Are you ready.... to receive?
That's the question I asked myself after I finished the second part of my day today. And I didn't really know the answer. So today is New Moon and the people ofBali consider the day to be very sacred. There are all kinds of ceremonies and pujas that are performed in the temples and our teacher Emily suggested that it is a very holy and auspicious day for us to visit the water temples or Tirtha Empul. And I really wanted to do it, not because of today being an auspicious day to visit a temple, but also because it's supposed to be a lovely temple and i wanted to go check it out.
I don't remember when, but Emily also spoke about a high priestess in Ubud who works with water to purify people. Her name is Ida Resi Alit and she a Hindu priestess, you can read more about her here. And a couple of us really wanted to go meet her. The group started off with 8 people, then trimmed down to 7, and then finally settled at 6. The 4 of us ( from the pottery workshop) and two of my other friends : Miroslav and Maggie, joined us. We picked them up at Anomali . Have I spoken about Anomali? Of course, it's after all my favourite coffee place in Ubud! Dewa our driver, had helped us fix an appointment at 2 PM with Ida Resi and the 6 of us were on our way at around 1:30.
It was a 45 minute drive to the high priestess's place and it was a lovely ride. Really nice music, (thank you Yoska!), I still can't get this song out of my head, loads of lovely conversations, some leg-pulling here and there about how Maggie heard "breast milk" every time any restaurant and cafe told her the milk they use was "fresh milk". Poor girl was avoiding all these delicious lattes because she thought they all use "breast milk". Haha. Now Ubud is a trippy and hippy place to be in, with all this talk about healthy eating and spirituality in the air, but breast milk is slightly a stretch even for Ubud. Haha.
So yea, it was a fun ride. It was lovely to drive through the country-side and not be stuck in traffic and be away from the town area for a change. Such lovely lovely lovely rice fields, and these blue clouds floating in the sky and so much green all around, and it was all glistening, thanks to the insane rain this morning. The weather had cleared (it was pretty hot in the afternoon actually) and the scenery was picturesque, I can't even begin to describe how calming this Land of the Gods is. Far out in the distance, Mount Agung was peeking out from behind the clouds and all I wanted to do was grab my phone and capture that moment forever. But my phone finally, after acting funny for the last two days, gave up on me this morning. I wanted to cry. But then I closed my eyes and accepted it and let it be. All this acceptance work we are doing at the training is helping me ! Anyhow, back to the topic. On the other hand, because I wasn't preoccupied with capturing that moment on my phone, I could stare at it all I wanted and embed it in my memory (hopefully to a place where I can reach out to when I want to visit it again). It was a beautiful sight. Our driver Dewa gave us a few insights into the Balinese culture and their ceremonies and their various fasts. It was interesting to see how their Hinduism is so similar and yet so distinct from the Indian version of Hinduism.
So yesterday was the night of Siwa Ratri, the night when the Balinese pray to Lord Siwa (or Shiva) and ask for forgiveness for all their sins. It's a night of purification as well. It is also a night to be spiritually conscious and there is a lot of meditation involved. Some of the rituals include : Monabrata (not speaking), Upawasa (not eating), Mejagra (not sleeping). So now you see why the water purification ritual connected so well with this day.
Anyhow, we reached the high priestess's place. I'm sure I am not the only one who feels this way, but often times when I am extremely excited about something, the nearer it comes, the more my excitement turns into nervousness. I was very excited about meeting Ida Resi. But when the car parked in front of her house, I wanted to be there and not be there at the same time. But we all walked in and were taken to a temple-ish area, at the very end of the Balinese house compound. I'll write one day about the way the Balinese live in compounds (so much to write about!). So this place that we went to, was a gazebo or balcony of sorts, at the edge of a hill, open on all four sides and at the front there was an altar. We all sat down facing the altar and did some self meditation while we waited for the high priestess to join us.
Now, this is a story you will find in some other blogs as well if you Google Ida Resi Alit. But I need to tell it here anyway. When she was 20 years old (and she is pretty young even now btw), Ida Resi fell into depression and her family introduced her to yoga and meditation for her well being. Now, neither was she a spiritual person or was she a pro at yoga, but she started having these spiritual experiences. And so she was asked to perform a particular ceremony. At that ceremony, she fell into a deep sleep and gained semi-consciousness, being able to blink her eyes but not talk. She saw a bolt of lightening and then she slept again and then finally woke up properly the next day, spiritually enlightened and speaking in an ancient Balinese language and that is when the Hindu Dharma Council declared her to be a high priestess.
She finally joined us and asked us to walk with her to the temple where we sat down for a bit, with our eyes closed, breathed long deep breaths, in through our nose and exhaled with our mouths. She chanted in a language I do not know of and haven't heard of. It was not her normal voice, but almost like some other being, maybe not human, was speaking from inside of her. I did recognise stuff like " Om", "Vishnu" "Dewi" "Namastasye", "Shanti" ....but the connecting words, I have never heard before. Definitely not sanskrit or any version of any Indian language I know of. To be honest, it was a little scary. I was frightened at first, but them my fear slowly dissipated when I suddenly thought about my maternal grandfather. For some reason. He passed three years back and yes I pray to him every night, because I pray to my ancestors as a part of my prayers asking for their protection, but I don't usually invoke him name or the thought of him in the middle of the day. But here I seemed to call out to him, while I sat with my eyes closed in a Balinese home temple with a high priestess listening to words I hadn't heard before. She rang a temple prayer bell all the time she chanted. And then she ended her prayers and asked us to open our eyes and come to stand in front of her in groups of two for the purification ceremony.
I don't have pictures of any of this now, thanks to my broken phone. I might add a few when my friends send me the ones they took. But here's a YouTube video I found of someone else's experience, just as a refrence. She was sitting on the edge of a high platform and there were silver pots filled with water next to her. Sitting by her side was another lady whose job was to fill out these silver pot as she emptied them on us. So Mie and Miroslav went first. And she asked them to close their eyes while she started chanting in that language again and used a chrysanthemum flower to sprinkle water on them. This was a sprinkle literally. She asked them to breathe through their nose and breathe out through their mouths. And then she started to pour water. Pour, pots and pots and more pots, endless pots of water, not slowly, no, but in quick succession, so much that you didn't have the time to breathe sometimes between the two pours! She asked them to stomp their feet and release any kind of emotion and to "Let it all go", she instructed them to use their hands while she was pouring water " to clean themselves, all over the body" : face, arms, torso. She asked them to wail, cry, shout, do whatever they want to do and feel like doing and not hold back.
I was shaking. With fear. I took a few deep breaths of my own to calm myself down. This was intense. Yoska and Riddhi went next. And then Maggie and I looked at each other and almost gave each other this "We can do it" look and walked to the altar. She asked us to close our eyes and breathe the way she had instructed the others. And I did. And then it started, I jerked with the first flower sprinkle itself, the water was COLD and then it started to pour. She touched our foreheads with her finger, almost like she was blessing us, asking us to let it go. I will not talk about how the others reacted or felt, because that is their own personal journey. But I'll talk about mine, of course.
I called my grandfather again. Or maybe he just stayed with me throughout that inital preparatory prayer and watched with me while I freaked out seeing others react to the cleansing and maybe he walked with me to the altar. But he was there. I felt like he was holding me, in an embrace and Ida Resi saw it as well, she saw my shoulders hunch, maybe thought it was out of fear or i was holding back, but I was succumbing to my granddad's embrace. She touched my forehead again, asking me to let go, to scream, to stomp my feet and to release anything I have inside. And I searched for stuff to let go of, and things I am afraid of, almost willing myself to cry and shout and wail. And crying comes naturally to me. It really does. But I was so secure with my granddad holding me, that none of those feelings rose inside. She continued to pour pots and pots. I stomped my feet, washed my face with my palms, all with my eyes closed. And then she finally ended with taking a ladle ( I saw her do it to others and hence I know) and reaching that into another pot of water, that wasn't the icy cold water she was pouring us with, but a warmer one ( the one that was close to the God at the altar, maybe was an offering made to God earlier that morning, almost like holy water) and poured that on us. And then she asked us to open our eyes and go and stretch our bodies in the sun and just stand there and get a little warm and as a parting thing, told us to let it go.
And as I walked away from there, I was still securely held. But somewhere I felt Thatha (that's what I used to call my granddad) release me and go back to his end of the world. I felt it. Suddenly he wasn't there. After that another family went to get blessed. And we all sat and watched. Just watching people release their emotions was so humbling, and overwhelming and intense, also so scary. Ida Resi then walked to us and asked us to go back to that balcony and said she would join us.
We all walked there, all of us a little calmer, a lot lighter, and somehow feeling fresh, almost like we'd woken up from a deep refreshing sleep. I could see it in everyones faces. We sat there for a bit before the other group walked by and sat down with us and Ida Resi joined us and lit incense, praying to the Goddess at the altar. And then she asked us to close our eyes and started to chant and used a meditation bowl / singing bowl / tibetan bowl along with her chanting, again in that language. And then she started to sing in a different voice, but in that same language. She went around the group i'm guessing, because she walked by me a couple of times, touching my forehead blessing me. It was a deep deep deep prayer / meditation, almost like a ceremony and we all felt the strength in her prayers and her chanting. Towards the end, she asked to say "aaaaa" loudly, while she continued her chanting. So there was a cascade of unending "Aaaaa"s. And then after 15 mins of those prayers, she asked us to open our eyes and said we were done. She asked if we had any questions, none of us were in a position to speak I think, so we just smiled and she said, then you can feel free to leave. And then she went around hugging everyone, I touched her feet (because that's what we do in India to a priest/ priestess/ God) and gave her a big tight hug and we all walked back silently to the car.
It was overwhelming for sure. I think I've used that word a million times now in this post. I came away from there and that, feeling blessed for sure, feeling clearer in my mind and body and so happy, so genuinely happy to have connected with thatha like that. Just knowing that he is there watching over me, and is there when I call out to him in times of need or fear or sadness, is such a beautiful thing to know.
We all had our experiences. And I'm sure we will all remember it for years and years to come, if not for the rest of our lives. We'd all carried a change of clothes of course, so were in dry clothes and didn't ruin Dewa's car. So we hopped in and were on our way back to Ubud. Each of us carrying that little something in our hearts and minds. I'm so glad I did it and did it with the group that came along. We've all bonded because of this, in a very special way and I thank them all for sharing that experience with me.
And I thank Ida Resi for her blessings. And send some her way for all she did for us.
नमस्ते
I don't remember when, but Emily also spoke about a high priestess in Ubud who works with water to purify people. Her name is Ida Resi Alit and she a Hindu priestess, you can read more about her here. And a couple of us really wanted to go meet her. The group started off with 8 people, then trimmed down to 7, and then finally settled at 6. The 4 of us ( from the pottery workshop) and two of my other friends : Miroslav and Maggie, joined us. We picked them up at Anomali . Have I spoken about Anomali? Of course, it's after all my favourite coffee place in Ubud! Dewa our driver, had helped us fix an appointment at 2 PM with Ida Resi and the 6 of us were on our way at around 1:30.
The High Priestess, Ida Resi Alit (Source: I-Mag Online)
It was a 45 minute drive to the high priestess's place and it was a lovely ride. Really nice music, (thank you Yoska!), I still can't get this song out of my head, loads of lovely conversations, some leg-pulling here and there about how Maggie heard "breast milk" every time any restaurant and cafe told her the milk they use was "fresh milk". Poor girl was avoiding all these delicious lattes because she thought they all use "breast milk". Haha. Now Ubud is a trippy and hippy place to be in, with all this talk about healthy eating and spirituality in the air, but breast milk is slightly a stretch even for Ubud. Haha.
So yea, it was a fun ride. It was lovely to drive through the country-side and not be stuck in traffic and be away from the town area for a change. Such lovely lovely lovely rice fields, and these blue clouds floating in the sky and so much green all around, and it was all glistening, thanks to the insane rain this morning. The weather had cleared (it was pretty hot in the afternoon actually) and the scenery was picturesque, I can't even begin to describe how calming this Land of the Gods is. Far out in the distance, Mount Agung was peeking out from behind the clouds and all I wanted to do was grab my phone and capture that moment forever. But my phone finally, after acting funny for the last two days, gave up on me this morning. I wanted to cry. But then I closed my eyes and accepted it and let it be. All this acceptance work we are doing at the training is helping me ! Anyhow, back to the topic. On the other hand, because I wasn't preoccupied with capturing that moment on my phone, I could stare at it all I wanted and embed it in my memory (hopefully to a place where I can reach out to when I want to visit it again). It was a beautiful sight. Our driver Dewa gave us a few insights into the Balinese culture and their ceremonies and their various fasts. It was interesting to see how their Hinduism is so similar and yet so distinct from the Indian version of Hinduism.
So yesterday was the night of Siwa Ratri, the night when the Balinese pray to Lord Siwa (or Shiva) and ask for forgiveness for all their sins. It's a night of purification as well. It is also a night to be spiritually conscious and there is a lot of meditation involved. Some of the rituals include : Monabrata (not speaking), Upawasa (not eating), Mejagra (not sleeping). So now you see why the water purification ritual connected so well with this day.
Anyhow, we reached the high priestess's place. I'm sure I am not the only one who feels this way, but often times when I am extremely excited about something, the nearer it comes, the more my excitement turns into nervousness. I was very excited about meeting Ida Resi. But when the car parked in front of her house, I wanted to be there and not be there at the same time. But we all walked in and were taken to a temple-ish area, at the very end of the Balinese house compound. I'll write one day about the way the Balinese live in compounds (so much to write about!). So this place that we went to, was a gazebo or balcony of sorts, at the edge of a hill, open on all four sides and at the front there was an altar. We all sat down facing the altar and did some self meditation while we waited for the high priestess to join us.
Now, this is a story you will find in some other blogs as well if you Google Ida Resi Alit. But I need to tell it here anyway. When she was 20 years old (and she is pretty young even now btw), Ida Resi fell into depression and her family introduced her to yoga and meditation for her well being. Now, neither was she a spiritual person or was she a pro at yoga, but she started having these spiritual experiences. And so she was asked to perform a particular ceremony. At that ceremony, she fell into a deep sleep and gained semi-consciousness, being able to blink her eyes but not talk. She saw a bolt of lightening and then she slept again and then finally woke up properly the next day, spiritually enlightened and speaking in an ancient Balinese language and that is when the Hindu Dharma Council declared her to be a high priestess.
She finally joined us and asked us to walk with her to the temple where we sat down for a bit, with our eyes closed, breathed long deep breaths, in through our nose and exhaled with our mouths. She chanted in a language I do not know of and haven't heard of. It was not her normal voice, but almost like some other being, maybe not human, was speaking from inside of her. I did recognise stuff like " Om", "Vishnu" "Dewi" "Namastasye", "Shanti" ....but the connecting words, I have never heard before. Definitely not sanskrit or any version of any Indian language I know of. To be honest, it was a little scary. I was frightened at first, but them my fear slowly dissipated when I suddenly thought about my maternal grandfather. For some reason. He passed three years back and yes I pray to him every night, because I pray to my ancestors as a part of my prayers asking for their protection, but I don't usually invoke him name or the thought of him in the middle of the day. But here I seemed to call out to him, while I sat with my eyes closed in a Balinese home temple with a high priestess listening to words I hadn't heard before. She rang a temple prayer bell all the time she chanted. And then she ended her prayers and asked us to open our eyes and come to stand in front of her in groups of two for the purification ceremony.
I don't have pictures of any of this now, thanks to my broken phone. I might add a few when my friends send me the ones they took. But here's a YouTube video I found of someone else's experience, just as a refrence. She was sitting on the edge of a high platform and there were silver pots filled with water next to her. Sitting by her side was another lady whose job was to fill out these silver pot as she emptied them on us. So Mie and Miroslav went first. And she asked them to close their eyes while she started chanting in that language again and used a chrysanthemum flower to sprinkle water on them. This was a sprinkle literally. She asked them to breathe through their nose and breathe out through their mouths. And then she started to pour water. Pour, pots and pots and more pots, endless pots of water, not slowly, no, but in quick succession, so much that you didn't have the time to breathe sometimes between the two pours! She asked them to stomp their feet and release any kind of emotion and to "Let it all go", she instructed them to use their hands while she was pouring water " to clean themselves, all over the body" : face, arms, torso. She asked them to wail, cry, shout, do whatever they want to do and feel like doing and not hold back.
I was shaking. With fear. I took a few deep breaths of my own to calm myself down. This was intense. Yoska and Riddhi went next. And then Maggie and I looked at each other and almost gave each other this "We can do it" look and walked to the altar. She asked us to close our eyes and breathe the way she had instructed the others. And I did. And then it started, I jerked with the first flower sprinkle itself, the water was COLD and then it started to pour. She touched our foreheads with her finger, almost like she was blessing us, asking us to let it go. I will not talk about how the others reacted or felt, because that is their own personal journey. But I'll talk about mine, of course.
I called my grandfather again. Or maybe he just stayed with me throughout that inital preparatory prayer and watched with me while I freaked out seeing others react to the cleansing and maybe he walked with me to the altar. But he was there. I felt like he was holding me, in an embrace and Ida Resi saw it as well, she saw my shoulders hunch, maybe thought it was out of fear or i was holding back, but I was succumbing to my granddad's embrace. She touched my forehead again, asking me to let go, to scream, to stomp my feet and to release anything I have inside. And I searched for stuff to let go of, and things I am afraid of, almost willing myself to cry and shout and wail. And crying comes naturally to me. It really does. But I was so secure with my granddad holding me, that none of those feelings rose inside. She continued to pour pots and pots. I stomped my feet, washed my face with my palms, all with my eyes closed. And then she finally ended with taking a ladle ( I saw her do it to others and hence I know) and reaching that into another pot of water, that wasn't the icy cold water she was pouring us with, but a warmer one ( the one that was close to the God at the altar, maybe was an offering made to God earlier that morning, almost like holy water) and poured that on us. And then she asked us to open our eyes and go and stretch our bodies in the sun and just stand there and get a little warm and as a parting thing, told us to let it go.
And as I walked away from there, I was still securely held. But somewhere I felt Thatha (that's what I used to call my granddad) release me and go back to his end of the world. I felt it. Suddenly he wasn't there. After that another family went to get blessed. And we all sat and watched. Just watching people release their emotions was so humbling, and overwhelming and intense, also so scary. Ida Resi then walked to us and asked us to go back to that balcony and said she would join us.
We all walked there, all of us a little calmer, a lot lighter, and somehow feeling fresh, almost like we'd woken up from a deep refreshing sleep. I could see it in everyones faces. We sat there for a bit before the other group walked by and sat down with us and Ida Resi joined us and lit incense, praying to the Goddess at the altar. And then she asked us to close our eyes and started to chant and used a meditation bowl / singing bowl / tibetan bowl along with her chanting, again in that language. And then she started to sing in a different voice, but in that same language. She went around the group i'm guessing, because she walked by me a couple of times, touching my forehead blessing me. It was a deep deep deep prayer / meditation, almost like a ceremony and we all felt the strength in her prayers and her chanting. Towards the end, she asked to say "aaaaa" loudly, while she continued her chanting. So there was a cascade of unending "Aaaaa"s. And then after 15 mins of those prayers, she asked us to open our eyes and said we were done. She asked if we had any questions, none of us were in a position to speak I think, so we just smiled and she said, then you can feel free to leave. And then she went around hugging everyone, I touched her feet (because that's what we do in India to a priest/ priestess/ God) and gave her a big tight hug and we all walked back silently to the car.
It was overwhelming for sure. I think I've used that word a million times now in this post. I came away from there and that, feeling blessed for sure, feeling clearer in my mind and body and so happy, so genuinely happy to have connected with thatha like that. Just knowing that he is there watching over me, and is there when I call out to him in times of need or fear or sadness, is such a beautiful thing to know.
We all had our experiences. And I'm sure we will all remember it for years and years to come, if not for the rest of our lives. We'd all carried a change of clothes of course, so were in dry clothes and didn't ruin Dewa's car. So we hopped in and were on our way back to Ubud. Each of us carrying that little something in our hearts and minds. I'm so glad I did it and did it with the group that came along. We've all bonded because of this, in a very special way and I thank them all for sharing that experience with me.
And I thank Ida Resi for her blessings. And send some her way for all she did for us.
नमस्ते
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