Listening to the Softer Voice (Back in Bali)

Part one!

Jun 12, 2023

When I first got back to Bali at the end of March, I was still tired and burnt out. I realized I was traveling at too rapid a pace, and had felt really depressed in Vietnam. I was so happy when I was first in Bali in January, that I expected to just be magically, blissfully happy all over again as soon as I arrived. And while I definitely felt better after coming back (strangely, this place that had once been so foreign to me was now the most familiar place I knew in SE Asia), something had shifted.

I had changed. Even though it had only been two months since I left, I realized I wasn’t the same person or traveler I had been the last time I was here. While I was grateful to be back, I didn’t want to explore as much. I was tired and more wary. I didn’t want to meet a million new people a day anymore. I still felt really sad and lost, and guilty for feeling that way in such a beautiful place when all I wanted to feel was grateful. I wasn’t sure what was wrong.

I wondered if it was Bali that I loved, or how it made me feel. That it was the first time since my surgeries that I had been free, truly free, and that’s what had made me so deliriously happy. And if so, how could I change my mindset? Which is why I did what anyone would do who was in Ubud and confused and/or had remotely any knowledge of Eat Pray Love - I went to see a local healer.

Actually, I had spoken with this healer, Kadek, before, but only over the phone. I didn’t have time to see him when I was here in January, but I got his phone number and we would talk. When I wasn’t sure if I should leave Bali in January, I stopped the car on the way to the airport and called him, without ever meeting him, and asked him if I should leave with an hour before my flight (I am a very fun and normal traveler!)

He told me to go to Thailand to see it so I could compare it with Bali, and then I should come back. I liked the plan and got on my flight, and now two months later, I was back. I asked him if we could finally meet in person. A few days later, I arrived at his home. I sat before him on the wooden floor and I expected myself to ask him to heal my eyes, my body, but instead I found him asking to heal my heart.

I’ve felt for a long time now that I’ve been holding myself back somehow, and I didn’t know how to fix it or what was in my way. All I knew is I wanted to feel cracked open. So I asked him how I could open my heart. It felt so hardened over the past few years, so fiercely protected, and I didn’t want to live this way anymore. He smiled and told me the answer was to share my love.

Whenever I felt a strong love for someone, for anyone, I should share it instead of holding it in. I thought I already did this, but then realized he was right. I looked back on moments when maybe I wanted to tell someone how great I thought they were, or was romantically interested but afraid of being rejected, and so I kept my distance. But he told me to share it anyway, to follow joy, and to surrender to wherever life may take me. He gave me water he had blessed and told me to meditate every morning on what I was grateful for and to thank the universe. Then, he advised me to immediately go to Pura Mengening, a water purification temple.

I got on a motorbike and went straight there. As soon as I arrived, I realized I was the only one there. I wasn’t sure what to do, when a Balinese man saw how confused I was and offered to help me. I bought an offering and covered myself in a sarong, then we walked into the temple. We spent the next five hours there together, praying in the water and then going to lunch afterwards. I felt so blessed to be there, to be sharing this day with such a kind stranger.

Later that night, I was walking home when a friend called me. She asked if it was a good time to talk, and I told her it was a perfect time, I was just nervous to walk home at night- primarily because I was walking right by the monkey forest and those monkeys will rob and attack you in a second. Then I heard myself and realized my biggest fear was a monkey attacking me at night. I still couldn’t believe this was my reality, and I loved it (Not the monkey brutality part, that I do not condone!)

As I told the friend about the healer, she was shocked that I had not asked him for help with my health. She was part of my chronic illness support group, after all. But we marveled at how amazing it was, how far I had come, that my issues with my eyes were no longer at the forefront of my mind at all times. I was allowing other parts of me to surface, other desires and dreams beyond just focusing on curing my physical body, and it felt really fucking good. I felt like my own identity was slowly starting to come through.

After I saw the healer, I started feeling a lot better. A few days later, I found out that a friend I had met in Thailand, Francesca, was in Bali. We had met at the Shambala music festival the month before, and honestly hadn’t spoken much. We mostly just danced together in drum circles every night, but that’s all I needed to know to decide she’d be a good travel companion. We left Ubud because it was rainy season and pouring every day, and headed for the islands.

We started at Nusa Lembongan, and while I was happy to be traveling with someone familiar, my restlessness and anxiety started to return. I wondered if I should leave to attend a meditation retreat, and had been wanting to deepen my practice ever since Thailand. I told myself that in a month I would go to Nepal and join a monastery to study Buddhism, then hike the Annapurna trail. I went online and booked myself a spot. In the meantime, I enjoyed the beauty of the islands. We kayaked through mangroves and swam with manta rays on Nusa Penida.

We got a home on the beach and I would wake up with the sunrise every morning and meditate, and then watch the sunset. Every now and then, I’d get aches of homesickness. I Zoomed with my family for Passover, and wished so badly I could be there. I had my breakfast while they ate their seder food, but it was no substitute for salty parsley (the best part of the seder, everyone knows this). Still, I knew something was keeping me here in Bali, I just wasn’t sure what.

The next island we visited was Gili Trawangan. I had been once before in January, but only for two days, and was excited to spend more time there. It’s a tiny island, so small that you can only ride bicycles or horses.

There are no cars or motorbikes, and the stars are unbelievably bright. The water is the clearest I’ve ever seen, and you can swim with turtles right off the shore. Also, there are mushroom bars everywhere.

On our second day there, Francesca and I were walking down the street when I saw a man that looked familiar and realized he was sitting next to me on my plane when I left Bali for Thailand over two months ago. I remembered how he said he was coming back to Bali to be a dive instructor on the island, and I had felt a pang of jealousy that he got to return. But now we were both here and back again! I was so excited but realized I had no idea what his name was, so I just shouted “Plane friend! Hello!” And he miraculously remembered me, too.

It turned out that plane friend’s name was Alberto. He was from Madrid, and had been working at the dive shop we had just walked past for almost two months. We all got dinner that night with the rest of his diving crew, and ended up spending most nights on the island together.

While I could no longer dive because of my eyes in case it affected my eye pressure, we went out on the diving boat with them and got to snorkel along. One day we went out and I just found myself floating in what I can only describe as a vortex of fish, then swam with six turtles. I couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.

One morning, I was sitting at breakfast when I hit it off a guy sitting at the table next to me. We finished eating and went to the beach, then swam up on the edge of one the fishing boats and kissed. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a turtle swimming past us and left the guy to follow it (as you can see, turtles are a big theme in this newsletter).

It had been a magical few weeks, and I was so happy exploring marine life every day. I always loved the water, but I never felt as deeply calm as when I was here, floating. Mesmerized by all the shades of blue.

I had felt so in my head this past month, but when I was in the water I felt so present, like nothing else existed. I started feeling pangs of anxiety about leaving for Nepal in two weeks, but tried to put it out of my mind. I had my spot in the monastery, but for some reason still hadn’t brought myself to buy the plane ticket and time was running out. I was supposed to be there in two weeks. I was having trouble sleeping, unsure of what to do. I was happy here, but this had been my plan. I wasn’t sure what changed.

One night, a group of us wandered down the street after dancing and sat by the water. I sat next to Alberto’s friend, Carlos. We had never spoken much before. We looked up at the stars and I tried to make normal conversation but he could tell I was distracted. I explained I was supposed to go to Nepal, that I had planned this since January, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to go.

And then he gave me a piece of advice that changed how I saw everything. He said that while it feels like sometimes we have that strong voice in our head that we feel we have to listen to, often times that voice isn’t always necessarily the right voice. It’s just the loudest one. And the loudest one usually came from fear. But he found that true happiness came from really sitting and letting that softer, quieter voice come through instead. We just aren’t used to hearing it - that’s what makes it such a challenge.

I realized then that for so much of my trip, while I thought I was listening to my inner voice, that voice may have just been the loudest one. The one terrified of getting sick and going home before getting a chance to see the world. But now, I was finally starting to feel settled and happy. I didn’t care as much about seeing everything and climbing Everest (or close to it). I was content to swim and meditate and see turtles every day. I didn’t need to check another thing or place off my list to feel accomplished or like I had made the most of my time, I was just happy to exist.

“That desire to stay, to slow down, to just be happy,” he said. “That’s your quiet voice talking. That’s why you’re not leaving for Nepal. You’re finally listening.”

On my last night on the island, we went to swim with the bioluminescent plankton. I was hesitant because I had been burned before- years earlier I was in Costa Rica and two guys urged me and my friend Amanda to go see them. Against our better judgement, we drove deep into the jungle to an abandoned beach at 2am only to find out there was no plankton and they just wanted to… get this… hook up with us. We were outraged that they did not share our love for plankton, and I was hesitant to trust again. So, I voiced this concern, several times. But the group assured me, it was for real this time. Hours later, I found myself skinny dipping in the dark, amongst the bioluminescent plankton.

It had always been my dream, and was finally happening. I could trust again, readers! As I floated there, I thought back to the crystals man I met in Chang Dao months ago who blessed me. When he did, he asked me to close my eyes and visualize myself floating in the abyss, floating weightlessly in the darkness. I thought of this image often when I meditated, and now, looking around me, I realized it had become a reality.

I have broken up this segment of my trip, so part two is coming up soon! And true to my word, here is a photo of Oreo with a new friend.