Within the first 24 hours of my arrival on Waiheke for a short visit from Hawaii I began crying tears of suprise for no reason at all. I was on the Ananda Tours art tour and in the garden of an artist on the tour. I asked her husband, who was working in his workshop making whimsical sculpture from cast-off corrugated iron roofing, “Is this what happens to people who come to this island? I feel like I belong here.” He said that indeed for some people that recognition is even more immediate than it was for me.
Back in Hawaii I phoned the NZ government and asked “What is the method that would work best for me to be able to live in New Zealand?” That was quite a naive question — I had never heard of getting an immigration consultant for that kind of help. At that point I was thinking of becoming a nanny. That’s a way a lot of foreigners get work visas to live in the USA. They asked me: “Do you have any relatives born in New Zealand?” I replied that my (American) mother was born in New Zealand. They then left me on hold for a few minutes and told me “You may qualify to live in New Zealand by dissent.” At least that is what I thought they said, and it was as confusing as a response of a character Alice encountered that she queried after she dropped down the hole in Alice in Wonderland. Later I learned the phrase they were trying to get through to me was “by descent”, which meant that if you could prove that your mother was born in New Zealand, you were the acceptable age, you had a clear background check, and you paid a fee, you could become a NZ citizen. When I found that out of course I said: “But I don’t want to give up my American citizenship.” At that point I found out that President Clinton had passed legislation to allow Americans to have dual citizenship with a friendly country. I had no idea about this, because I was given temporary dual citizenship at birth with Britain, which I had to give up at 21, as America required that I choose one citizenship or the other. If I had chosen British I would have had to leave the USA and from another country apply to live in the USA as a “registered alien.”
The above story illustrates how when I felt I was “meant” to live on Waiheke, based on my emotional experience that first day, the way to live here legally just happened. That is just one aspect of how Waiheke is a magical and spiritual island. To others that just might be a coincidence.
At this point I think there is something special, a sort of power, in the land itself. It doesn’t seem to me to be a “vortex”, like Sedona, Arizona, where many people, including myself, feel a certain “spookiness”. Sedona is said to be a place that spacecraft from other planets fly through the red rock formations for amusement, (there are photos of “spacecraft-hiding” circular clouds on greeting cards in the gift stores) or where Native Americans in centuries past came to perform sacred ceremonies or go on medicine man prescribed ”vision quests”. Indeed, Sedona capitalizes on this vibration, and it’s the home of many alternative metaphysical organizations and it hosts conferences and retreats for America’s most “wacky” and most “cutting edge” artistic. Yes, a professed “vortex” creates a whirlwind of strangeness around its sacred space, and Waiheke just does not qualify as a vortex to that degree, even if there are quite a few independent-minded creative people on the island.
Waiheke is alternative, but the days when Waiheke was a “hippy” place are over. Perhaps all the hippies retreated to “The Barrier”, Great Barrier Island. There are a few noticeable exceptions. Iconic Mike Morgan, the Rocky Bay artist whose paintings look to me like drug-induced dreams and who is highly regarded in New York City, still looks like a wild character out of a pirate play or the old San Francisco flowers-in-your-hair ”Haight-Ashbury” when he confronts reality and has a coffee in Oneroa. And there is a thriving alternative “back to the land” community at Awaaroa, past Onetangi, but it is almost “establishment Green” at this point. Although Waiheke has a history of being a place where people have retreated, the very cost of living has now more or less mediated that option. Still, if you ask the locals who have been here for a while you will find some interesting “How I Got Here” stories. One man I met told me he was a stable, married man with a mortgage in the pricey waterfront Auckland eastern bays suburb of Cockle Bay across the Hauraki Gulf, and he just got fed up one day with his suit and his straight job and his responsibilities, so he just got into his dinghy and rowed it over to Waiheke, never to go back to his former life. Somehow the island supported his choice, or his story.
If Waiheke isn’t a vortex, what is it that most people feel here? They may say it’s the slightly warmer semi-tropical at times weather, the uncrowded beaches, the wild lavender, the great wine and wineries, or the very “slowness” of the pace. It’s like living in a park. And these characteristics of the island are indeed true. And now there are fancy restaurants, expensive boutique hotels, and other pampering amenities that have an allure to some — and perhaps some day a Langham Hotel with a fancy spa will be completed. But underneath the surface attractions, I feel there is something much deeper, much stronger, and it is my belief that it is within the land, and perhaps the surrounding waters, itself. Walking on Waiheke I feel the power at varying strengths in different places. Some of these places definitely feel like “power spots”. There is some kind of what I would call magnetic energy coming up from the ground beneath my feet. Until I have some input from people more sensitive than me who actually “know” what is in the energy of the land here, and the water around the island, this power I feel is truly in the feet of the beholder. What do you feel when you are here?
What is the effect of the island’s spiritual power? Well my first doctor here told me that for centuries people have come to Waiheke for healing or convalescence, that Maori tohunga have always known this, that the island just has that effect. Another resident of several years told me : “The island speeds up your karma faster than anywhere else. You can work through blocks that have bothered you your whole life.” How does that happen, I wondered. Perhaps that is the process that is going on here, en masse in some kind of magnifying hundredth monkey effect. It is even more ephemeral than the magnetic energy in the land that I feel is there but have no way to measure. I am hoping that there will be others who can provide more information about the the nature of the power of the island and water surrounding it, and how it drew them here or currently impacts their lives. Perhaps you might also have a story about Waiheke miracles I could put here. If so please make contact on the Contact page. Your comment will not show on the website unless you ask me to have it show.
