Bali – Page 2

In love with life

August 21, 2012 By Atalwin Pilon Leave a Comment

I have noticed before that yoga works like some sort of time bomb. During the class it feels uncomfortable for many reasons but afterwards a certain peace comes over me. Sometimes it feels like I am on drugs.

In the hour after class things started to shift. And it was very strange. It felt like the moment where you realize for the first time you are falling in love with someone. You realize you are accessing a different container of feelings and emotions and it happens more or less involuntarily. You can’t stop it. In the hours that followed the feelings kept getting stronger and stronger. And I just started to feel really, really happy. I could feel my heart overflowing with love. I realized I was in love with life.

The first day of the rest of my life

August 17, 2012 By Atalwin Pilon 1 Comment

I feel clean, rested and peaceful. The temperature is very nice, not hot and sweaty and certainly not cold. There is a gentle breeze. I am typing in the garden of Villa Blubambu because I wanted a different setting than my bedroom at my brother’s place. Also I wanted to describe a different kind of experience and add some colour local. So I brought my laptop and decide to work from here.

Mathieu just brought me a glass of white wine and explained me what the occasion of today is. There is a little temple outside of the main building. Today is the anniversary of the temple. Every year there is a celebration and every 3-5 years there should be a bigger one with more guests. Today is a bigger one. We celebrate that the spirits on the grounds are well taken care of and in a good mood.

It’s all good

August 16, 2012 By Atalwin Pilon 3 Comments

The black panther appeared three times in one day. Quite remarkable, don’t you think? What to think of that? My usual response to these miracles is to shrug. It is nice of course but I never had some kind of result or answer. I also feel that if God is trying to so hard to send me a message and He can make black panthers appear in my daily life, why can’t He send me a clearer message? Just a note on the kitchen table would do fine. He knows how thick I am and He should therefore know that I don’t understand what he means with the panthers, especially in this phase of my life (the panther taught me about relationships which doesn’t seem to be relevant at the moment).

Communication with the Universe

August 12, 2012 By Atalwin Pilon Leave a Comment

My motor taxi driver speaks little English and seems to be trying to convince me to go to another place than I had in mind. I stubbornly keep repeating the name of the town I found in the Lonely Planet assuming that this method will be sufficient to arrive at my destination. Minutes later he stops at a place that is NOT in the town I had in mind and clearly the place he had in mind all along. But I do realize that this motel is very close to the airport and cheaper than the resort I had picked out. I decide to stay, pay my driver and pay for the night and arrange a taxi to the airport. After having some decent food I am in bed at 21.00 and get about 7 hours of sleep. Perfect.

Healing in Bali

January 20, 2011 By Atalwin Pilon Leave a Comment

Everybody can make any holiday into a healing journey. More so, we can make every day into a day of healing. By tuning in to our hearts, letting come up what wants to come up and then act accordingly we heal all our wounds. 26 days in Bali changed my life, so if just one billion of us start doing this today we can change the future of our planet in three months. I totally believe that. Think about it.

I feel blessed for the journey we made. By making this journey to Bali I realize again that life is a journey. It’s not just my journey. We are here together, all of us on this planet. And we are all making our own journey simultaneously with all the others. Let’s just reflect on the possibilities we have how to make this journey awesome for everybody.

For my little brother

January 18, 2011 By Atalwin Pilon 1 Comment

Yesterday my brother told me he never felt as if he had a brother, or that he never felt that I was a brother for him. As I write all this down, for the first time drawing the complete picture for myself, I feel we never had a chance. I’m naming now three major influences that drove us apart but I can think of more. It breaks my heart when I oversee all the suffering we went through and I can only imagine how lonely and rejected my little brother must have felt during his childhood, often alone in his room.

I wish I could just turn back the clock and do it all over again. I wish I could make all the beatings and humiliations undone. But I can’t. I regret that from the bottom of my soul. It is very tough for me to see how tough my brother has become. I feel very guilty and intense grief. I sob behind my laptop

Raw and tender warrior heart

January 17, 2011 By Atalwin Pilon 2 Comments

We recovered in the hot springs, meditated under the cold waterfall next to the spring, went to a cock fight afterwards and have the pictures to proof it. How good can it get?

Maybe it can get even better. Because I feel also sad. Everytime I arrive at a place that is even more beautiful than the previous one I wish I could have shared these moments with the girl I love. Now it is the sadness and the desire to share, love and be loved that make it real. This realness combined with the realness of the astonishing view, the experience of the goodness of nature makes me feel tender and raw. Walking away from that rawness would make me live less than my truth. I just can’t make a conscious effort to betray myself anymore, it is just not how I want to live. Sadness is a part of me, allowing myself to be sad makes my heart soft. Realizing that made me see that my sadness makes this experience even more beautiful.

And now it’s time for some synchronicity: I brought with me the birthday present Mike gave me. It is a book called “Smile at Fear, Awakening the True Heart of Bravery” by Chogyam Trunpa. My eye just fell on this quote:

“Warriorship is so tender, without skin, without tissue, naked and raw. It is soft and gentle. You have renounced putting on a new suit of armour. You have renounced growing a thick, hard skin. You are willing to expose your naked flesh, bone and marrow to the world.”

Reading that brings tears to my eyes and a smile to my face. Simultaneously.

Aligning with life, Tirta Empul part II

January 14, 2011 By Atalwin Pilon Leave a Comment

This is the domain of the heart, the soul and the divine. This experience is what is meant with basic goodness. It is in all of us but we cannot posess it, we can experience it but we cannot grasp it. This is why I feel that it is of absolute importance to do this stuff even when the rational mind cannot grasp it (or especially when the rational mind cannot grasp it): it is an opportunity to reconnect with our innate basic goodness. Experiencing that goodness feels so good and so true that it doesn’t matter what the judgments of the ego are about the weirdness of the things we need to to do to find that place. Breathe, pray, stretch yourself like a dog (downward), or submerse yourself in holy water, it’s ok. It is more than ok, it is fundamentally good. For you, for me, for others, for the planet. Because it aligns us with life.

The miracle of Tirta Empul

January 13, 2011 By Atalwin Pilon 1 Comment

Today was again special day. We got up early to go to a sacred place and meditate there. The name of the temple was Tirta Empul and it was about 30 minutes driving with the motorbikes. The idea was to get there before the many tourist filled busses would arrive. But even though we were later than expected we were also a bit too early. We wandered around the complex, feeling a bit lost because there was nothing (no signs, no brochures, no guides) to give us some explanation or direction. So we decided to leave and go find the waterfalls that were mentioned in the Lonely Planet to take a swim.

The dance of life

January 12, 2011 By Atalwin Pilon 2 Comments

At the end of the day we met up with other friends at the Yoga Barn for a Biodanza workshop. It was my idea to do it. I had done some sort of try out class 4 or 5 years ago, couldn’t really remember what it was like but knew it was with lots of dancing and was pretty sure that we didn’t have to squeeze our bodies into impossible postures. That sounded like music to my ears.

Biodanza is the dance of life, explained our teacher Simon. To make a long story short: it was amazing, sexy, sensual, heart warming, vulnerable, intimate and profound. And all these experiences came from dancing together. By experimenting with different distances, movements and ways of touching different people we get to know ourselves and experience ourself in relationship to others and in relationship with our bodies.

Are you ready to become a Warrior?