Wilma's Blog on WomenLikeMe

One Free Man

The Story of John Channings

Born and educated in New Zealand I was nineteen in 1975 and in my third year at Auckland University.
At that time I was regularly confronted with the question, “What career are you going to pursue, John?” to which I couldn’t find an answer.The question was unanswerable because I didn’t like the choices on offer.
Looking at my father, running your own business was hard work and fraught with problems.Becoming an academic seemed like an exercise in stifling creativity rather than nurturing the best from young minds.
Being a lawyer meant arguing points of law irrespective of the effect it had on the lives of others.In fact I wasn’t interested in working at all.
The options on offer didn’t look very promising and besides “why would I?” with the upcoming miracles of technology.
In the 70’s the expectations of what machines could do were high; soon humans would be free to pursue honorable activities while cashing in on the benefits of the ever advancing technology.
My focus was more on how to prepare for that promise; a promise that certainly appealed to me.
Even at that age I was having images of a life, a life that was not yet the norm but would be if we allowed things in life to work for us rather than us working for things.

Above everything else I was passionate about sailing.
I’d been sailing since I was twelve and I loved it. In fact, I harbored a dream about sailing.
I harbored the dream to sail across the Pacific.

So an idea evolved; to build a boat to do just that.
Building a boat required knowledge which I didn’t have and money, which was also in short supply.
But I had a dream, a serious dream and that image of a life that wasn’t the norm.
My dream required a rethink and questioning of what I was currently doing. As University wasn’t going to add to any boat building skills or add to my current dream, I decided instead of study to spend the winter months building a small 3.7 meter sailing skiff, just to see if I could.

It never occurred to me to keep my feet in both camps to play it safe. I was going to build a boat and half measures had no place.
Even then I was clear that there was no leverage in holding on to two major activities in my life, study AND boat building.
I considered myself free to have choices and I chose.

Once I had decided my eyes and efforts were firmly set on getting my boat building skills up by using all the resources that came my way. I found boat building mentors from the sailing club I belonged to, I created time to concentrate fully on the boat by letting go of my studies and I found the money to build this little boat with.
And sure enough, after six months I launched my first sail boat.
In those six months I had created a boat that gave me boat building knowledge, confidence and a saleable object to increase my initial financial investment.
Without knowing I also laid the foundation for a life in which I was going to be unstoppable.
I experienced that what I wanted, dreamed or imagined is possible.

The completion of my first boat left me with my next questions.
After completing that year’s study I asked if I was ready to build a bigger boat. A boat big enough to cross the Pacific?
I already had a design in mind that fitted my criteria, but could I finish a project of that scale?

To find answers I needed to think. I needed time and space to see if I had it in me to complete a bigger boat.
The question I grappled with was of course bigger that just building a boat.
Unconsciously I must have known that I was going to leave the path to a predictable future and that I was about to carve my own path into the unknown.

I didn’t know it then but to confront these big questions I created my own initiation into manhood.
That initiation prepared me to enter a life of following dreams, a life of letting go of the safe and predictable; a life of stepping into the unknown and becoming my own master.

For three months I walked the uninhabited coasts and forests of New Zealand with nothing more than a sleeping bag, dried food, a few dollars and time to think.
For three months I trekked and learned the power of ‘now’ as each step was a step in the present leaving behind the past, not clear of where to from here.
I slept under bushes and trees with a plastic sheet over my sleeping bag to protect me from the rain.
I slept under the stars on the beach when the nights were clear.
And during the day I walked with no other plan than putting one foot in front of the other and seizing what came along.

My mind cleared of clutter as I lived in the ‘now’.
I had three months of meditation and getting access to my higher self, my heart and my soul purpose.

At the end of those three months I was very clear. I had accessed my heart, heard my soul and decided to follow my dream.

I left University and I went looking for a shed in which to build the boat…..my image, my dream, my life……

Four years later, 1980 I launched my second sailing boat, named ‘Liu Shueng’, after my Chinese girlfriend.
I remember vividly, sailing one fall morning under the Auckland Harbor Bridge, looking up at the stream of traffic queuing its way to work knowing I was living my dream.

I was living my dream, choosing my own unmarked path, learning to trust, doing what I love and making things happen.
It was the boat and me.

I cannot say I was not fearful back then at the beginning of the voyage.
I remember the first leg of the voyage very well. We were exhausted from completing all the last preparations, the good byes and the realization “this is it.”
The weather was typically stormy New Zealand weather and trusting this small 26 ft boat that I’d built being knocked around in big seas and fresh winds took some courage.
We were both seasick to boot.

I had chosen an unusual rig, a Chinese Junk that was very easy to handle and as a result sailing the boat didn’t take much effort.
As GPS didn’t exist and the little boat had no electronics or a motor we relied on the sextant, our senses and the wind.
Night after night sitting under the stars, slowly moving in the vast ocean with nothing to do and nowhere to go propelled me again powerfully into the now with a mind cleared of clutter and capable of deep meditation.

It was an extraordinary passage.
I learned to trust myself and the boat I’d built.
I got to experience the joy of following my bliss after the initial exhaustion and emotional turmoil had died down.
My mind finally quieted down and left me with the ability to just be in the ‘now’.
I got to enjoy the ocean and feel one with its vastness and power.

Having arranged my own initiation some years before, at 25 years old I was now reaping the benefits of that transition that opened me up to the greatness we all have in us.
Accessing this deep knowing of how to manifest while sailing the ocean has made me unstoppable to manifest freely any dream I have for the rest of my life.

After that extraordinary first voyage we eventually landed in Mopelia, a remote atoll in French Polynesia and entered paradise lost and the world of Robinson Crusoe.
We could not have landed anywhere better than on this small island.
Landing there was great synchronicity and complimented my inner journey perfectly.

On the island lived Calami Taputu, who was one of the 6 people living there.
Interestingly Calami and I were born on the same day in the same year, both 25 years old at that time.
But our lives could not have been more different.
I’d just turned my back on fourteen years of education, a profitable future in law and life in cities; Calami never went to school and spent his whole life on small atolls; he’d only visited Tahiti twice.

It is hard to begin to describe my experiences on that island and how much meeting Calami would contribute to my life of adventure.
For six months I followed Calami around on his little atoll where he lived in that community of six.
I went diving on shipwrecks with Calami and learned about sharks. Sharks were common on Mopelia.
Before that I’d conveniently brushed most sharks with the same brush. When sharks were in the water, I was out.
Calami had no perception of that; he had learned the ways of sharks.
The operative word is ‘learned’.
Calami had worked out how to share fishing with the sharks.
When we went fishing or diving, every time Calami assessed the situation first. He took his time to look and observe what was going on and taught me to do the same.
A popular fishing spot was the pass into the lagoon. Always lots of fish, but lots of sharks and current too.
These sharks, Calami assured me would not attack humans, but they certainly attack wounded fish on the end of a spear. So the deal was, he would dive into the pass from the edge, swim down and spear a fish. As he returned to the surface with his wounded fish on the end of the spear, my job was to dive down with a hand spear and poke the sharks to scare them off before they could get to our bounty. Mostly I got to the shark before the shark got to the fish.

Calami also taught me how to catch crayfish at night on the coral reef, to hunt turtles and how to score wild pigs without a gun……

The biggest discovery in living with Calami was that Calami had preserved what I call ‘innocent perception’.
It is a distinction that I now teach which contributes to manifesting our dreams.
Innocent perception allowed Calami to live in the ‘now’. He was able to see with great clarity what was so in any situation and to act astutely and effectively.

Calami wasn’t looking for the ‘right’ answer or anyone else’s approval when finding solutions. He was creating every day to the best of his abilities and his mind stayed sharp and innovative.
I on the other hand had learned that there is only one right answer or one right way to do things; education and exams do that to you.
I’d learned to copy others to get approval instead of thinking for myself.

I am not against education; learning how to copy is an important survival skill and we need to know how society works, what the rules are.
But I realized that following the rules mostly meant getting stuck in a career, working hard and losing the skill to think-for-ones-self.

Calami had escaped all that conditioning and he wasn’t a poor uneducated Tahitian.
On the contrary he was innovative in his approach to life and his joy in dealing with challenges was obvious.
This realization and my time with Calami had a big impact on me.
It confirmed that I had made the right choice and that I could rely on my own resources to make life happen.
I still regard that time as miraculous; with Calami as my teacher I saw what a human being is capable of when allowed to live as he sees fit.

My amazing six months with Calami set me up for a wonderful sailing experience.
I gained confidence, learned to think for myself, knew how to create my day and to see what is possible.

Thus well equipped we sailed on to cruise to the Cook Islands, Hawaii and eventually we sailed to the west coast of the North America where we explored Canada and Alaska, eventually heading south to Mexico.
Eventually we returned home as living on remote tropical atolls and the like, lovely as it is, lacks the stimulation of other people’s input.

In 1989, I came ashore and got interested in the world of business, as I saw this was how to make things happen.
These days, work and money has a huge impact on people, bigger than politics, religion or even education.
So I set about to learn about business without losing my passion for adventure, remote places and interesting people.
I started up an Eco tourism business, the Green Beetle, a then new concept, taking young people on six day bus tours of Northland, New Zealand and really let them experience the wilderness I’d so come to love and respect.
By doing the business I was working and learning flat out. I did the planning and organizing, the driving, cleaning and sales calls, promotions, problem solving and more.
And after five years I sold it.
In those five years I worked hard, employed staff and saw that I could earn money. But I was actually no further ahead then when I was at university.
What was my future in business?
Where was my free time, my joy in adventure, all I can look back on were long hours and hard work, just as my father had.
I saw the danger of falling into the trap I’d so wonderfully escaped from.

So I started to look around, looking for answers and people who were noticing the same.
Teachers and learning moments started to pop up in daily life and the people around me.
Different people had different pieces of the puzzle.
I found some great courses and great teachers.
‘Money and You’, presented by Robert Kiyosaki I certainly enjoyed.
He promoted learning from experience and showed me an expanded meaning of the word ‘leverage’.
I attended Landmark Education’s courses and I got the language to express what I was on about.
I knew I could make my life happen, I had already done so.
But Landmark gave me the distinctions to express myself clearly in a way other people could understand.
More pieces of the puzzle arrived with my study of the biologist, Humberto Maturana and his theories on ‘matristic’ versus hierarchical societies and his profound comment, “love is the only emotion that expands intelligence”.
I embraced Francisco Varela’s Ontology of Language explanations, as a theory of conversation that was truly useful in improving our day to day dialogs.

First I had done my apprenticeship in living a life involving heart and soul.
Now teachers have made it visible and given me the language to express myself.

I am fully aware that my heart is the master and I make sure the mind is serving the heart when making decisions.
“Am I coming from love, does everybody win here and do I do no harm?” are my present questions. If the answer is ‘yes’, I proceed and chose play.
If the answer is no, I chose not to play.

The guidelines I live and manifest by are simple and are the basis for my extraordinary life.

The guidelines are:

• Whatever I do, everyone must win.
• I’m looking for opportunities to co-create with others and co-create with the universe.
• Be generous. I give my time away freely as I’ve realized that as long as we charge for our time, our time has very limited leverage.
• I notice opportunities and make suggestions, “what is possible here?”
• I travel light knowing that security lays within me, not in the material, the structures around me.
• I let go of structures that no longer serve me.
• I go for joy and lightness, accepting in the now what is so, whatever is so.

I recognize I am not alone and I have a role to play with others in today’s inquiry into “manifesting from love and our greatness”.

Today I continue to live in the flow, a leveraged life, playing team with Wilma and others in life and business.

Each day I wake up peacefully creating my day, and imaging how I will co-create with the universe and the people who come along.

While I still make plans and have goals, I hold onto them lightly being prepared to trust a bigger plan I am not privy to.

That makes for an extraordinary life.