INDONESIA - DAY TWENTY ONE
JUNE 5, 2024
We started the morning at 7:30am with a yoga practice. This was a departure from our “regular” schedule where we have a morning meditation from about 8:00-8:15, and circle begins at 9:30am-1:00pm, followed by lunch. After lunch we have had free time to sit by the pool, enjoy spa services, read, nap or arrange a driver to go into town.
After our morning practice, we enjoyed another wonderful breakfast. At 10:00am we met in the living room to meet our drivers to go to the water temple.
Saunders and I went to a water temple last week - yes, I know I need to still catch up. Both were special, however this one impacted me differently. It was a sacred experience. The other one was more like the Disneyland of temples with more people, the same sarongs handed out to go in the water and then just like at Disneyland, where you exit into a gift shop, you are ushered out into an “Indonesian market.” Don’t mind all the people pushing their wares on you as you exit following you to your vehicle who barely take no for an answer.
After the purification, prayer and blessing we anoint ourselves with offering flowers on the top of our heads and rice at our third eye. My rice has fallen off.
My intention for this trip, especially this part of the trip was to let go and by extension let all the S#!+ from home go. It’s funny though, somehow “home” does not want to allow me to let go. Everyday, it is a new thing I need to figure out. Truly, I wish I were here in life before cell phones and unplugging and tending to MYSELF on a grief retreat actually was just that. This is the curse of modern technology, right? We have constant access and when we don’t, we are longing for it and freaking out because we don’t. It’s enough to drive a person nuts and that, it has. I washed away a great deal at the water temple today and yet here I sit stewing with more S#!+. The time change does not help either. When I awake in the morning, the US has had their work day, so I wake up to it all; a barrage of emails and texts. I look forward to the weekends and the day time here. It’s funny, as I write this I am processing that I am most stressed from 7:00-9:30am and 7:00pm until I go to bed at night, Indonesian time. It would be so nice to be free of that especially on my retreat. I guess life didn’t get the memo AND…..
tomorrow is a new day!