Hale Makua was a world-renowned Hawaiian kahuna. He graced my life with his magnificent aloha and wisdom for the few years that I had the privilege of working for and learning from him. About a year ago, Mr. Makua appeared to me in a dream. He was imbued with supernatural vibrancy and mana. The dream occurred the night after I “incubated” (posed a question for) my dreamtime related to a significant conundrum I face -> How to develop software that enables users to recreate, in a virtual “dream space,” their numinous or supernatural dreams?
That night during a semi-lucid dream state, I’m in Hawaii body surfing 100ft plus waves that travel from the shore out to sea. Like an eel, I serpentine my way back to the shoreline where my artist friend Reiner gestures toward a large cliff. Along the whole side of the cliff is gigantic abstract ice sculpture shaped like a man. The whole man turns to lava-fire and then back to ice.
I thought to go back out body surfing, but then something inside me says, “Wait. Wait to respect the power of creation, the power of the ocean. Wait until just the hands of the iceman are on fire.”
The hands turn to fire then I swiftly eel my way back out to sea . . . catching another enormous wave on which rides an extraordinary elder in small canoe. It’s Hale Makua only with bigger eyes and an electric supernatural energy radiating from him. He’s singing the most uplifting and joyous Hawaiian chant I’ve ever heard. My heart soars as we race together super fast on the wave. Then I become fully lucid and realize that I am creating the entire dream and singing the song. As I awaken I continue to sing the song but its beauty rapidly vanishes.
I lay there crying, deeply affected by the ephemeral beauty and mana that emerged from within me. How can I bring the dream to life? How can I truly share it? Then I think, OK Anthony try and recreate a dream like that with your software.
Even though the dream made the conundrum of my software development even more pronounced, I felt thoroughly empowered by my predicament. I believe that always just beyond reach in each of us is more beauty and supernatural abilities. Our predicament, our challenge and opportunity is to stretch and grow beyond our perceived limitations, to capture the once unreachable numinous beauty from within and share it, become it.
When we sing on the face of this emergent wave, this conundrum called life, we truly awaken to our infinite, unfolding potential. Our opportunity is to bring the numinous to reality, the super-nature to nature through the humility, reverence, discipline and aloha that Hale Makua so graciously embodied.