Thursday, January 29, 2009

Just Another Story

Tripping in Amed, my ipod froze as it was making its way through the shuffle – otherwise known as DJ God. The light remained on and the track showing was Just Another Story, The Return of the Space Cowboy. Now, on mushrooms, the phrase, ‘can I have some toast?’ can be thought of as a profound truth. So I understand if you are picturing a couple of stoners with a glazed look in their eyes marvelling at tiny miracles. If you can let that go, come with me onto the ledge of the bathroom where the following truth was revealed…

I sat with Cat on the ledge, not a cloud in the sky, looking at more stars than could be imagined. To one side of us were the hills whose lights appeared as more stars. The other side was the ocean. As we sat there and attempted to take it all in we could hear our minds chattering. ‘I’ve seen this before’ they would say. ‘That’s the stars, that’s the ocean, that’s a hill, this is a ledge’ as if nothing remarkable was occurring in those moments. As we moved from our categorising minds into our hearts and solar plexuses we could stare with child-like innocence at the sheer magnificence of it all. But even the thought, 'this is magnificent' is a judgement which makes the opposite also true.

It goes on forever this chatter – the mushrooms just helped us to see it from a different perspective away from ordinary consciousness. For a moment we are participants in an unravelling play to which we are neither the playwright nor the director. We are just playing a game in which the rules are unclear, but it’s fun and spontaneous and full of life. Then the mind draws you back to the attic and it becomes You and Me. It is Guilt and Blame. It is Success and Failure. The right side of the brain always arguing against the left side into eternity.

Just another story. One on top of the other on top of the other. Characters intertwining into the roles of good guy and bad guy, mother and father, ally and enemy. Time getting distorted into past becoming future becoming past again. The endless loops of mind-centered madness and all the while we are missing the unknowable truth.

I write about this trip because it continues to teach me today as I think back. And the irony of it all is it has become just another story. Trying to hold onto truth such as this is, as Jnaneshwar puts it, like trying to pick up a wave. All you will pick up is water. So I share it with my blog audience, whoever you may be, because it seems selfish to confine it to a bathroom ledge on the east coast of Bali in the still of a night of nothingness.

Cat Kabira the First

I met Cat the first day I arrived in Ubud. I was sitting in a cafĂ© with the unnamed woman who I had come to see. We were blocking out half of our faces with our hands and comparing sides – which one was more masculine and which more feminine. It was a fun game. Cat strolled passed on the way to an Indonesian lesson that she would never find. She stood with us and talked about the different sides of the face and of the masculine and feminine in us all. There was an instant something, but it wasn’t romantic. It was a recognition. Perhaps a natural understanding. The seed would take a while to unfold.

A yoga teacher who teaches the Forrest Yoga Style, I met Cat a few more times over the month that passed. Eventually we caught up for a night of gin in my apartment above a restaurant in the rice paddies. The flow was easy and a friendship had been struck. But you know how it goes with boys and girls, there’s also something sexual. Alice, who I had met in the Gilis in January, was of the opinion that the best move is to just get the sex part done and out of the way and get on with the friendship… I ponder the success rate of her theory. Cat and I didn’t take this route and went about building a friendship even if the polar opposites of our privates were attracting each other.

After a few outings – one involving an all-night singing and dancing extravaganza in the belly of the beast of Seminyak – Cat and I decided to take a road trip out to Amed, take some mushrooms, and connect to the Source. We found an amazing 2 storey apartment right on the beach with the hills behind. The sky was beautifully clear and with a black moon the stars were out in full force.

How do I go about telling you about this experience but by mentioning the lessons that came from Source? Here they are as best as they can be remembered…

Monday, January 26, 2009

The Phoenix and the Short-Lived Flames

The thing about going into the unknown is that you really don’t know what’s going to happen. I know – that’s obscenely stating the obvious. But seriously, a space is created and anything can move into it.

When I was married to Natalie we used to talk about having kids. We had the feeling that the first would be a boy and we would name him Phoenix. When the marriage ended there was almost a mourning period just for this unborn son.

So who should turn up in Ubud in February but Glen – an ex AFL player from Carlton and the Hawks, Kati – an Elvish Finnish girl, and their 8 month old, Phoenix. They taught me about something I’d never heard of – the Lotus birth. It involves not cutting the umbilical cord after birth and placing the placenta in a decorated bag that stays with the baby. After about 5 days or so the baby will let go of the placenta when it feels ready. Kati described the placenta as the baby’s first friend and the cutting of the umbilical cord as the baby’s first taste of the violence of life.

Interesting huh?

I spent a lot of time with this family, getting to know them and talking about similar experiences – from burning man to central America – the synchronicities rolled on. We joined up with an American couple, Karen and the A Man. Together we formed our little crew living amongst the rice paddies. We talked life, we walked through a couple of crises, we ate great food and indulged in many a massage.

Through this time I would make 2 more mistakes when it came to women, coming to the realisation upon reflection the simple truth that, God is not a pimp. That led me to the decision to embrace a year of celibacy. It’s fortunate that in Hebrew the word ‘year’ means ‘season’. And so my year of celibacy became a tidy 3 months – the time it would take to get to know and love my dear friend, Cat Kabira…

The Beginning... January 1st, 2008

In the beginning there was me and a backpack and the first day of 2008. And it was good. Like any good story it began with a girl. Unlike said story the girl is not a major character and all the strange build up with her in the months that led up to Bali fell apart rapidly in the physical world contact that followed. Essentially, anticipation was better than participation. In fact, there was no participation, for when I got here I realised that there was a severe lack of attraction.

Maybe this woman acted as a good catalyst to get me here. Maybe that was her purpose. Or perhaps she was the start to a great lesson learned in 2008 – see through the veil.

So things with this Balinese woman ended before they began and I found myself going for a cleansing bit of action with an American girl after about a week or so of arriving. Cleansing was right – as my night with her was mysteriously linked with 6 days of bali belly that rendered me immobile, having to be within 10 quick steps of a bathroom. It was on one of my many long porcelain celebrations that I realised it for certain – I’m travelling again.

The belly cleared up only as she left town and I found myself, after 3 weeks in tropical Bali, to be in need of a holiday! So I left town and headed out to Lembongan Island – a place known for its scuba diving and snorkelling. There I spent as much time as I could underwater.

Do I tell you about the dive that we had, 2 dive masters and 2 beginners, when we were caught in a downcurrent that took us 18 meters further down than we were supposed to go? About the 50 year old woman, that I had convinced that diving was a safe sport, who took water into her mouth at 40 meters and panicked? Who nearly didn’t make it to the surface and when she did had lips of purple-blue?

Probably not.

She survived and we moved on. Me – onto the Gili Islands. Here I had a shake out of debaucherous fun in the islands off the mainland of Lombok where the cops don’t go. It was just the kind of good times I was looking for, and when I returned to Bali at the end of January, I was ready to hit the reset button and go again.

Introdogshon

I’ve had a couple of requests from friends to share a few experiences from my time in Bali. And as it is all coming to a close I thought I’d put down a few notes on the journey, what I’ve learned and who I’ve learned it with.

Soon I'll be heading off to Taiwan to teach some English and Sing Some Song. Hence the title of this blog. So consider the next few entries a wrap up and then get into some more live time feeds.

So if you get the feeling, stay tuned to this blog and get down with the uploads.