Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
Loading
author
Jadbalja
I was raised by a caring and loving scientist who taught me from a very early age how to question and search, and who encouraged me to quest deeply into the silence between my thoughts. I was bless...view moreI was raised by a caring and loving scientist who taught me from a very early age how to question and search, and who encouraged me to quest deeply into the silence between my thoughts. I was blessed with a mother who believed I had the intelligence to find my own way, and who was always there to reel me in by the same ropes I sometimes used to nearly hang myself.
I had just turned nineteen when I bought a one-way ticket to Australia, with only twenty dollars left over when I stepped out of the plane. For the next two years, I bared my soul and my body to whatever new experiences and adventures presented themselves.
Jad-bal -ja is the name with which we christened our ancient, big-bellied, lap-plank fishing boat when my wife, Sheila, and I became fishermen in a tiny village on the Caribbean island of Grenada. Our fellow fishermen then christened me Jad--bal-ja, too.
In the nineteen sixties, Sheila and I started a hippy commune on a hundred- acre farm. We experimented with it for two years while I fulfilled my Conscientious Objector alternative military service as Director of Horticultural Training at a center for the mentally handicapped.
Twenty years in both retail and wholesale nursery businesses, with eight years living and working closely with poor farmers in the tiny African country of Lesotho as horticultural extension agents between these two (ad)ventures, yielded many insights into the answers to my life's biggest question: Who am I, really.
To some people, my journey may seem too unguided and unconventional, without a well-grounded career with proper vesting and tenure. I would say to these people, “I have felt the pulse of the heart of darkness and looked head on into the light of the sacred. I’m no guru, but I offer you this look into who I am in the hope that you might let go of yourself for a little while, look out at the world through Jad-bal-ja’s eyes, and maybe see who you are, too.”view less
Books by Jadbalja
Journeys In Search Of Who We Really Are, Tales from one man's search for meaning