. Even the ones we refuse to claim. They are still ours.
I made the choice to go to sea alone at great risk to my life despite what others thought or spoke to me.
I'm glad I did because my life transformed forever.
Had I not gone...had I not gone through what began over a five hour period after I shot the sailing portion of video you just watched, I would have never experienced the "line" Sargent Dean Allen, United States Army Ranger (retired), was referring to.
Right after I stopped the selfie video of sailing, the winds began to increase at a rapid rate up to gusts over fifty knots during the next five hours. I dropped the sails and powered up my engine. The seas went from what you saw to over twenty feet at times with the tops of them breaking over my bow as my boat became airborne and crashing down hard on the backside of each wave sending the vibration up into my body. I was scared out of my mind...something I admit freely. I was almost three hundred miles out to sea in the Atlantic Ocean and was sailing into the middle of a developing tropical system. By my choice of not having instantaneous weather information, I was sailing into the unknown.
Within that flowing moment of time, I only had one choice in my mind...in my Soul. To remain present with my body and go forward with life. The entire event...a wall faced which I chose to travel towards...lasted eighteen hours. I made it to the other side after a very long "battle" with nature.
I am in Gratitude to God for the gift I was given that day. No one has to experience what I went through to achieve transformation. That is my story and apparently, I was supposed to learn the lessons I learned a certain "hard way." All of us have to learn lessons the "hard way." You are thinking about your lessons right now. Perhaps more intense than mine, perhaps less...as you think of yours with a perspective of relating to mine.
The thing is though, personal experiences are just that...personal. That day while alone at sea, I faced death and won. So for me, there is nothing more intense than that experience. Your experiences are the same in that way. Your most intense experience is no less or more than mine. Respect for my fellow humans, is where I am going with this. Respect for the choices you make as an individual and respect for the lessons you have hopefully learned from them. In return, respect for mine, all of the other humans in your life and all humans on the planet we share together.
What are you going through right now? There is a lesson in that experience. Perhaps you already know what it is. Perhaps you are still processing the information with the lesson to follow and appear later...just know it is there for you.
The lesson I created for the 2016 Hay House World Summit is still available for free until May 26, 2016.
"Run Toward That Which Scares You," is in direct alignment with this post.
Click the image below and you'll go straight to Hay House. If you have not yet registered, all you have to do is fill in your email address and name. No big deal and it is free to listen to all of the lessons until the Summit is over on the 26th. 75 lessons are live right now, including mine, with 25 more going live on the 22nd. The clickable image below is the lineup of the next 25 beginning the 22nd:
I feel blessed to have been included on the same platform with Deepak Chopra, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Brendon Burchard and so many others. How I got to Hay House began with the adventure at sea alone. One never knows where a challenging path will lead. Sometimes you just have to have Faith in yourself and go.
Peace to you.