SWINGING

In three weeks I have visited two Balinese hospitals and three traditional Balinese healers.

After my initial heartquake that landed me in Sanglah, the people’s hospital, my new neighbor, Adriana, took me to see a traditional balian.  (Adriana is from Slovakia and her husband, Brij, is from India.  They met in Dubai.  I just love how international Bali is.)  We drive about 30 minutes, arriving at a house surrounded by rice fields.  Several others are ahead of us in the waiting room, a mixture of locals and westerners.  A Balinese woman attended by her grown son slowly sips an herbal potion the healer’s wife has prepared.  It is evident that the tea is not a delicious mixture conducive to gulping. 

When it is our turn the balian greets us as a gracious host, makes a sincere effort to memorize our names and, holding my hand, escorts us to a private room.  The look in his eye is clear, deep and direct; a knowing, reassuring look.  We sit together on cushions.  He does his healing work with Adriana first, then Brij; I go last.  He asks us to look into his third eye and keep our eyes open.  He closes his eyes, telling us he is able to view inside our bodies.  Brij is clearly in a high state of discomfort as the balian does his hands-on energy work, a deep and specific massage with coconut oil.  When he works on me, focusing on the organs below my rib cage, I feel no pain at all, just a sense of elation that continues to rise.  The balian says I don’t sleep well and it’s true that I sleep very little.  He talks about my pancreas, but doesn’t say a thing about my heart.  Adriana tells him about my recent heart experience and he says, unconcerned, “Heart is easy!  Just need to see me one time for heart!”  He does a little additional energy work on my heart and we return to the sitting room.  His wife brings us individually concocted teas that look and taste as if she has scraped the jungle floor and added ginger.  The balian and his wife focus their bright and intense eyes on me, remarking repeatedly about how young I look for my age.  The balian insists over and over again that I am from India.  

Once we leave and Adriana asks me what I think of the balian and his healing powers, I am not sure.  I certainly feel uplifted by the experience.  “He is a spiritually conscious man,” is about all I can say for sure.

At home I find a dear friend has sent me the link to a Hindu chant called “Devi Prayer:

Hymn to the Divine Mother.”  I have been asking my heart what will make it sing.  As I listen I feel this chant is one of my heart’s songs; the extended New Age synthesizer notes replicate sounds I have heard during some of my out-of-body travels beyond this world, the Sanskrit lyrics tie in with the balian’s insistence that I am Indian. 

Ma Amba Lalitha Devi

The Divine Mother is everywhere.

She is in everything.

She is the Divine Essence that lives within all beings.

Her domain is the field of life, for she gives to all beings the sustenance that is needed for life.

Her beauty lives in the natural world, and spans the universes in all their splendor.

She has been called by many names, for all traditions recognize Her.

Into each consciousness, the knowledge is given of the sacredness of life.  This sacredness IS the Mother.........

I have spent most of my life paying very little attention to my pancreas, not really even aware that I have one.  Since the balian brought the subject up I do a little research.  Insulin production, part of the job of the pancreas, is not my issue, but I did come across something that caught my attention, a couple of somethings: metaphysically the pancreas has to do with the sweetness of life; and the gemstone that relates to the pancreas is the emerald, my birthstone. 

Just a few days later our family is on another vacation, a long weekend school break.  We begin at a place called Turtle Bay near the village of Jasri, far on the southeast coast of Bali.  Our friend Emerald lives there and has invited us to stay as his guests in the Javanese joglo house he usually rents out.  The joglo, made of teak and standing on tall stilts, has two bedrooms, two baths, a sitting room and a gigantic balcony looking out on the crashing waves.  From the balcony it feels like being on a ship at sea; no human-made structure is visible, just a small island off shore exactly the shape of a sperm whale.  

Emerald’s staff serves us a healthy lunch on the balcony, a combination of the fresh greens I have brought and vegetables from Emerald’s organic garden.  It feels good to me being here, a taste of the sweetness of life.  Emerald has lived in Bali for decades and we have known him for almost as long as we have been visiting the island.  I always feel uplifted by conversation with him, absorbing the depth of his understanding about such diverse topics as the sacred geometry and lay-lines connecting Balinese temples and the intricacies of Balinese politics.  I feel like Emerald gets me; we understand each other.  It does my heart good to be seen and met.  Emerald has recently begun growing coffee and invested in a small chocolate making operation, subjects of great interest to Asher and I.

After lunch I have some physical discomfort.  I can feel the balian’s fingers working my pancreas area, although he is nowhere in sight.  A wave of exhaustion comes over me and I rest on a daybed with abundant, plump pillows.  Soon I feel my spirit begin to journey away from my body and the prickles of fear that rise up in me when that starts to happen.  I hear Asher’s voice -- not his physical voice  -- say, “Don’t be afraid.  Go into the Light.”  I relax more, surrender, and move into a Glow that is yellow in the center and vibrant orange all around.  I experience a peace beyond peace... serenity.  As it dissolves away I find myself rubbing my fingers together making sure I still have a body.  I have been having these experiences with increased frequency the past two years.  They are so real to me that I know beyond any sense of doubt that much more exists than what we know as physical reality.  Each experience is a little -- sometimes a lot -- like dying.  I believe I am learning to die so that I can live well.  To live well is to live free of fear, in absolute trust that all things are working together for good.  To live well is to live in joy.

For the rest of that day and well into the next I am in a state of bliss.

We visit Emerald’s chocolate partner, Charlie, at his gnome-like chocolate factory right beside the ocean.  All the buildings look like elves or preschoolers live and play in them, but actually it is Charlie who makes natural soap and raw chocolate there, living upstairs in one small room with a bed and a chair.  Overlooking the beach, hanging a great distance down from a coconut palm, is a wide plank wooden swing.  I put Sofia on it, but it swings out so far over the sloping land, reaching out to the ocean, that she is afraid to stay on for long.  Asher does the full-on adult ride, pulling the swing up the hill to a wooden treehouse-like platform built around a palm, then sailing out in a long arc high above the ground.  He finds the swing kind of scary, too.  Ordinarily I don’t find frightening things fun.  I don’t care for roller coasters and horror films.  On this day, having walked along the lip of the volcano between life and death, and having staked my territory in bliss, the swinging is magnificent.  I pull the swing up to the platform, let go, and surrender with supreme ease.  I am tasting the sweetness of life.  I relish the sensation of flying.  The swing is a barometer for me and I am registering no fear.

Later, I crash.  An emotional crash.  Having moved into my most expanded state yet, I then take a swing in the other direction.  I contract.  It starts as anger about a couple of seemingly small things, but what it touches off in me is a profound feeling of not being cared for, provided for, assisted by my husband, and by life itself.  I put myself through the worst of my teenage anxiety, comparing myself to others and judging myself harshly.  We had left Emerald’s beautiful surroundings -- Sofia and I traveling by car and Asher on his bike -- to join about about 20 Green School families in Amed, the easternmost part of Bali.  It was much too large a crowd and far too crummy a hotel for my plummeting state of mind. And ordinarily hot, dry, beachy Amed is overcast and rainy our entire stay.

This is a big crash for me and it takes me days to climb out of the pit.  It gets worse before it gets better.  I want Asher to listen, be compassionate, be affectionate, but he tells me it’s all an inside job, I have nowhere to look but inside myself.  True, but still I want him to listen.  The more I want him to listen the less he is willing to do so.  I would like him to be able to hold his own joy while compassionately hearing my pain, but he will not budge from his absolute stance, his insistence that his duty to himself is to selfishly pursue his own joy no matter what.  I think he feels that listening to my fears and insecurities will pull him down.  A gulf widens between us.  I can’t believe this is happening, and at such a tender time.  Of course this is when I am getting to the real emotional roots, the epicenter of the heartquake.  This sense of betrayal by someone who I think is supposed to love and care for me emotionally duplicates wounding from long ago when the imprint formed.

During the week I have an impromptu visit with another balian.  This one has been my friend for 13 years, since our first trip to Bali.  We took one look at each other and became friends for life.  His name is Ketut, but I have often affectionately called him Ketutski.  That’s hard these days when the growing entourage around Ketut calls him Shri Guru.  Yep, he’s been elevated to guru status.  Guru in Indonesian means teacher, but the connotation with this crowd is closer to Exalted Avatar. We have an intimate conversation for a few moments, but the circle of adoring women trickles in and I discover they have lunch plans with Shri Guru.  I join them along with Ketut’s family at a small warung just outside of Ubud.  Shri Guru tells the story of Ketutski’s visit with Avara and Asher in Los Angeles for a month maybe 12 years ago including the story of the time the three of us were together in our West LA kitchen, I passed out, Ketut saw my spirit leave through my heart and when I came back in I was in bliss for days afterwards.  We all pause for a moment, seeing the thread weaving a connection to the present.  I am not entirely comfortable with my propensity for this kind of travel, but sense it is leading me somewhere important.  It strikes an incongruent note for me that Shri Guru tells the assemblage how scared he was when I passed out.  I do not tell everyone that a year later, when Ketut and I were together at his home in Bali one night, he passed out and I picked him up after he bopped his head on the stone floor.  We have a connection beyond this world.

Somehow the enormity of the gulf between Asher and I recedes.  The tides of relationship go in and go out.  Gratefully they come back in again.  Just as the cycles of nature move through birth, life and death into rebirth once again, relationships die and are reborn as they evolve.  I tend to my own needs more deeply and he comes forward with a greater willingness to ride through the moment by moment fluctuations with me.  Just in time.  

A few days later I am having not one heartquake, but an extended series of waves somewhat like labor contractions.  They come on in the night.  Sofia is sleeping beside me and Asher is stroking my hair, helping ride out the quakes.  With each wave I pour forth a stream of consciousness release of every significant trauma I have experienced in my life, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing.  My body is doing something beyond my control; I cannot stop it or alter it.  The eruptions are powerful and they scare me.  I realize this terror is something I have carried my entire life.  I am riding the razor edge between life and death.  I affirm my desire to be in this body, my passion to live fully.  I have only just begun to get the hang of being here.  It feels like the waves will go on forever, but then they recede.  

I decide to go into the hospital again.  The hospital maneuver gets set into motion;  Cynthia finds a cardiologist on duty late at night, Michelle finds a car and a driver.   Asher stays with Sofia and angel nurse Michelle accompanies me.  I notice as I have time to pack my own bag that I am already feeling better.  Each time I go to the hospital it is after the fact.  I go anyway.  All the tests are normal, every single one.  I go back home in the middle of the night and slip into bed with my family.  I am glad to be home.  

I know this is not about a problem with my physical heart.  Asher knows this, too.  He also understands me better and knows me more intimately than he has ever known me in the 15 1/2 years we have been together.  Side by side with me as I died and birthed and spilled my lava, what had previously been a fuzzy understanding came into sharper focus for him.  Now it is easy for him to be compassionate.  

Day by day I feel better.  Some of the physical symptoms continue.  Some of the fears still lurk... will I pass out if I am driving a motorbike?... can I scuba dive?...  

My pembantu (helper) takes me to see her balian.  She comes to my house with her husband and son, during the hours she is usually off duty, and takes me on the back of her motorbike to a remote village.  We sit on the porch of a typical Balinese compound. A middle aged man in a sarong and nothing else struts towards us with the gait of a basketball player.  My pembantu, Komang, and her husband make some comments in Balinese about his physique and he flexes his muscles good naturedly.  At times like this I don’t really know what is happening but just go along for the ride.  No one speaks any English and I don’t know what the protocol is.  The athletic man slips into the house and returns all in white.  So he is the healer... I wasn’t sure.  He takes the offerings Komang brought and goes into his temple where he prays briefly.  When he comes back he asks me in Indonesian (at least they speak Indonesian, a language in which I can crawl along like an infant... in Balinese I am completely lost) if I had an experience where I suddenly fell over, passed out and... his hand trails up into the air signifying me leaving my body.  Okay, that’s impressive.  I hadn’t told anyone present.  He asks me some more questions, only some of which I understand and then begins his hands-on work.  Much of it is incredibly painful.  Komang holds my hand.  He does something between my toes and asks me if I feel heat.  No, just pain.  He massages my heart deeply with coconut oil.  My top is in the way and they ask me to take it off.  I am half naked with my pembantu, her husband I have just met, her son, various members of the balian’s extended family and the balian himself, receiving intense and sometimes excruciating massage, yet I am very much at ease.  In between phases the balian looks at me with piercingly loving eyes and asks how I feel.  I laugh a lot and respond that I feel good, but he is not convinced and does more work on me.  His hands and arms shake as he pulls energy out of my heart.  He is chanting something I cannot hear over the clucking of the chickens roaming around with newborn chicks.  He massages my arms and legs, always returning to my heart with that inquiring look to see if I have released my burden.  This man and I see each other, understand each other, without language.  When it is all over I feel lighter.  He directs Komang to make a jamu for me, a healing tonic of mostly turmeric, some vegetables and, uhhg, a raw egg yolk.

The next day some of my symptoms continue.  They come and go.  It is not intense, but it is not gone.  The lingering question is:  Will there be more? 

I arrange a cardiac treadmill stress test at the hospital.  When I arrive the staff tell me that the machine is broken.  Bali.  Asher gets a little huffy with the employees which is a good thing because they then decide to send us to the customer service office.  I am amazed that they have such an office.  The woman inside schedules an appointment for the test later that day in a private office.  They hook up 10 electrodes to my chest.  The same doctor who saw me in the hospital administers the test.  I walk on the treadmill.  At intervals the treadmill gets steeper and faster.  My blood pressure remains normal throughout and my heart rate is steady.  I pass the test with flying colors.

I receive a clean bill of health from the doctor.  My heart is just fine.  I am not going crazy.  I am not even having heart attacks.  Not really.  I am awakening. 

Whatever my life was about the first 50 years, the next 50 are swinging in another direction.