Malama’s Blog

Dolphins – the word alone brings a bright shimmer in the eyes of children and a nostalgic smile on the lips of adults. For decades now, our daily life has been accompanied by the image of this intelligent and so friendly, playful hero of TV-serials, named Flipper. Through him, we think we know all about dolphins and all dolphins must be like he was.

It was the same with this famous dog “Lassie”, so famous that suddenly a race of dogs changed name from Collie to Lassie, which simply means little girl in Scottish. I had a Collie, a big beautiful male named Prince and whenever crossing children on the street, the call of “Lassie, Lassie” followed us.

The children growing up with these images often are so programmed that they carry on this image into their adult life and then behave in the same way; for example when having the opportunity to swim with dolphins in the ocean, if by chance or by organized boat-trips.

There is a deep desire to touch; to cling to the dorsal fin and ride the waves … living a little bit of magic and be the hero!

The dolphin called Flipper was, as all the film-animals, a captive, trained animal and had a role to play, rewarded with fish. He died in the arms of his trainer, having shut his blowhole and thus stopped respiration, willing to die. He was not sick, he was just tired, tired of the captive life.

When swimming with dolphins and whales, we are strangers in their element and should behave exactly as we would like strangers to behave in our homes: friendly and with respect and not trampling around and spreading havoc.

Dolphins as other marine mammals have very sensitive perceptions; with their sonar they scan you and detect your feelings towards them. The simple thought of “I want to touch” makes a dolphin swim away. Or he stays out of sight, almost laughing at you. Quite often I have experiences this when swimming with a group of people that the dolphin swam behind a person for some time without being seen but observing the man or woman very carefully. So how is it that some people meet dolphins easily and others can’t catch an eyeful of them?

Well, as I said before, dolphins can read your feelings. They not only know you by the way you come to meet them, for example over-arm swimming is felt as threatening by them, but they sense your heart and through this organ you can communicate with them. The old Egyptians knew it and the heart was the organ to be finally weighed to judge the person. The brain was scraped out of the scull as useless … that should make us think – with the heart!

And it is amazing what communications can take place between man and dolphin. One day I had a woman in my group who could not swim but her greatest wish was to meet the dolphins in the ocean and it took a lot of courage from her to come on the boat and even more to get into the water. Even though she had a life-jacket and an experienced swimming instructor at her side, she felt very insecure and could not enjoy the experiment. I swam some yards behind her when a dolphin came up close to me, looking at me as if asking what the poor woman was doing there. So I told him in my heart that she could not swim and was very afraid in the water but that she wanted so much to see a dolphin swimming in the sea, at least once.

He understood and slowly, as not to frighten her, swam up to her, looking at her and turning around her at just arm-length and then saying good bye and disappearing in the blue depth. For her it was the ultimate realization of her desire, this alone had been worth the whole voyage.

We know so little of this hidden underwater world and yet destroy it without even thinking about. It’s still time to change …. Who knows for how long?

In the beginning of humanity men were hunters and gatherers.  They lived from what nature offered and adapted their lifestyle to the conditions around them. They took what they needed to sustain the clan, hunting and collecting fruit and grain in summer to survive the long hard winter if ever they did not move with the seasons to avoid the hardship of ice and snow.

They started using clumsy tools of their own making, inventing new ones and improving them, learning from life.

These times have long passed. We live in abundance, everything is obtainable,   there are all kinds of products on the shelves of the super markets and yet, the hunter still lives in the memory of the cells of man.

Some kill for sport, some say nature needs help to regulate itself, some don’t even think about what they are doing.

And some do it for profit. They disguise it with a scientific name so it becomes acceptable to the public opinion.

These are only mice, rats, rabbits, monkeys or… whales?

This year the Japanese Government has announced that nine hundred whales are going to be killed for their Scientific Research Program. Norway and Iceland are opening their whaling season in the beginning of May, as soon as the waters are free from ice. These two countries do not really consume whale flesh as a base of their nutrition like Japanese people do where whaling has a long tradition there. They slaughter whales for money and because they pretend whales eat too much fish so there is not enough left to feed the people.

Millions of dollars are made every year with the slaughter of whales. What the men responsible for this kind of industry seem to forget is that whales can’t be raised like cattle. They have their migration routes, their mating and birthing places and the moment the whales are extinguished at one place, the chance that others fill the gap is very thin.

There are many whale species just at the limit of survival because the population is so low that the natural laws of procreation are not guaranteed. And they are still hunted and slaughtered in the most horrible way.

It is as if mankind was blinded by the glitter of gold not to see the beauty and majesty of these noble beings and the important role they play in the balance of the life on this planet.

From time to time we all think about the sense of our life; mostly in moments when we are not so happy about our current situation. As we see others living better, being more successful, living apparently in a harmonious partnership or simply seeming so much happier than we are, we tend to feel a slight sense of jalousie and being treated badly by life creep up in our minds and hearts.

Why? Why does she have this wonderful partner, why can he afford the new car, they are not better, more intelligent or beautiful than I am!

We tend to struggle with life instead of living life. We did not learn in our youth what the really important things are in life; in fact we can’t even say what life is. But we have a whole life to explore life by living it.

So we hear “life is evolution, the strongest wins”. This has brought us over thousands of years of war, fights and struggle, strict separation of classes and enslavement of large parts of the population.

Underlying this opinion we accept that there is no escape of this condition, that it had been decided by whim at the moment of birth which kind of life we are going to live without any chance to change it.

Royalty is Royalty and untouchables will stay untouchable.

The sins of the fathers into the seventh degree! That’s it!

In many religions these thoughts have been taught and accepted for a long time. But the same religions say also, that we are all children of God and all of the same essence.

So we all must have the same possibilities, the same chance of luck, the same deserving to live a life we want to live.

So who decides? The families we were born in? The country, the government?  God?  Or could it simply be that we, ourselves, took this decision long before birth?

The life on this planet, in this dimension, offers all the possibilities we could imagine to become what we want to be.

Born in a shack? Great! The world is open to be explored.

Born in a castle? Great! Castles have doors to go out and discover a shack where we might meet a friend to travel together and discover the possibilities to mold our life.

We came here into this world to explore our own inner world through the mirror of the outer world and what we see in this mirror is the creation of our making, our thoughts, feelings and actions.

So could it be that the purpose of our life is to re-discover our Higher Self, our infinite, eternal Soul? Life after life, in a never ending spiral …

In my last blog I told you how I came to travel to Hawaii.

After the decision to change continents I had done my homework and searched on Internet for the most exciting places and things to do and to see.

And there was one point that rapidly got to be the number one in my program: to swim with the Hawaiian Spinner Dolphins. I wanted to swim with dolphins out in the deep blue ocean and experience the possibility of communication between man and animal.

We all have heard or seen films about bottlenose dolphins working with autistic children and this subtle communication happening there had intrigued me for some time already.

I rapidly found out how to realize my dream and finally the day came. Early in the morning a small group of people had gathered at the harbor and soon we were on our way. The captain gave us all the recommendations how to behave with dolphins and then suddenly we saw the fins of a big pod of dolphins sliding through the water.

My heart felt like bursting with joy and I hardly could hold back the tears of emotion welling up. Finally my dream had come true!

When I slipped overboard and started swimming in the direction of the dolphins, I was the last and the slowest of the whole lot and the dolphins had already passed. I turned around on the spot to see where the other people had gone, when a small group of dolphins came my way.

Oh boy, what a sight! Three mothers with their babies were swimming right up to me. My heart was bumping so loud in my chest I thought the dolphins could hear it. With effortless, slow, yet powerful movements they passed close by, looking at me with curiosity.

“Oh you beauties, you swim too fast, I can’t follow you, please stay a bit with me, I love you, you are so beautiful …” Words formed in my heart while I tried to keep up with them, my arms still close to my body as we had been instructed. Over-arm strokes are felt as a threat by these sensitive beings.

And amazingly they slowed down! Did they really hear me, did they feel my love, did they know I never would do them any harm?

They slowed down, let their babies swim my side so I could see them clearly, accepting my presence.

I was overjoyed! We swam in harmony for some time, enjoying our   communication on a higher level of consciousness. I had lost all sense of time. And suddenly they were gone and I woke up like out of a dream.

I took up my head out of the water and looked around. I was alone! No boat, no people, nothing but the shore some distance away and the deep blue sea around. Wow! Where are the others? Had I gone so far?

Turning around in the crystal clear water I finally saw a white spot far away speeding up toward me. It was the boat with a very, very angry captain who had to leave the group to look for me. He promised I would never set foot on his boat again if ever I did this again. Still completely absorbed by my experience I answered that it was not my fault; the dolphins had led me astray! Well, later on we became good friends and every time I was back on the island I went out with him to see my friends, the dolphins, again.

Almost as a final lesson of this adventure I learned later on that the others of the group having hurried so much to see the dolphins, had lost sight of them very quickly. Hurry-up slowly ….

Was it a welcome-gift from the dolphin family? I really felt blessed.

At first sight I would have said that my book “Malama” now published as an e-book on www.thereismoreinlife.com has started this famous December 31 of the year 2007. But actually it has started years ago, when, in a workshop, I heard some seemingly unspectacular words that stuck in my mind.

If you are afraid of something, do it! There is a great lesson to be learned.

I started thinking about my biggest fear and found out that it was about travelling all alone. I love and always have loved discovering other countries and people, but living in a couple I never had to bother about the how.

At this moment I realized that, living on my own by then, I avoided places I did not know and always returned to the same spots. Sure, I had my excuses, too expensive, too far away, no time … and yet it was my fear holding me back.

So I decided to go on a really big voyage, the place farthest away from me … Australia!

Great decision, so I started looking on Internet for airfares, the most interesting towns and so on.

And then, something very disturbing happened. Every time I entered some place or town in Australia, a completely different part of the world popped up, always the same.

Again and again, as I entered Sydney, Queensland or the Great Barrier Reef – the website appearing on my screen was – Hawaii!

I had never dreamed of Hawaii, did not know a lot about it, just that it’s a chain of islands in the Pacific and there I was, looking in amazement at these pictures. It was as if a big finger was pointing out again and again where I had to go.

And I obeyed! I gathered the necessary informations and booked my flight, not knowing that long years and many wonderful experiences later I was going to write a book about this island, the whales, dolphins and the Aloha Spirit of the indigenous people of Hawaii.

Life took its time and gave me all the experiences I needed to follow the path shown to me.

…..to be followed