I’ve spoken before about how karma isn’t only just payback or the only the consequence of cause and effect (as in “we write all of the plays and play all of the roles…we played the bad guy, now we’ll play the good one”), but rather a gathering of all aspects of love into the whole of completion.
In Bali, I felt like I was living the karmic wheel in a wholly new way – everything everywhere all at once.
In some ways the flow of visions felt akin to a life review. A scene would arise and fall away, like a breath, of times “I” had known or lived. Yet in the same turn of the wheel of breath, other scenes would be arising and falling away at the same time. Everything was simultaneous, and differentiation came simply through where my focus was. It was like being in a time sphere from which you could look at everywhere at once.
Notably, unlike reliving memories, there was no thought or emotion in the sphere. There was no personal identification with the one who had lived the scenes, just a sense of “Yes. There’s that. All of that. Now.”
As we received ceremony after ceremony for karmic cleansing and activating new blessings, awareness watched this curious, spherical wheel. It felt like discovering a new assemblage point of relationship with the eternal nature of the all-ness of now.
While this perspective is one I know well in theory, Bali brought a deeper embodiment its truth: everything is now. What a gift.
With this experience came a deeper capacity to be present in every moment without connection to other moments, past or future. I was keenly aware of how humans (or shall I just speak for myself here!) have a ubiquitous persuasion to live any given moment in reference to other moments.
For instance, this being my 6th trip with groups in Bali, I wondered if perhaps it was my last. Part of me felt/feels it is. This would naturally (humanly) give rise to viewing all events through the lens of “the last time.”
But I never felt this. I actually had no awareness of whether it was or wasn’t. First or last was no thing. For in reality, every time for anything is the only time. The one time. And in that sense any experience is the first and last time all at once. Only in reference to past or future do we give it some other designation.
If everything is now, then everything simply is. The power of every present now is that it is pristine – pure, true, and complete. Our experience of it only gets clouded and convoluted by living it in relation to what is not happening, meaning the past and the future, or perhaps our ideas of what should or shouldn’t be happening (i.e. attachment).
So the summation of the gift of this Bali Blessing is that the power of presence was deepened in tangible, beautiful ways.
All Love,
Christine
