I just got back from a trip to the mainland US. It’s always hard for me to leave Maui (Hawaii), but I wanted to visit my family on the East Coast. I stopped in LA on the way and visited a friend in Colorado on the way back. I like to break up my trip in both directions because it’s a really long trip from Maui (in the middle of the Pacific Ocean) to the East Coast and a 5-6 hour time difference, depending on the time of year.

Being on the mainland US is a jolt to my system. People drive fast. There are crowds, lots of buildings, lots of people, especially in the cities. I’m also not used to traffic. The island of Maui has a total population of around 170,000. And, of course, it’s winter, and Hawaii being tropical, I’m not used to the cold. I had quite a shock when it snowed while I was in North Carolina visiting my family. Then I had to drive through a blizzard in Colorado (at least a blizzard to me) to reach my hotel in Boulder.

But anyway, this trip for me was about resting in the Heart. I focused on staying in my Heart while I traveled to these different places and encountered lots of different people. I think I was pretty successful. My ego didn’t rear its head too often, except in moments of self consciousness, like while I was walking around Hollywood by myself on Valentines Day. 

I want to stay in my Heart now. I really want to connect with people from my Heart and not from my ego-mind, from my conditioned self. The ego is not where I want to be. It’s just a scared little fictitious entity that’s trying to run my life. Reality is the deep Heart, which you could call God/Source/Being/Consciousness/Peace/etc, where we’re all connected on a deep level. 

I just love seeing people smile. I love traveling on full airplanes and getting to experience all of us traveling together in the same direction. It’s kind of a metaphor for life. I just loved being on a packed six-and-a-half-hour flight from Denver to Maui in the back of coach the other day, surrounded by families with small children. I got to see the parents loving and caring for their children. This isn’t something I have gotten to experience myself, as I’m not parent, but I love seeing other people experiencing this. 

I love experiencing crowds, too. I didn’t use to—in fact I generally avoided crowds. But now I feel other people‘s Hearts, so being on a packed plane or in a crowded airport isn’t tedious anymore. It’s a wonderful experience of Unity. 

We’re all on this plane together. We’re all part of this unified world. We’re like little characters in a snow globe that’s hurling through space on a certain trajectory. There’s no stopping it. And we’re also the very substance that makes up the whole Universe. That’s true Unity. 

I just looked up the etymology of the word universe. It comes from the Latin word universus, which means “turned into one, combined into one, whole”. We’re all connected on a deep level, pieces of a multi-dimensional puzzle that couldn’t exist without each other piece. And we’re all here for a reason: to show Love to each other. We have to really connect on a deep level and understand that that’s the only Truth. Love is the only Truth.