Spiritual Journey | Confessions of a Cruise Director

Finding Balance in Bali

This is part 2 of a 4 part series about a recent trip we took to Bali

The infinity pool into the rice paddies at the Alila Hotel

Of course a spiritual vacation is not all the earnest work of devotion. We are staying at the Maya Ubud, and a more integrated balance between luxurious four star service and raw nature I cannot imagine. The whole property is a lush tropical garden, set among the rice paddies of Ubud, itself the artistic heart of Bali, as well as where Liz Gilbert stayed when she wrote the Bali part of Eat Pray Love. The lawns are well-manicured, but even the team of gardeners working seven days a week can barely hold back the jungle of local plants, huge trees, and bright colorful splashes of flowers. The Maya has a deeply organic feel from the moment you approach the front entrance, a huge thatched roof covering the open space and pavilion, which is inspired by the design of traditional Balinese “bale” and family compounds. You feel like you are on a spiritual vacation for sure here, a spiritual tour of the mind, body and soul. A wooden walkway slices through flowing water to the lobby, where the soaring thatch ceiling is grounded by a circular glass floor at the center, lit from below and filled with objets d’antique from Bali’s ancient past.

All of Bali is a work of art

The staff welcomes you, with more than passable English; their enthusiasm for your comfort makes their meaning even clearer. When my group arrives, our cooling welcome drink and room keys are accompanied by the spa brochures I requested. The energy in the room is palpable as everyone chatters excitedly about the treatments, the design. By the next morning, the spa is booked for three days solid by our happy assembly, knowing that we digress from Eat Pray Love, but happy to do so..

Greg and I are staying in a pool villa, one of 34 that stretch out in neat rows ringed by the ever-abundant plant life. Walking to our room for the first time, I see five different types of butterfly. As we slide open the teak doors to our room, we are transported into another level of beauty. I treat myself to a spiritual tour of the room. The roof is thatched in the traditional Balinese fashion, the neat rows of dried grass clearly visible high overhead. We have a 4-poster bed with filmy cotton mosquito netting draped charmingly on the bedposts. Our bath is an oversized hammered aluminum affair with a view of the private garden. Nicer than the accommodations in Eat, Pray Love… by far.

The outdoor shower of our room in Bali

Outside, facing the bathroom, is a small plunge pool, filled to overflowing with cool clear water. The sticky humidity has already taken its toll; as soon as the bags are delivered to our room, I strip off my clothes and take a bracing plunge into the pool. There isn’t much room to swim, but it is enough. During our stay, I use the pool three or four times a day, looking up into the blue sky, enjoying the view of the Ti plants and the verdant jungle that envelops me. Once, I see a huge snail, bigger than my index finger, gliding up a three-foot leaf, his antennae waving cautiously as he explores what comes next. I want to be that snail while I am here, concerned only with what is just in front of me, but spiritual tour leaders don’t get much spiritual vacation time. Ensuring that all the guests are happy, well taken care of, and that their myriad questions are answered, leaves me little time for personal pursuits, though I do re-read portions of Eat Pray Love in the pool each afternoon, just as a reminder to stay on track.

Sometimes, something comes along that profoundly affects you enough to need to talk about it… a lot.  I read a book that I think, in addition to being highly entertaining, also had a profound spiritual impact on me, and on my own spiritual tour as I careen through this thing we call life.  So I thought I would share it with you – it’s coming out this week, and you can also read the first 2 chapters for free  at Forgiving Ararat.com.  I would also welcome your comments here!

Forgiving Ararat is, without a doubt, the most original book I have ever read. First-time novelist Gita Nazareth (surely not her real name?) has created a story world which seems to live at the intersection of the film What Dreams May Come, the Bible, and a John Grisham novel, with all the best aspects and deeper meanings of each.

The story begins as the heroine, Brek Cuttler, arrives at a train station called Shemaya just after her death. Perhaps the only previously used image in this novel is the station metaphor, but in the skillful, lyrical hands of Nazareth it becomes much more than a wayplace for the dead. A lawyer in life, Cuttler has been chosen to represent the souls of these dead as they pass their Final Judgment, but first she must learn to accept that she has died and why, as well as learning how to be a presenter of souls in this shimmering, shifting purgatory.

Both a spiritual novel and a rivetingly juicy tale, I found reading Forgiving Ararat almost a religious experience. Nazareth’s prose bathes the reader over and over in the light of justice, love and hope, tempering the sinister stories of man’s inhumanity with the truth of their reasons for making these dark choices. She turns murderers and rapists, lawyers and newscasters alike, delving back across centuries and even millennia, into dimensional human beings and argues successfully that the pursuit of justice may itself be irrational and unjust, but it is how we order our lives, and forgiveness, if not love, can still conquer all.

Underlying an epic stocked three deep with characters of every ilk, whose stories are interwoven like a colorful hand-knit afghan (even the book’s publisher gets a fictional nod as the press of one of the novel’s doomed souls) is Nazareth’s startling prose: “… the morning sun strikes the bright yellow fall leaves of a maple tree, making the tree appear as though it has burst into flame. A small sparrow lands on a branch, risking immolation.” Every sentence bursts with a transcendent pride of place, as if each word is happily embracing the next, and even the least significant description is worth rereading to see what new light Nazareth has shone upon usually mundane text.

Though Nazareth’s story of good, evil and the search for justice in what at times can seem like a very unjust world, is spiritual, it also deals with the religions of man: of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, as well as the fanaticism of Nazis, the Aryan Nation, and Holocaust deniers. It is here that Nazareth excels the most, expertly navigating these dangerous waters and bringing the understanding of truth and the desire for reason and justice all the way to Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, even to Jesus and Yahweh Himself (or Themselves, depending on how you look at it). It is as if she is asking us to look at each religion, at each viewpoint, as Cuttler is asked to look at each soul, impartially and without judgment, and we are richer for it by the end of the tale. Forgiving Ararat is not to be missed, and Nazareth’s novel, I hope, will be the first of many.

Finding Balance in Bali

This is part 1 of a 4 part series about a recent trip we took to Bali

I am sitting in the stunning, airy bar of my gorgeous Balinese hotel and I am sweating… a lot. I’m on a spiritual tour that I’m leading and I’ve just had a ten-minute walk, the slow, meandering kind, but it has still taken its toll in the sticky, humid weather. Even with spiritual vacations, there is a delicate balance here between freshly showered and breaking out in a full, glorious dancer’s sweat and I am hoping to find it. Like the heroine of Eat Pray Love, I have come to Bali searching for balance.

It’s a challenge, because I am not exactly here on an actual spiritual vacation. My partner Greg and I lead spiritual tours to sacred sites around the world, and Bali is high on many people’s lists. So we are working. Managing a group of 35 American travelers, to be exact. This is not as hard as it sounds, if you take into consideration the group dynamic of “one mind.” I never thought I would want to travel with a group until I first took a spiritual tour myself. But when I did I understood the tremendous power of shared intention. This is furthered by the tremendous interest in Eat, Pray Love, where the author/heroine visited Bali for four whole months and found the love of her life.

We are traveling in Bali for two weeks, visiting temples almost every day. The emphasis of a spiritual tour is on pilgrimage, yes, but also on poolgrimage, its sister, spagrimage, and their close cousin, shopgrimage. At least the group is balanced. Our little band of Americans is made up of some real sports. They have bought their temple clothes – the sarong, sash, white shirt, and (for the men) headdress – indicating the devout intentions of a Balinese worshipper. Yes, most of the women have readEat Pray Love, though none of the men have. They go to the temples and learn how to pray like the Balinese Hindus. They clasp their hands in Namaste (not unlike our good old-fashioned American “prayer hands”) and hold them up – first to their foreheads, for the gods, then to their hearts, for our human selves. They wash their faces in incense smoke, toss flower petals in the air and tuck them behind their ears. They eat uncooked grains of rice (to suppress base desires) and are doused with holy water by “Pamungku,” the Balinese priests who accept our offerings and lead us in prayer. For two weeks, they give their lives over to the search for something greater, the core of any spiritual vacation.

Next week… part 2 of a Spiritual Vacation in Bali