Carol Adrienne, Ph.D.                              October 2010

Are you feeling called to make a major life change? How strong does the call have to be to motivate you to take the first step?

“Moving to Hawaii was like a calling,” says Elizabeth Jenkins, one of my dearest friends. We talked recently by phone and I was, once again, impressed with Elizabeth's ability to listen to and live according to intuitive direction. She is an inspiring example of living an authentically passionate life.

(Her web site is www.wiraqochafoundation.org )

Elizabeth, a licensed psychotherapist, is best known for her work with the Q'ero Indians of Peru. Over twenty years ago, she was plunged into the ancient teachings of Andean spiritual tradition of living in harmony with the forces of the natural world. She met her mentor, anthropologist and Andean priest, Juan Nunez led Prado. Don Juan's father, anthropologist Oscar Nuñez del Prado, "discovered" the Q'ero Indians--direct descendants of the Inkas--in 1949 and led the first expedition to their villages in 1955. Don Juan met and studied with his Master, Don Benito Qoriwaman—made famous in Shirley MacLaine's book, It's All in the Playing. Ten years later he received the Hatun Karpay Initiation in 1988.

Deeply touched and forever changed by what she experienced, Elizabeth went on to lead journeys of initiation with Don Juan, which have attracted participants from all over the world.

Moved by the plight of the indigenous people of the Andes, Elizabeth founded the Wiraqocha Foundation. The Foundation's mission is to support and promulgate the Andean philosophy of life and the vision of Andean prophets preserved by the Q'ero Indians of Peru. The Foundation continues to help bring supplies and relief to the Q'ero people--a tribe of 400 Peruvian Indians on the verge of extinction--while preserving their traditional culture and identity.

If you have ever dreamed of visiting visit Peru, you MUST get in touch with Elizabeth for the journey of a life time. You can begin by reading her two internationally bestselling books on the INKA Tradition: THE RETURN OF THE INKA: A Journey of Initiation and INKA Prophecies for 2012 and JOURNEY TO Q'EROS: Golden Cradle of the Inka. Several years ago, I participated in one of the initiation trips with a group led by Elizabeth and Don Juan. We visited and did ceremony at ten Inka spiritual sites, including Machu Picchu. The experience was unforgettable.

“So what's new?” I asked Elizabeth on the phone. “Well, we've got 107 sheep now!” she laughed.

I remembered my visit with her a few years ago. I could easily picture the setting where she lives on the Big Island of Hawaii, with her mate, Barney Frazier, and their two children. They've got an organic orchard of 1600 fruit and nut trees, a herd of sheep, and a roadside fruit stand on the main highway.

Everyone dreams of getting away from it all and starting a new life. And they did it. How, you might ask, did Elizabeth and Barney go from living in a suburban home in California to an organic orchard in Hawaii?

“Just before 911, I felt like I was looking at life from the wrong end of binoculars,” said Elizabeth. “We were living in Martinez, California, in a home that Barney had just finished remodeling. Not only did he work on the house during the day, he also worked from midnight to six am in his commercial cleaning business, which he owned.

I was writing my first book, and conducting initiation trips to Peru. Our first child was not even one, and I was pregnant with number two. We were camping out in the backyard while Barney finished the house.

Right after Christmas, we got robbed.

After that, something changed. Even though we had just finished the house, the robbery propmted us to ask the question, “If we could live anywhere, where would it be?” We had never before discussed it, but we both said, literally at the same time, 'Hawaii.' The very next day I was on the Internet looking for property. Two weeks after the robbery, we found a cheap flight to Hawaii to look at property for sale.

Just before we got to the second house we looked at, I told Barney 'I feel like we are driving home.' We were on the southern tip of Hawaii, the Big Island, four miles from Naalehu, a town of 2500. I was struck by the beautiful black sand beach. The property we looked at is between mile marker number 67 and 68 on Highway 11, which circles the island.”

When Elizabeth came back to California, she kept dreaming about the black sand beach and swimming with turtles. “I knew that was where we had to go. It really was like a calling. 'This is where you must go.'”

For less than they sold their suburban home in California, Barney and Elizabeth were able to buy the five-acre orchard, bearing citrus, avocados, and macademia nuts, complete with a brand new house.

“Obviously, we knew nothing about farming. Oddly enough, both of us had grandparents who had each owned a fruit stand! Barney's granddad's stand is in South Carolina (his uncle still has it.) Mine was in Lowell, Massachusetts. My grandfather had transformed a gas station into a fruitstand, because during the depression, there was no gas.”

Elizabeth says, “We started listening to the land to see what to do next.”

“The front part of the land, adjacent to the highway, was an overgrown mass of bushes and trees. From the beginning, it seemed to be saying to us that it 'wanted to be something.'

At first we just started by picking up our fruit and boxing it up. We bought some boxes from a wholesaler, negotiated a price for a thousand pounds of limes, and drove it in to Hilo. But we quickly found out that wholesalers could change the negotiated price once we arrived! Very frustrating. After that experience, we were so mad that we decided to sell the fruit ourselves. We started with a table and a picnic umbrella. It just kind of grew from that. We were determined to be self-sufficient and not be dependent on the viscissitudes of a wholesaler.”

The picnic table has since been replaced by a thousand-square-foot open-air pavilion with a metal roof.

“We developed all our own products, which we sell at the stand and now on the Internet (http://www.ailaniorchards.com/) Along with the citrus and avocadoes, we sell organic, dehydrated Macademia nuts, and nut butters in dark Belgian and white Belgian chocolate. We also have home-grown coffee. The plants are interplanted between all the other trees. We also sell the honey from our own honey bees.”

Life purpose is an unfolding process.

In the last nine years, Elizabeth and Barney have continuted to“listen for the next step.” The orchard is blossoming in a new way now, as the couple's goals are expanding. For example, Elizabeth's teaching work with indigenous nature wisdom is widening out to include an educational institute to study sustainable farming, based on their development of natural farming methods.

As they worked the land, each next step seemed to come naturally. For example, they brought in a few sheep to keep down the weeds in the orchard. Not only did the animals trim the grass and fertilize the ground, they ate the fallen fruit, thereby reducing the fruit fly problem.

When we are living our purpose with enthusiasm, synchronicity seems to aid us in unforeseen ways. For example, a member of the USDA came by one day to discuss chemical traps to keep the flies down. When he saw how Barney and Elizabeth were handling the problem organically and sustainably with their herd of sheep, he invited Barney to share his story with other growers and to speak to the USDA.

“We knew the sheep would reproduce on their own, but we didn't realize that we would go from seven to 120 sheep,” says Elizabeth. “We didn't plan to raise organic lamb, but we had too many sheep, so we had to harvest them to keep the sustainablity of the orchard. We found the meat was unbelievably delicious. Feeding on citrus, natural grass, and avocado, they are happy lambs! Happy lambs taste better!”

In October, Elizabeth and Barney are attending the Bioneers conference in San Rafael, California. (http://www.bioneers.org/conference) Along with presenting their products, they will be discussing their new “educational vacations,” in which people can visit them for a week and participate in farm life for part of the day.

Elizabeth is also offering more advanced programs involving workshops with Q'ero Indians from Peru, as well as with local teachers, kahu, or priests, of the Hawiian tradition.

Elizabeth and Barney's story is a wonderful example of following intuition and living with enthusiasm. It exemplifies how our life purpose naturally leads us to deeper and deeper levels of experience and fulfillment. One thing always leads to another. The path opens one step at a time. Our conditioning tells us that we must strive to make things happen. However, authentic fulfillment comes only when we know how to listen, learn, and keep following the call.

Despite her busy life as a mother, farmer, author, and international workshop leader, Elizabeth continues to expand and develop in new ways. When I spoke to her on the phone, she had just come back from South America, where she was filming an episode for the Discovery Channel, for a program called Beyond Survival. She took Les Stroud, of Survivor Man fame, on one of her advanced initiation journeys.

“It was fantastic,” she said, “I was very proud of Les. He walked 100 kilometers through the Q'ero nation villages--through hail and sleet and snow, going over passes more than 18,000 feet high. He went from the tiny villages all the way to the Q'ollorit'i festival on top of the glacier.

We were invited to perform rituals in the sacred temples of the Q'ero Indians. They had never had outsiders perform before. I've worked with many of the Indians for the past twenty years, but I had never been to this sacred mountain,Wamanlipa, before.”

Elizabeth and Barney are also very involved in the educational lives of their children.

“We love where we live, but with this remote location, we decided to go with home schooling. We are also planning to bring some of the Q'ero children from Peru to study here on our land. We want to offer a new model of education, building a leadership program with the Q'ero kids with our Q'ero kids project. We want to support these kids in a collaborative interaction with a globabl world view. They will study with Hawaiian kids to learn about sustainability, science, and solar energy. We want to offer them the best of modern and ancient ways to live sustainably on the earth. We want the Q'ero children to share their traditional views about Pachamama (mother earth) to illuminate our children. A great exchange!

Now that we are attending the Bioneers conference this month, it feels like we are really bringing together organic farming, sustainable agriculture, with the indigenous wisdom which has been such powerful influence in our own lives.”

As we said goodbye, Elizabeth laughed, “Following your vision is not always easy. But the universe is so infinitely creative. It comes up with a way better plan than I could ever have thought of. We just had dinner on the beach with all our friends, with ten kids playing frisbee and the adults cooking and drinking wine at sunset at the beach. What a life. I couldn't have designed it better!”

Happy October!

Carol Adrienne