Soul medicine

There’s something about Ubud, which means medicine, and I must need a lot of medicine because I’m always returning to this very special place in Bali. 

The slower Balinese pace - if you allow it to permeate your being - is an enriching way to live encouraging you to notice more and think less.

Of course there is shopping and all the other things one can do. Yet, there is a quieter Balinese lifestyle and rhythm and this is what I like to drop into.

Right now I’m sitting on the little tiled veranda in my villa in Lodtunduh, Ubud Bali. A gentle breeze caresses my skin, the cloudy sky diminishing the heat and the light gray clouds show a possibility of showers.

A few more days of the glorious ceramics workshop at Mahteh Ceramics that gave me everything I hoped for and more.

Then it’s up to my familiar place in Penestanan, north of central Ubud where I’ll catch up with friends before heading home.

So while here, I create a slow lifestyle and there is no striving … for anything.

Life guides my actions and I surrender to it rather than trying to control it. There is still action needed like when handling clay you need to guide it but never force or try to control it. It lets you know right away that that’s not going to work as your clay goes off-center or collapses into a heap.

It’s something that has been percolating and composting within me for years and to now have moments of the magic of living this way is indescribable.

It helps me understand that there is never, nor has ever been, a need to strive. The energy of striving was only there because I thought I was in control of living this life and that I was the “doer” needing to do something. It was a closed loop that didn’t allow for the magic of life itself to guide the movements of my actions. There’s a joyfulness moving with life in this way where there is no striving as such.

The mind wants to be the driver, but the body knows

It means being very tuned-in to your body to hear the whispers of your soul, and the feelings in your heart. To tune-in to the subtleties of your intuition, your surroundings. The more you do, the stronger it gets. It’s moving out of mind (thoughts) habit of overanalyzing into a deeper place of knowing. We all have this deeper place of knowing. 

Perhaps we fear what it will prompt us to do. 

Or we fear we will get it wrong if we do follow its call.

Remember, the mind is loud and the soul calling is soft. If you don’t give yourself quiet time, you will not hear the soft voice of the soul and what it is trying to tell you. It knows what’s best. Trust in that and not the loud noise of the ego mind.

Life is not about living a production line life

Our societies train us to produce, produce, produce what it wants from us, rather than showing us how to listen and BE what we are meant to be. Producing things is not a “bad” thing per se.  When we produce from a natural movement of energy within it doesn’t require any striving force. In the natural state it’s impossible to repeat things endlessly in this kind of production line of life. There has never been a repeat sunrise or sunset. 

Even when you aim to repeat something, it’s never really exactly the same. So the idea of mass producing the same thing renders the product lifeless.

Those societal structures that have been in place for eons that would have us produce things in a repetitive way are dissolving, and not just for me. I feel it more strongly than ever. This movement into trusting our inner prompts and going with it, no matter what the mind says, or what others think, and doesn’t require striving. At all.

It’s following the flow of life that runs through you ALL the time 

But you have to tune-in to the current.

It takes practice to override the loudness of the mind telling us what we ‘should’ do, and instead follow what our soul is calling us to do. It can feel scary initially if we’re not used to living this way, but our soul is never wrong and is leading us to a life we are meant to live.

This is what I encourage you to explore. It’s never too late, and besides, there is no such thing as too late. 

Namaskar,

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