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by Ed Reif»
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| I didn't burn this bridge |
Here are 10 Cruises (And Destinations) I had to go on before I died:
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| Venice-Gondola Dreams And Acqua Alta (High Water) |
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| Dubai- Strange But Awesome |
Alaska The Great Land-Action Plan
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Santorini, Greece
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Let The Orinoco Flow
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Maldives, Islands
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Consciousness Is Wireless
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Bora Bora
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Tahiti-Stopover In Paradise
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| The Fjords of Norway |
Mother Nature and Father Time Are Effin Special
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The Fjords of New ZealandMilford Sound-Are We There Yet? |
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| Full World Cruise |
L.A.To London in 110 Days
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| The Oasis Of The Seas |
It only ends once-anything before that is just progress
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Too much cruise ship? Quantity is its own kind of quality.Go BIG or Go HOME |
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| Honorable Mention-The Hawaiian Islands 1994-My First Ship - A Rust Bucket- SS Constitution(a glorified ferry) with a lot of heart known as "American Hawaii Cruises" |
The Hawaiian Islands
This Is Your Brain On Travel
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| Dubai 2014 The roads of life have twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same.When I see the symbolic meaning of camels, the sacred animal and ship of the desert, I see journey(ing) and transport(ing) . Their essence is of long-distance travel. It's no secret the camel can endure days in scorching hot deserts while transporting precious cargo and whole tribes across great distances. |
Travel can alter perceptions and may even rewire your brain. Novelty and unique one-of-a-kind experiences raise dopamine levels, the chemical in your head that gives you optimism, curiosity and creativity.
This gift of pure attention is harder to achieve when your brain is ON French Fries--the default American mode, when your "chi" or energy is Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones.
The Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road but Neurons That Wire Together Fire Together and the best way to predict the future is to INVENT it. There is no absolute grid I live in where things occur independent of my own thinking about them. In the 70's The ME Generation was Old school selfishness--- I am the center of the world. That's tired. My New Wor(l)d Order says, I create the world...and more importantly my thoughts do too. Change your thoughts, change your world. That's Wired Thinking.
The 3 P's-Practice.Practice. Practice.
The hardest arithmetic I've had to master is the one which enables me to count my blessings. It requires a long apprenticeship (Think Gladwell's 10,000 Hours of practice rule or 10 years) Cruising around the world, provides a legitimate short cut for taking things with gratitude instead of for granted.
Despite the spectacular sceneries and itineraries. The universe is in our head,and not out there separate from us. In actuality, a world of our own making. We are co-creators of our world, and we can effect that world and the world of others, even at a distance.What the bleep? Read more HERE
As the brain changes the mind changes, in practical terms each time you repeat a particular thought or action, and "use your marbles", you strengthen the connection between a set of brain cells or neurons.
Consequently, neurons that wire apart fire apart, and different thoughts create different pathways-.It has been over 60 days "vacation" from blue ocean cruising and the urge to sail remains. How do I explain this habit: Use it or lose it.
Traveling = f(dopamine flow); Money= happiness
The actual cruise might be four days or a week, the anticipation of Norwegian Fjords cruise, for instance was months and the memory will probably last for years or forever. So, while I focus on the joy of the doing the cruise there is joy or anticipation and the joy of THE memory of it all the time.
This gift of pure attention is harder to achieve when your brain is ON French Fries--the default American mode, when your "chi" or energy is Velcro for negative experiences, but Teflon for positive ones.State It Then Create It
Before you can take your path you must live it in thought.
My thought makes me travel and create archives of experience and expectation where I incinerate negativity and have a mindfulness of pure attention, without advice, without judgments-When I'm traveling, I am what I am right there and like some Starfleet Commander- I endorse Captain Kirk's recommended policy of non-interference with the internal development of alien civilizations. I must say, some of these places I visit, at least on the surface, look a bit like Mars.
Freedom is what you do to what has been done to you-even if what has been done is being born in America, the cultural equivalent of the geographically-desirable-places-to-live-on-the-planet lottery. So why squander your inheritance and live in The United States of Unconsciousness.
Wired Verses Tired-Grey Matters
The 3 P's-Practice.Practice. Practice.
The hardest arithmetic I've had to master is the one which enables me to count my blessings. It requires a long apprenticeship (Think Gladwell's 10,000 Hours of practice rule or 10 years) Cruising around the world, provides a legitimate short cut for taking things with gratitude instead of for granted.
Despite the spectacular sceneries and itineraries. The universe is in our head,and not out there separate from us. In actuality, a world of our own making. We are co-creators of our world, and we can effect that world and the world of others, even at a distance.What the bleep? Read more HERE
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| The Persistence Of Norway |
As the brain changes the mind changes, in practical terms each time you repeat a particular thought or action, and "use your marbles", you strengthen the connection between a set of brain cells or neurons.
Consequently, neurons that wire apart fire apart, and different thoughts create different pathways-.It has been over 60 days "vacation" from blue ocean cruising and the urge to sail remains. How do I explain this habit: Use it or lose it.
Traveling = f(dopamine flow); Money= happiness
"Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy travel and new experiences, which is kinda the same thing"
The need to break free and sail away is ancient, enduring and incessant. Voyages trigger a concept called psychological distance: Something about the experience of leaving your place creates a shock and awe, a pathway into a new perspective that floods the brain with ideas. For me, this shift in perspective starts as soon as I'm on a cruise ship . Ships are weirdly the most lucid part of my life. Every cruise I take somehow changes my life in some way.
"The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea."-Karen Blixen (Out of Africa)
The actual cruise might be four days or a week, the anticipation of Norwegian Fjords cruise, for instance was months and the memory will probably last for years or forever. So, while I focus on the joy of the doing the cruise there is joy or anticipation and the joy of THE memory of it all the time.Rudyard Kipling wrote "Milford Sound is the eighth wonder of the world.". National Geographic Traveler Magazine selected Norway as The Top Natural Tourist Attraction in the World. After visiting both, Norway in 2010, and New Zealand in 2011, I didn't need a second chance for 2012 SE Alaska Fjords to make a first impression--It has brought me back again to a place I have never been before...
I used to think working on cruise ships was bad, but I stopped thinking- I guess I have ship for brains!
You are HERE. Travel with ME...
The experiences at sea turned my can’t into cans and leveraged my Adventures (which was nothing more than bad planning) into serendipity a thousand unseen helping hands of allies, synchronicity, and the Michelangelo effect
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| Awe Is What Moves Me Forward |
Serendipity- You Will Be Helped By Hidden Hands
An I For An Island- There Is Life After Luau
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| Life at (20+32) in Fiji |
Two Roads Appeared-I Got Lost
The cave you fear holds the treasure you seek.
The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed.
REAL travel writing is about leading an interesting
life and having a good time. It’s less about where you go and more about who you go with
or end up meeting along the way. Being
who you are and doing what you like when you like where you like. Being There.
To live like a travel writer is better than to write
about it. Travel by proxy, OPT Other People’s Thoughts, is not OPE, Other People’s Experiences. It’s not even OPM, Other People’s Money. The currency is
DIY, Doing It Yourself and that is priceless. In fact Free is the radical price
you pay for your own Personal travel of this sort. Sure there is the details of
cost. Cost is what you pay but value is what you get. You can walk the painted
line and do the Aristocratic grand tour of the world, the one in the Travel by
proxy books, or you can go your own way- it’s more messy.
I went to Paris and ate a croissant and had an
espresso at a cafe- What does that mean to you? It’s not what we call something that gives it
its substance.You can’t get fed from the
word croissant. You can’t read about
this stuff, you must undergo it. It’s a transitory ephemeral and capricious.
Take a bite. The Mystics call this One Taste, like all the oceans, the salt has
one taste. How inappropriate to call this place Planet Earth because it is
surely all ocean, both literally and figuratively.
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| Life at (20+33)in Australia |
I am location neutral, untethered, unmoored, never
dropping anchor too long; one of an ever
growing number of the privileged homeless,
where home is a feeling not a place.
Cruising hasn’t solved my problems (situations), it
subsidizes them in a movable feast.
Doing the math, from Zero to Infinity:
5-2=7. I am doing less yet BEING more. because
the fewer activities I DO the
higher the value I can generate for them. I am one of the new rich-time affluent geeks
with beacoup bandwidth of mobility and
individualism.
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| The Have And The Have Yachts U.A.E. |
1+1=infinity. Motion creates an emotional algebra where environment creates mood. Tomorrow may be the busiest day of the week, but the future is already here, and evenly distributed. It can come from nowhere else but the energies of the psyche.
2+2 = 5. Is the fuzzy logic in the superstition of
materialism, that shared hallucination that says you MUST purchase freedom in a two week vacation.
Freedom is free. It is not for sale. The Secret is
about results, flow is about process rather than achievement. The Law OF
Attraction is misstated. I don’t attract what I want. I attract what I am. All the "happy" accidents, seem uncoordinated when they happen, fooled by the randomness, in reverse, seem more orderly, plotted out by a fiction writer.
Sailing
around the world, provides a
legitimate short cut for taking things with gratitude instead of for granted.
My Adventures ,which are nothing more
than bad planning, more often than not, turn into synchronicity--- being in the right place
at the right time. Graced moments and a strong dose of magic lift the spirit and remind you that you are on the right path. The experiences at sea have turned my can’t into cans and leveraged my
dreams into Serendipity-You Will Be Helped By Hidden Hands.
RETURN Sea Change- 20,000 Leagues Inside My Brain
The meaning of life- I Got One-the meaning of life is about the experience of realizing that your dreams have come true. That your make-believe world has become REAL.
Digital narcissism and singing my praises-me,me,me,me,me are over. No self/no enemy. When you get out of the way, you get more sublime. But you have to be a SOMEbody before you can be this NObody. Slaying the inner dragons of monoculture is easy compared to slaying the dragon of ones own holding on to the self.
It’s time to give credit where and when credit is due. The most extraordinary aspects of my being didn't come from me. The spark(s) of epiphanies that I occasionally get are less about being a genius and more about having a genie---Making Wishes.
It’s time to give credit where and when credit is due. The most extraordinary aspects of my being didn't come from me. The spark(s) of epiphanies that I occasionally get are less about being a genius and more about having a genie---Making Wishes.
My Sea Life as an Accidental Sailor , based on a
true story is downright paranormal. How the hell did I get here? Whatever
talent I possess(ed) is most def on
loan from some deity, some unimaginable source and force for some exquisite
portion of time, to be passed on when I am finished.
Showing Up. Being T/Here is 99%. But that other 1%
is the difference between lightening
and a lightening bug If you build it,
you will leave- Fear is for folks who don't get out very much. Outdoors Is In!
"When you define me, you negate me'--so let me
tell my own idiosyncratic story. My autobiography gives dignity and meaning to
me and the universe.
I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how
much I love being at sea. Maybe what matters is who I am when I’m doing
it. I’m my best self. Character is doing what’s right when no one
is looking.
All of ones problems come from the inability to spend time quietly
alone in ones "room".
As much as I detest the travel
(sometimes) —I love the writing and the introspection—the virtuous delights of
organizing a disorganized country, itinerary or culture, and comparing it to my
state of mind at that moment , stripping away the inessential and the
second-rate, classifying all that remains in neat, terse blog posts, building a
solid foundation with the bricks that these ports of call and at sea have
thrown at me. Every blog post is an act of love and contribution. There is
freedom to live in the wisdom and power to serve others and share the ecstasy of stepping into another world and not just do the ordinary day-to-day things but being a magical helper, continuing The Souls High Adventure - An I For An Island- There Is Life After Luau
All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time - namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. Joseph Campbell (1904 - 1987)
Thanks to Bill Moyers, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the Doubleday editor, whose interest in the ideas of Joseph Campbell was the prime mover in the publication of The Power of Myth.
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