After 20 hours of traveling, I am finally at Kalani Oceanside retreat. Only a day in short of meeting Stephen LaBerge before the actual Dreaming and Awakening program kicks off.

Flying to Kalani

My flights went very smoothly. Surprisingly smoothly. When approaching LA, I had clear view of downtown and the white Hollywood sign on the hill lying on the background. I Reality Tested the scene immediately: “suddenly, you are in the US” :-)

But this was only the first part of the trip. I needed to transfer to a flight to Honolulu that would take an additional 6 hours of traveling. Was a bit anxious to see whether my luggage would find its way around the airport, but it did. To Honolulu I have never in my life seen that much ocean. Blue everywhere. Hawaii is located such a long way from the west coast of the US. It is like Atlantis. During this particular flight I started feeling tired. The time difference between Hawaii and the Netherlands is exactly 12 hours. So when I am feeling ready to go to sleep, I actually need to wake up and ‘get out of bed’.

Sleep deprivation

At Kalani, I arrived at some sort of paradise jungle at 9pm in the dark. When I stepped out of the car at the parking area, I was surrounded by a Jurassic Park background sound of countless night animals; like at Universal Studios at ET’s ride, only this time without the help of digital speakers. Temperature was not that hot actually, pretty nice weather. The occasional rain. Once I checked in at Kalani’s beautiful guest services location, I was first greeted with “Welcome to Kalani” and a necklace made out of tiny white seashells that the lady at the desk kindly put around my neck. First impression of Kalani’s atmosphere: spectacular informal, genuine, human, accepting, community, volunteering.

I checked out the building where I had booked a shared lodge and discovered that it was actually part of the very building where a big part of the program will be held; in the large open common area (somewhat like a temple), a few boxes were stored with the label “Stephen LaBerge” (see pic above) on it. My guess is that some boxes are packed with NovaDreamers while another contains a beamer and speakers.

Once in my room, I managed to stay up without sleep until 11pm Hawaiian time (this means that I skipped one night of sleep). So naturally, when I went to bed at 11pm  – though feeling very very tired – my biological clock was actually telling me that it was 11am: which led to a weird night of sleeping.

When I got to bed, though my mind knew what was going on, my body lost the plot completely. I woke up several times during the night, feeling hungry, nauseous, and at one time very confused (temperature was all right though). I really forced myself to calm down and return to sleep, which I did. Waking up at 7am the following morning, I felt actually not that bad. The sleep interruptions led to the occasional lucid dream which could not have been more fitting in this context. I guess that I will feel more rested tomorrow morning. I hope.

Today’s plan

Today I will explore Kalani. I skipped breakfast (sleeping) so will go to lunch soon to have my first meal. Then I will go buy a water bottle (forgot to bring one with me), a cool arm bracelet to “energize” during my stay here as a cool lucid dream symbol (-reminder) when I return home in a couple of weeks. Then I will go for a swim, check out the beach … and relax.

Most probably I will meet Keelin, Stephen’s (lovely) program coordinator, this evening and perhaps Stephen as well. Cannot wait. Either this evening or tomorrow we will at one time discuss opportunities to collaborate :-)

Related Posts:

• Stephen LaBerge’s introduction to lucid dreaming part 4
• First day before lucid dreaming part 3
• Embarking on my lucid dream adventure! part 1
• The matrix and lucid dreaming part 6
• Meeting Stephen LaBerge this month!