Lo! Comes a Seer.........How Bali is Blessed in Yoga & a Vow
Cross me palm with silver Dearie, and I’ll tell you yer fortune”, so says the fairground crone huddled over her crystal ball or the gypsy lady on the street corner. Or used to say perhaps. Nowadays it’s more likely to be a booth in some tacky New Age extravaganza in a Hilton Convention Centre in a major city someplace called the “Mind Body Spirit & UFO Festival” or somesuch. Here in claustrophobic halls and annexes is gathered the whole gamut of New Age commercialism. In the fortune telling line you are likely to find tasseographers (tea leaf readers to you, Sir), aura readers, rune readers, chiromancers, phrenologists, graphologists, astrologers as well as sundry psychics and abusers of the Tarot and I Ching. You name it and they’re likely to be there. Somewhere in it all I’m sure there is pure gold, but the overall impression frankly gives me the heebie jeebies. Money changers in the Temple more like.
From what I’ve just said you might think I don’t believe in the ability some people have to ‘see’ things most of us cannot. Actually, you’d be wrong. Not only am I open to it but I’ve actually met a few people with truly remarkable powers of this kind. Quite what it is they do and how they do it I could not say. One thing I can tell you, such people are pretty rare and it is really only by word of mouth from friends whose opinion you respect that you get to hear of them at all. When you do come across one it is a gift so take advantage of it if you can. For the rest, the other 94%? Self-deluded at best. Worse, any skills they do develop are more about preying on the credulous.
So when my friend Katia, St. Kate of the Vertebrate, who knows my views on the subject and whom no-one could exactly call a Findhorn Fairy or New Age Flake, goes to the trouble to call me up to say that a Middle Eastern clairvoyant with a remarkable psychic talent and intuitive gift, whom she has herself consulted, is to be in Bali for a few days - I am not only curious, I am tempted to go. In fact I am going to go - and will share next issue what I reckon on it all.
Anyone else who wants to find out first hand; his name is Marwan, he is out of Lebanon and will be here between the 6th to 9th June. If you want to know more or make a booking call Bodaya Studio in Sanur, Tel: 284 427.
Bali is Rich in Yoga
Now I’ve not beatified my friend K just because I like her, which I do, nor just because she’s a women of character and transparent integrity, the which she is, but most of all because she’s a genius in getting a bod to move the right way after years of going the wrong way. One thing Bali seems to be blessed with is a large number of really wonderful Yoga teachers of various disciplines who live here or who pass through on a regular basis. They can be found in Ubud, Sanur and Seminyak and we are more lucky than we know in the high calibre of many of them. We’d be mad not to take advantage of their presence. I was in some classes recently given by Olop from Seminyak way and was awed not just by what can be done but by the dedication it takes to get there. There are more than a few others here just as talented, just as dedicated. Not only that, new people are coming forward and starting to teach. I commend and salute them all, every one.
But me, I’m a beginner, d’ye see?
I may have done quite a bit of Nei Gong and Yoga in my time but I would have to say it has been, how shall I put it, sporadic? Bit like my meditative practice I would have to say. In fact movement and meditation would be my two biggest deficit areas. But I’m working on it! As a consequence I couldn’t say my body is as flexible as it might be. In fact I cannot even touch my toes without bending my knees. Not anywhere near! I’ve been tempted to make that a target and a commitment to myself for quite a few years now - but, not knowing if it was physiologically possible, didn’t want the angst and massive blow to my self-esteem of making promises to myself I couldn’t keep.
So here now, under the aegis of this Noble Organ and before its assembled readers I do solemnly commit to touching my toes (without bending my knees, natch) within 3 years of this date. If anyone wants to take odds on a year, drop me a line. You might be on.
Beginner’s Mind
The reason I now feel confident to take such a momentous step is this. My friend K treats me like a beginner. She knows I actually don’t have a clue or forgot long ago which muscle to use to do what she’s telling me to do. So she pokes it or says “imagine it”. The yoga folks do that too, by the way. After a while, sure enough whatever it is I couldn't do starts to happen. Now in K’s case, however much she knows about yoga, Pilates, silat, physiotherapy, rehab or any other kind of movement or physical therapy, what I like is she is not wedded totally to any one. If it don’t make sense structurally she’ll adapt accordingly. That’s not necessarily true in yoga, which after all is not just about physical wellbeing.
In yoga, I observe there is a tendency to follow one particular path or teacher to exclusion of all others and the possibility for the more devoted to become a tad dogmatic about it. Cleave unto the path and in time ye shall prevail. At least some may. Having said that I do recognise that for some, such single-mindedness may indeed be the correct path and can lead to spectacular results. Just not everyone, is all. I also recognise that there are many, many yoga practitioners who are as mentally flexible about such things as they are physically and not in least dogmatic or doctrinaire. Its just good to be clear about what you expect and what you’re prepared to do to achieve it. If there is congruence between the two, you are a lot less likely to be put off by the time it can take and the rate of progress you make.
So you can imagine then, that in a not particularly large class of say a dozen, who may be at different levels of competence, it is quite likely that you will be perpetuating some fundamental error and not know for years. In my case, my toes were not coming any closer no matter what. I was simply bending in the wrong place and even had I been told that, I wouldn’t have known what to do about it. That’s what beginners classes should show you, but often do not.
I also hear that, like my friend K with her Pilates, yoga and rehab work, another well known Bali yoga teacher has decided to devote her time more to one-on-one healing yoga. That is, matching her years of yoga discipline to the particular individual in front of her for a therapeutic purpose. That makes absolute sense to me and the more gifted teachers move in this direction the better off we all can be. Of course its not just in yoga we see the healing application at work, but in Qi Gong, Aikido and many other schools also. We see it too in the work of Merta Ada, applying meditation for the specific purposes of healing. It seems to me that the more there is a dual approach, the general and the individual, the better it gets. We need the general approach just because it is general. It leverages a teachers time more effectively, the message or movement reaches many more people, it addresses a bigger more all-embracing context than the strictly personal, and it involves group energy. Individual work allows us to address specifics, confusions and pathologies and is wonderfully encouraging.
The Thing about Teachers.....
One thing I have noticed is that teachers of this calibre all have certain characteristics in common. To be any good you have to care more about what you are doing and how you are doing it than about the money or the kudos. You simply can’t have it both ways. You can’t want to be a great healer or yoga teacher and to become rich and famous by doing so. It always gets in the way. You may indeed become rich and famous but only by giving up the expectation. You can’t fake it either, people know and it compromises what you do. It drives away the very abundance that might otherwise come your way unscripted and unexpected. Trouble is, though many people want to be a teacher or a healer, few are prepared to do what it takes to be a great one. Many with potential fall by the wayside as the desire for recognition and money debases their talent. Others have neither the gift nor the application, and should not seek to fool themselves or others. Their talents lie elsewhere.
and Money........
Don’t think for one minute I’ve got anything against money or doing your best to get it. But know what you’re doing and why. There is a time to make money, to provide for yourself, your family and to give yourself the freedom to find your way in life, if you don’t already know. And if you do, it will almost certainly change, leading onto other things. That’s what makes life interesting.
But spare me please, those dreadful New Age seminars on “Creating Spiritual & Financial Abundance” and their ilk. These are pyramids, where only the organisers get rich. They take your normal average greedy person and first tell them its not greedy to be greedy. They then tell them they deserve abundance, it is their God given right. There may be a few personal hang ups in the way of true wealth but no probs, the course will help with that. Above all, they must remember they are a good person and deserve to be rich and must affirm that day after day. If after a while they do not become rich they are obviously not a good person or they’re not doing it right. That’s leads to yet more low self-esteem among the armies of the already LSE-challenged and more greedy embittered people, with no particular talent or means of ‘making it’.
I think the most unappealing example I experienced of this sort of wilful self-delusion was the sight of a woman I knew announcing that she was a devotee of Laksmi. She did this in all seriousness, while exhibiting a stunning degree of greed and lack of integrity. It was the grossest of insults to the Goddess. She’d probably done a course or two, that one. Or perhaps came to it naturally. Hard to tell. And she made herself ugly.
Living Faithfully
Its sadder though, when you see this sort of thing happening with healers who actually have a talent but whose energies go into building cash flow, networking, leveraging their time and the number of patients they see in a day and building associated forms of income. They end up losing the very respect they crave and the original purpose and spark they had gets lost, temporarily one hopes. If anyone needs a model of an inspired healer who had got the balance right, you have only recall Dr. David Moore, who graced our shores a while ago.
Whatever we do and whoever we are, we all need to conduct a reality check from time to time, be it Socratic or Advaitic. For those of you over 35, with their persona intact, I suggest you hire a demolition company, you probably need it. For all those out there striving to earn an honest buck, I salute you. For all those teachers or healers of integrity my special gratitude and admiration.
The closing lines of George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” put it well,
“ No dreams of being praised above others.........
Feeling that there was always something that might have been done better, had they known better.........
Their work spends itself in deeds which leave no great name upon the Earth. But the effect of their Being on those around them is incalculable. For the good of the Earth is dependent on all those who live faithfully their hidden lives.........”
The icons and the ‘wannabes’ will always be with us, don’t worry! But however unfashionable it may be, we all know the kind of person Eliot describes. Not necessarily teachers or healers but amongst our friends and acquaintances, and we are both blessed and rich in the knowledge.
Paracelsus
Comments or queries
ParacelsusAsia@yahoo.com
