Motorbikes & Cultivating Presence
I’ve been missing the freedom and expansion of the motorbike. I became quite a confident and at times aggressive driver (for those of you that know me well, this is shocking, right ). Speeding across town and on long trips. I’m missing all the senses and awarenesses it takes to move fluidly in a sea of people, cars, animals and bikes!
Grateful to my dear friend who arrived in Bali 2 months after I was there. Me understandably apprehensive about riding, he was like, “what, you’re not riding a bike?! We’re going to change that. I’m taking you this week.” He took me to the rent the bike, showed me some tips, showed me some more tips and then laid in the grass when I was confident enough to ride around the street. David knew better than I did that I needed to ride the bike! (as he often does, haha). And of course, there’s nothing like a deeply tapped in, attuned man to take charge and lead!
I was forever changed. Seriously, this was one of my favorite parts of being in Bali.
And, one of the things I was MOST grateful for when I left Bali was that I never had a crash on the motorbike. For real...it’s vulnerable and potentially dangerous af - your bare body on the open road.
I’m especially grateful for this given the entourage of mostly external dramatic intensity (including massive health challenges) my last month in Bali was. It’s seriously beyond the beyond on physical, emotional and spiritual levels! I was in it and, at the same time, watching it curiously and somewhat shockingly on a movie screen.
It occupied all of my energy - all I could do was put one foot in front of the other and keep responding to storms. And, it was so beyond my comprehension that I haven’t had words or any potentially deep meanings or lessons to share on here. I can point to unwindings, unravelings, a big death and rebirth. Yet these are just attempted lifeboats (aka. interpretations and meanings) on the ongoing ocean of existence.
Sometimes, we are not meant to analyze or understand. Instead, we are meant to simply live, experience, be present and trust our capacity to keep moving forward. We are meant to trust that what is important to know and feel will reveal itself in the moment or over time. This is sometimes the most ‘healing’ and ‘generative’ thing we can do. Be here now in this human life in this human body.
We’re here to live, not to endlessly go into the shadow, the unconscious and our inner childhood wounds.
I’m experiencing a massive shift in how I’m living and perceiving each moment. I am seeing ever more clearly that healing, self-reflection and self-analysis have been keeping me in a prison and not allowing me to fully LIVE. I am slowly freeing myself from these chains.
I’m learning to work, be creative, love and live in a new way, one that uses the fullness and wholeness of my natural expression without the subtle tricky ways my brilliant psychological and spiritual mind shuts down natural aliveness. It’s a journey!
Plunging into the darkness, continually confronting and reflecting upon myself and my actions and endless healing are my shadow. Internalizing the joy, lightness and beauty of this world are my golden shadows that need cultivating and nourishing.
Really, it all comes back to the motorbike - freedom, expansion, flowing with the currents and the messy free-spiritedness of life as she unfolds before our eyes.
And for those of you who relate to this, I know intimately what it’s like to live in a prison of ongoing darkness, misery and endless healing and the nuance and clear seeing it takes to climb my way through. Even as the daily entourage of hard feelings and sensations still come. I’ve lived this and am still living it. I have many skills and tool sets to help people heal and transform their lives and this is perhaps the biggest one!