Here I am, my first day completely out to sea, on the Alaska Spiritual Cruise, where I have been invited as a speaker and yoga teacher. I have never been aboard a cruise ship before, never been to a place where I couldn’t see land around me in any direction, and never spent a week so intimately packed in with 3000 complete strangers held together by a floating mass of steel the size of a small city. It is a unique experience to ground on a body of water, and even harder to hold balance poses on a surface that is constantly shifting back and forth. There are no yoga mats, and we practice on towels, reminiscent of when I first started studying yoga 40 years ago. But we practice.

This whole enterprise is an incredibly complex production. Nearly 1000 staff and approximately 2000 passengers are careening through the waves together en route to Juneau, Alaska and back down the Inside Passage – the fjords of Alaska and Canada. The staff, I’m told, consists of workers from 40 countries. One waiter I talked to said he had met people from 60 countries during his 7 month shift. The staff is generally good-humored, and I hear are treated well, except the nature of the work means they live on board and seldom see their families. Most send the money home to a distant country.

I marvel at the fact that this self-contained vessel carries enough food to lavishly feed 3000 people for a week, enough water for all their showers, dishes, and other uses, and carries the waste until it docks into port. It has to create the electricity to power the ship, 3000 staterooms, 7 dining rooms, more bars than I can count, several elevators, and a gym with over 100 electrically powered workout machines, going 24/7.

The guests, from all walks of life, share one thing in common: they have all come here to have a good time and to enjoy the beauty of nature. This is their cherished vacation, some as the result of long and careful savings, others rich enough that it doesn’t matter. But no matter how they got here, something different happens in this unique off-land environment—people talk to each other. They make jokes, they look out for each other, they ask with genuine interest who you are and where you’re from.

The atmosphere is playful, unhurried. There’s nowhere to go when you’re out to sea. No bus to catch, no train to make, no appointments to book, unless it is for a massage. Everywhere you wander, there is music coming from some hall or other, interesting art on the walls, and the endless deep blue sea, with its shimmering reflection of the sun and clouds.

Nevertheless, my judgments arise because it is such a consumptive environment. My mind calculates the carbon footprint, sees the wasted food left on the tables, the overweight bodies stuffing themselves with sugary desserts. The whole scene is catered to the rich, and every little thing costs money–$60 a day to use the internet for example.  Beneath the mall-like atmosphere, there are people here who are hungering for more, for a deeper experience. They are the ones who signed up for the spiritual part of the cruise, with two dozen speakers on board to bring them enlightenment about one thing or another, from past lives, to rituals, to of course, chakras.

Tomorrow I speak on manifestation through the chakras — how to give your gifts back to the world and co-create Heaven on Earth. Perhaps it will make a difference, somewhere, somehow, even way out here in the middle of the sea. I manifested this wonderful experience—what do you want to create?