My unexpected initiation into the Balinese healing tradition

Monthly Newsletter | December 2024

The monthly newsletters are an amalgamation of musings and two poems (one by another poet and one by me, as per a practice introduced to my master’s cohort by poet Alice Oswald).

Please scroll down for upcoming online courses and event announcements.

Hi, friends! From my den in the Australian bush. If you’re listening to the recorded version of this, you’ll hear the quartet of crickets in full recital and the odd birdsong.

First, I have decided to extend the discount to my full archive for ONE MORE WEEK. If you are currently a free subscriber, this will give you 20% discount when you upgrade to a paid subscription. It is currently the cost of a couple of cups of coffee - hope it helps!

With Christmas coming up, I thought this publication might also make a good present for a fellow lover of myth, poetry, imagination, and the generative secrets of our ancient ancestors!

As usual, I’d be really grateful if you helped me spread the word about my Substack! You can either share the link to my publication below, or highlight a quote you like from any of my pieces and Substack will automatically convert it into a snazzy shareable instagram story. Thanks again for being here!

Now to this month’s strange and marvellous affairs: my unexpected initiation into the Balinese healing tradition, finding a puppy who I was sure would be mine but had to give up, and the directive power of pain, grief and, ultimately (one would hope) grace.

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Listen via audio:

If you are an artist, that means that you are denuding yourself more and more, that by the time you die you are stark naked and your bowels turned inside out.

— Henry Miller

I read these words by Henry Miller on Poetic Outlaw’s Substack the other day, and felt that weird messy impulse to cry and laugh at the same time. A few of you have written to me lately thanking me for the new vulnerability I’ve been sharing on here. It dawned on me that my pieces are much more personal than they used to be. I guess it’s inevitable, this public de-bowling! It comes with the terrain.

At the moment, I’m settling back into my bush home with my beloved and our pup after being away for six weeks.

My update from my self-imposed writing retreat in Bali is that my manuscript is almost done - hurrah! And as is the nature of travel, I was gifted the unimaginable.

Perhaps it’s a bit cliche, but what the heck. I want to share the last paragraph of Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel Eat Pray Love here because it creates a good and solid container for what I will attempt to say today.

As she comes to the end of her journey through Italy, India, and eventually Bali, in search of what she calls her balance, she writes:

In the end, I’ve come to believe in something I call the ‘physics of the quest’, a force in nature governed by the laws of gravity. The rules of quest physics goes something like this: If you’re brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting and set out on a truth seeking journey either internally or externally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared most of all to face and forgive some of the most difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be witheld from you.

Unlike the hero’s journey in mythology, Gilbert’s “physics of the quest” is not one sole journey. It is cyclical, it ebbs and flows, pokes its head up in the most unexpected places, is a constant. It’s not an “aha moment” that we arrive at after a search and can sustain for the rest of our lives. The quest is life itself.

So with that philosophy holding the fort, I will attempt to put into words the unfolding of my own quest, at least a part of it, as I am able to grasp it today.

If you have been reading past entries, you will know I took myself on a solo writing retreat in Bali to work on the manuscript of my first book.

As I was writing it, I was still doing my research on ancient religion and sharing it on my publication for the paid community. I was especially excited to have been able to interview four shamans, or balayan, as they are known in Balinese. One woman and three men. I will share the interviews and what I learned about their tradition as part of my series on Ritual for paid subscribers over the next few weeks.

But today, as part of the monthly newsletter, I’d like to tell you about my unexpected initiation into the tradition!

As is the nature of initiatory experience, the trickster did not stray too far away.

Where there is initiation, there is a cross-roads. And where there is a cross-roads, there is the trickster.

I found the balayan Made Sumatra’s temple during one of my dawn walks through the rice fields. I didn’t know he was a healer. I was actually looking for Balinese yoga - I was fed up with the flashy and soul-less white girl yoga that seemed to have taken over everywhere else, and longed for something less adorned.

I had seen signs to a temple where yoga was taught, and followed them through the rice fields.

The door was open, the usual morning offerings and incense placed carefully at the entrance, so I let myself in.

The temple had various sections. On one side was a marble floor that I would later do daily yoga lessons at with him, then there was an altar with a stone figure of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, and two smaller figures of the beloveds Shiva and Parvati. And then there was another section with two low tables, one covered in papers and notebooks, a packet of half empty cigarettes and a cup of coffee gone cold. And the other with an altar laid over it, replete with stunningly carved singing bowls, giant crystals and rocks, thick clouds of incense smoke, and bronze bells of differing sizes.

“Hello?…” I called out.

Loud drilling came from upstairs.

“Hello?!” I tried to shout over it.

This time, a head poked out from the terrace, and there was Made Sumatra the Balayan.

“Yes?!” He seemed annoyed.

“Are you teaching yoga?" I yelled up.

“Tomorrow, 9am.” He beamed me a smile like a waxing moon and was gone.

And that was that.

I started doing yoga with him every morning. Balinese yoga, which, for those of you who don’t know, is very different to yoga from India - or at least the iterations of it we find in the West. It is slow, simple, and reminds me more of tai chi or qigong.

It also reminded me of the yoga I did with the Jain nuns I lived with for a time at their temple in Rajasthan. No fancy postures or emphasis on how stretchy you are. No glamorous attire. Just a lot of breath. And a slowing right down. And a need to hold a totality of attention unwaveringly.

At the end of our lessons, Made would share little nuggets of wisdom with me about Balinese philosophy.

It didn’t take long for me to catch on to the fact he was a healer, a powerful one at that. He exuberated the quality of power particular of a shaman. There is a great void in their eyes.

One day I asked him if I could interview him on his craft.

Our interview took place on my last day in Bali. I was due to leave for Lombok the following day for a week, and then had my flight back home to Australia.

But it didn’t all quite go as planned.

What I thought would be an interview like all the others became something quite other. And by the end, I had decided to change my flights, return to Bali for an extra week, and receive initiation into the Tradition.

I can’t write about the details of the initiation here, they are secret and still forming in me, but I can tell you of the trouble it brought in its wake - the good kind of trouble.

After re-arranging my life to stay in Bali a bit longer, extending my flight, booking new accommodation and putting my manuscript to the side, the day we were meant to begin I arrived at the temple to find the doors closed.

I knocked and shouted and waited, and tried to communicate with Made’s offering maker who speaks no English. And eventually, I left, defeated.

I walked back the hour-long walk along the rice fields stunned.

Had I misunderstood our agreement? Or worse, had I made the mistake again of confusing a charlatan with an elder?

As I have briefly written about before, I came out of what turned out to be a cult based on fraudulent teachings a few years ago, and am still recovering from it all. I feel a deep sense of distrust - or perhaps better put, discernment - of self-proclaimed spiritual teachers.

And then my phone rang. And it was Made and he was so sorry, he had forgotten and was out in a village teaching!

This was during that crazy full moon in Taurus earlier this month that seemed to turn a lot of us inside out.

“Come tomorrow,” he said before hanging up.

At this point I was cynical. But I had already changed my flight and sensed giving up and going home now would feel worse than another let down if I stayed and it didn’t work out.

So, I stayed.

Obstacles on the path to holy things is familiar ground to me. The same thing happens during my visits to Palaeolithic cave art. Or megaliths. Or on pilgrimages. There is a chaos. A “how much do you want this?” quality.

The following day, just as I approached the temple, another obstacle.

This was the magical day that I met my Balinese pup.

I need to sit back and make another cup of tea for this one. Writing - even thinking about him - still stings.

This fluffy little angel had been abandoned on the streets there and had discovered that a restaurant by the temple had staff with soft hearts who would feed him.

As I walked past, he bounced up to me. His copper hair in tufts and fallen off his belly and legs completely. He was dirty and covered in flees and scabies and his ears had nasty scabs on them.

But he was full of life and puppy joie de vivre and nibbled at my feet and pulled at the hems of my trousers.

Little Fox, I called him. I took him into my arms and didn’t let him go until I had to to return to Australia. We went straight to the temple, together.

This time, Made was there and ready. Sitting at his altar with his incense going.

“I’m sorry I can’t come today,” I said. “I have to take this puppy to the vet!”

He nodded, showing no expression of surprise or disappointment or being effected in anyway at all. Again, an attitude I learned was central to Balinese Philosophy.

“You come later.” And he turned back to his altar.

Everything was simple with Made. No wasted words or energy. No misspent time.

I took my little fox to the vet and they kept him there for three days, building him up and treating him for his scabies and yeast infection.

Every day after my visits with Made, I would walk to the vet and spend the two hours of visiting time with him curled up on my lap playing with a rope I got him.

I fell completely and utterly in love and my chest fluttered every time I made my way to him.

I was so sure he was mine.

But, nothing ever really is, I suppose. And in my study within a tradition whose philosophy is centred on detachment, it turned out my first lesson would be the art of letting go.

After conversations with my beloved, and finding information on just how much it would cost to transport a dog to Australia, not to mention the horrid and long process it would be for him, I made the impossible decision to find my little fox a home in Bali.

And by some miracle, though there are thousands of abandoned dogs, I found him one.

I called him Zorro, both because it means “fox” in Spanish and because of his rebellious spunk and his courage surviving the streets.

My heart ached that whole week as I fell deeper in love with him and simultaneously knew I had to let him go.

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.

Wrote Rilke in his council to a young poet.

When I think of him tears still well up. My body longs for the soft warmth of his and I yearn to wake up to his little head nestled into my shoulder; for the peace of those merciful mornings.

I cried most of my overnight flight home, in between those discombobulating batches of airplane sleep.

I worry he feels abandoned again. And doubt whether I made the right choice. I’m exhausted.

Initiation is not glamorous. Or tidy or sanitised. It is terrifying. And it always involves a wound. And that wound becomes the path of awakening.

Initiation is to anticipate change and let it shape you without destroying you. They are the events that change our lives forever, that pull us more deeply into the waters of life. The American mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade writes of initiation this way:

The point of initiations, whether accidental or intentional, is to touch the mysterious core, pass through change, and return. It is like touching the fire that continually burns at the center of the earth or touching the depth of a great ocean. A touch is all that a human being can stand. One touch can change the course of a life forever. Trying to dwell in those depths, trying to live in the flames of those fires, makes people crazy. . . . But if we return from our rounds in the fires and waters of life, we may carry healing to the wounds that seemed incurable above, a healing that moves the world again.

The American professor Dr Mara Lynn Keller studied initiation within the Eleusinian Mysteries. She describes it as follows:

The soul at death has the same experience as those who are being initiated into great mysteries... At first one wanders and wearily hurries to and fro... and journeys with suspicion through the dark as one uninitiated. Then come all the terrors before the final initiation, shuddering, trembling, sweating, amazement. Then one is struck with a marvellous light, one is received into pure regions of meadows, with voices and dances and the majesty of holy sounds and shapes. Among these he who has fulfilled initiation wanders free, and released and bearing his crown joins in the divine communion, and consorts with pure and holy men.

My official initiation involved purification, blessings, the occult practice of awakening certain energy centres with the use of ancient symbols, and the transmission of secret knowledge passed down through generations.

My unofficial initiation demanded a letting go of that which I most longed for. To let go of what I loved, as an act of love. The contradiction is harrowing.

And then there is grace. And the angels, somewhere secret, holding the flame of redemption and hope. And when I got home, I came across these words by C. S. Lewis that are currently embalming the grief in my heart:

Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.

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Poetry Offering

This month, I turn to Mary.

In Blackwater Woods, by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light, are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfilment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able 
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

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I don’t think we earn the right to be human by simply being in a body. I see humanity as more of a rank, one that we earn through our ability for compassion, solidarity, moral responsibility and small, seemingly insignificant acts of kindness. We have ample examples of people who look human, they dress and speak the part, and yet are void of any humanity. These past few days I’ve been reflecting on what makes us human- what it takes- and wrote this poem.

I expanded on these ideas a few months ago in my piece Being Human: A Rank to be Earned

The Beauty and the Horror of Being Human
Today I am tired.
The air is thick and spacious and rolls out into a mantle of existential dread
and those wheels that usually churn to get everything going, those ones that ensure a functionality necessary for our participation in society, have come to a standstill.

Today I don't know what I am for.
I feel crippled by the arrogance and certitude of self-appointed wisdom teachers 
who  colonise our screens with their hubris, and vanity, and the confusion 
of glamour for beauty.

I think of the dismembered bodies of Palestinian and Lebanese children, the great chiasmic divide splitting the US in two, Putin's threat to attack the UK
and my mother's garden there with its Welsh daffodils. 

It is a terrifying time to be alive
as another woman in Iran in shut away in a psychiatric ward for protesting the hijab
and last week's demonstrations on the International Day to End Violence Against Women remind us that a woman is killed by an intimate partner or family member every ten minutes.

Meanwhile, I watch as my bees collect pollen from the fresh buds of rocket plants that have just burst into flower, seemingly only for their delight.
I watch as the king parrots relish in the feast of seeds we put out for them each morning and my dog's ecstasy when my partner comes home from work.

All the while the magpies ring in morning with their song
and summer rains on the tin roof inspire consecutive pots of tea and bread baking.

I am heartbroken and I am happy.

To be human, fully human, and alive,
perhaps means to tune one of our ears to the great suffering of life, 
a life that we are intricately woven into 
and a suffering that cannot be separate from our own,
and the other ear, tuned to the crow, and the murmur of soil after heavy rain and, sometimes, even, the secrets of roses as they unfurl beyond their thorns 
and turn to face the sun.

Perhaps somewhere in between is where we are, or, where we are not, 
where something else exists entirely
and we get to watch from somewhere just beyond,
not so attached and provoked; 
affected and yet removed,
an intricate part of it all, participating in the great dance 
with every bone and raw fibre, and yet able to hold our own,
able to bear the beauty and the horror, both.
Alive. And fully human.

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