Under the circumstances, I decided that the most courageous and life-affirming thing to do was to walk away from the family business and to leave behind all connection to my family’s fortune. This felt like the most honest and liberating choice I could make. It was a choice for my integrity.

It was not a choice, however, that my father could then understand. Sadly, it was a source of distance in our relationship. He did not appreciate the path I was taking, and could not grasp why I would refuse the golden opportunity he was offering me.

I hated disappointing him, but I had to be true to myself. In 1969, my wife, Deo, and I moved to a remote part of a little island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, where we built a one-room log cabin in which we lived for the next ten years. We grew most of our own food, and our gardens were totally organic. The money we needed came from the yoga and meditation classes I taught. We were financially poor, in many years spending less than a thousand dollars, but we didn’t need a lot. We were profoundly in love. Our time was our own. And we were learning a lot about growing food, about healing, and about ourselves.

In 1973, four years into our time on the island, our son, Ocean, was born, at home and into my hands. As he grew up we continued to spend very little money, so that we could have time for each other and the other things that mattered to us. We understood what Thoreau meant by “I make myself rich by making my wants few.” We celebrated simplicity.

As Ocean grew up I naturally had expectations for him, but more important to me than whether he lived up to them was that he be able to listen to himself well enough to know when my expectations were in alignment with his destiny and when they were not. The last thing I wanted to do was to tyrannize him with my own fears and unfulfilled wishes. What mattered was not whether he disappointed me, but that he not betray his own soul.

Eventually we moved back to California, and several of my books about healing ourselves and healing our world became bestsellers giving us some measure of financial security. The press took to calling me things like “the rebel without a cone” and “the prophet of nonprofit.”

Meanwhile, my father, on account of his diabetes and high blood pressure, was beginning to make major changes in his diet. Gradually he gave up eating ice cream or any other form of sugar, and he greatly decreased his intake of meat. As a result, his health improved dramatically. He liked reminding me that he was “not a card-carrying vegetarian,” but he was beginning to have far more respect for the lifestyle choices I had made and the work I was doing.