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Mark David Gerson
a book bubble about
Acts of Surrender
Biographies & Memoirs
Author Insight
Land of Aloha and Tears
For all its picture-postcard beauty, Hawaii was a difficult place to live...and not only because it was so expensive. Some metaphysical writers link each of the Hawaiian islands to one of the chakras — from the first or root chakra for the Big Island, through the second or sacral for Maui, all the way up the chain to the seventh, the crown chakra, for Niihau. The root chakra governs identity, security and survival; sexuality, fertility and creativity are the domain of the sacral chakra. We lived on both the Big Island and Maui during our three and a half years in Hawaii and, on each island, I experienced chakra-linked upheavals that felt as explosive as the volcanic eruptions that originally created the islands.
Book Excerpt
Acts of Surrender
“I surrender to the land,” I chanted softly, moving away from the wall and spiraling toward the center of the enclosure. Suddenly, I collapsed to the ground, sobbing. “I surrender to the land,” I continued, my face pressed into the moist Maui earth. After three years of struggle, I had finally given myself over to this land of paradox. Unconditionally. In return, the land let me go. Three months later, having once again stripped our possessions down to an affordable-to-be-shipped minimum, we were on an ATA flight to Phoenix.
As the plane took off and I watched Maui disappear into the turquoise waters of the Pacific, I sobbed again, harder, if possible, than I had done at Kukuipuka. Two years would pass before I could remove the word “aloha” from my voice-mail greeting or could listen to Lei‘ohu Ryder sing “Maui Loa” without feeling a tug back toward the land whose tough love had bruised, battered and, ultimately, strengthened me.
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