journey to the holy land .:bali:.
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we water our dreams with earth magic
i prayed for miracles/ followed the magic.
swept into my greatest dreams, riding in on divine light beams.
we travel 36 hours to the other side of the planet and land in bali.
where up is down and dark is light. where it snows flowers instead of ice on rooftops.
where the rooster crows at dawn over the rice fields, heralding a magical new day, and i hear him through the wide-open bedroom windows that have no screen #rustic #wild #open
we’ve come to live here for as long as it makes sense. (in the end, it’s 6 months)
i drive on the opposite side of the road on a motorbike carrying both my children, with no traffic laws, yet so much more collective intuition, attention, flow. i’ve never driven a motorbike in my life, but i learn quickly and get into a groove. before i know it, it’s my favorite mode of transportation. so simple. so free. it’s an open-air spiral dance with the wide world around me, and i don’t ever want to return to the thin lines and grids and frustrations of american traffic.
i’ve embarked on a pilgrimage from across the seas in search of transcendence, but what bali really teaches me is immanence;; how to be fully here, self-embodied. dirty with living, naked with loving, stripped to the bone by truth. like my teacher says, “your soul is the hand, your life is the glove. wear it fully.”
to engage full on/ go all out in my expression of authentic living & becoming my truest self, i thrust myself yet again into the unknown. i literally couldn’t be further from home, or my comfort zone. not only does distance separate us from loved ones, but so does time. we sleep while they wake, and wake while they sleep.
we find out pat’s mom has two benign brain tumors (discovered by divine accident while scanning for a tooth abscess). she can treat one with medicine. the other will need radiation or operation.
prayer enlarges our hearts- aligns us with the bigger plan/purpose.
we can’t imagine life without her.
we’re living in a (very) foreign country, and both of my kids catch pertussis. we love them back to health and they’re so much stronger for it. i’m so grateful for the body’s intelligence// natural medicine and the ability to support & strengthen their immunity at the interface of the lungs. the acute sickness only lasts a week or so, but their coughs linger for months (100-day cough, they’re not kiddin’)
i prepare myself mentally, emotionally, physically for an initiation/ spiritual quest… // jedi training \\ …my 200-hour yoga teacher training. it begins in october, on my one-year ibogaine anniversary 😱 #spiraltime
opportunity knocks and i throw the door to my heart wide open :: i leap into the dark.
what once was a dream is now realized.
#spiritualunfoldment becoming, becoming, becoming
inadequacy bubbles to the surface. the fear of being seen. the even bigger fear of not being seen for what i truly am.
will i put my guard up, build walls around myself and stay safely inside the fortress? or will i let it all come crumbling down, unravel, and allow myself to stand naked, raw, vulnerable… free. #thetower
this is a shadow i live with. the teeter totter between ego // truth :: self-liberation // self-limitation
what does it feel like when i step into my power? liberated expressive creative passionate sensual. absolutely present with full trust and surrender to what the moment will bring. no planning or protecting. open and free. trust and surrender create ease and flow. the degree to which i am living authentically is the degree to which i am in my power.
every window and door of my villa is open to the sound of rain downpouring; a lush jungle soak. i wake at dawn, and meditate alone in a quiet, sleeping house. i am transported into lightness./ the bliss body of absolute ease and expansiveness.
i linger in the sensation of purity, the all-encompassing peace, feeling the rightness/lightness, holiness in every atom of my life. paradise found.
i come down from the mystic mountain, reborn, and pull tarot.
i ask:: may i please be enlightened.
i receive: 10 of hearts (bliss! harmony!), the star (spirit made manifest. #charmed), the sun (highest self-expression, electric energy, total illumination, enlightenment)
…i hear you loud and clear…
the world all around me and within me blossoms open like a flower. vivid, psychedelic, expansive.
in the bloom of my life/ transformed by beauty.
at dusk i cry tears of gratitude as i ride my motorbike home from another 12-hour day of training. crystalline codes of gratitude and awe -- the only correct response to life. holy water pouring from the eyes of consciousness. i can’t believe where i am – in time, in space, in my life and my being. #magicalliving
the soul is the authentic self made visible.
at dawn i cry in child’s pose. full surrender. embodied let go. a flood of tears moves through me like a river.
e m b o d i e d l i b e r a t i o n ;;
the cellular memory of absolute openness & freedom of being brings me to my knees // mingles with the pain and utter heartbreak at how many times i unknowingly deny myself this freedom. i open and open and open some more, and cry and cry through an entire asana practice. shamanic. deeply feminine. heart-opening. holy saltwater tears washing and cleansing me from the inside out. pouring, pouring, from closed eyes all the way down the streams on my cheeks. i taste them on my lips, absorb them into my skin. #integration
tears = structured water = intelligence = medicine codes
i am here, i am whole, i am holy.
i practice yoga/meditation/study 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for a month. it’s intennnnse
pat pays for my training *and* takes care of our babies//////
he’s a star in human form ✨🌟✨ #atlas of our lives.
his love is a doorway to my truest, most authentic self.
(thank you thank you a million times thank you 😭)
there’s only room for everything. (a glowing reminder)
when we attempt to close certain energies/experiences out, we close ourselves as well. we build a wall.
we say, “there’s only room in here for x, y, z.”
we say “no” to life as it’s happening.
but when you open to it - a l l - raw & vulnerable & willing, you can meet anything and everything, and be transformed by it, be opened by it. you can let it in, let it transform you. with practice, the circumstances of life can widen our aperture, instead of narrowing it.
magic is simply a willingness to cooperate with everything. like floating down a broadening river into the open sea.
“it’s written in your heart how to love, and your destiny is on your brow.
the answers you seek are all around. all you have to do is bow.”
i practice multi-dimensional surrender. mentally. emotionally. spiritually. physically.
i deeply inquire: what is embodied surrender?
i used to get it confused with collapse. now i understand it isn’t passive at all.
they say “the issue is in the tissue.” we store memories in our cells, unprocessed emotions in our flesh, codes in our dna. what are your patterns of holding? what plays like a broken record in your life? where does it occur in your body?
i shine the light of awareness into every corner of my life:/ my self.
the unknown becomes realized. the undealtwith becomes felt, and melts.
the shadow turns to light. poison turns to nectar. #transformation #embodiedalchemy
my anatomy teacher inspires me.
“if you want to change anything in your life, change how you breathe in relationship to that thing.”
breath is the key that unlocks/transforms the patterns in our lives. the medicine of iboga showed me that the heart is the third lung. when i breathe with my heart, my reality shifts.
dream yoga transforms my practice (i’ll tell the full story another time). doing bhujangasana (cobra pose) in my dream transmits actual cellular memory while i sleep - a burst of light, and the asana integrates like a software download into my body. when i wake up, the pose is unlocked - a new understanding of the anatomy dawns. #dreamyoga
in waking life, a baby cobra slithers through our open bedroom window. by the time we come back with tools to evict it, it’s nowhere to be found 🐍😬
i am an embodied chemist. i pay special attention to what chemicals (food, thoughts, emotions) open and close my consciousness. #somanaut #madscientist #alchemist
i am forever devoted to awakening the consciousness in my every cell. my practice is my offering, my body + being are the prayer.
by the end of our sojourn i quit drinking alcohol.
surrender also means letting go of the things that keep us closed/ keep us feeling small and limited. self-liberation.
i am devoted to holy transformative healing. life is a spiritual quest/ an endless invitation to embody the sacred truth of who we are.
“yoga is the journey of the self, through the self, to the self.”
= = = =
friends + family come all the way across the planet to play with us. we have the time of our lives.
pat and i take a date trip to remote northern bali. we drive for hours and hours, through country roads, passing villagers who look as though they’ve never seen a tourist drive through before. #offthebeatenpath -- just how we like it.
gps is funny in foreign countries. especially countries with no road names/signs. we take a route that has us literally motorbiking up a rocky mountain (no road, barely a trail). pat has to lift and accelerate the moped at the same time. i laugh and film and am no help at all. i worry we won’t make it to our villa, which is apparently in the middle of n o w h e r e
we eventually arrive.
we’re alone for the first time since leaving the states. we drop in. we eat. we sleep. we touch. we talk. we swim.
we hike through the rainforest to 300-foot waterfalls. we water our dreams with earth magic. 💦🌿💭🌈💘
we make two visa runs over the course of our six month sojourn (you have to leave and re-enter the country every 2 months on tourist visas. we travel to singapore and malaysia, each for a weekend. we don’t take very many pictures, here are some…
visa runs are fun, but we’re eager to get back to bali.
after six months we decide it’s time to fly back to the states and return to our loved ones. mega culture shock ensues! it takes time to re-adapt to the ways of the west. we miss so many things about southeast asia… and yet we’re so happy to hug our family, experience air conditioning, eat comfort foods, and be there for pat’s mom as she prepares for brain surgery 😭🙏😇🕊
bali is holy land/ hallowed ground.
she shows us that the best mode of transportation is often a leap of faith, which may or may not include balancing upside down, saying yes without thinking, trusting ourselves with reckless abandon, and realizing that strangers really are just friends we haven’t met yet.
thankyou thankyou thankyou beautiful mama bali --
for proving to me again and again that after i leap and before i land is magic ✨