Learning from the Balinese
by Bev Aisbett
In May, I took a much needed ten-day break and travelled to Bali with my partner of seven years, Kevin.This was my third visit to Bali and Kevin's second. It is a favourite spot for several reasons - the sun and sea, of course (Kevin has been a surfer since he was eleven) and the shopping (what female could resist?) but we also love the culture and the wonderful, gracious people of this small island.
And it was these latter factors that I would notice most on this particular trip, in light of the work I have been doing in assisting those with anxiety towards a more relaxed and flexible approach to life's challenges.
For, despite the bright veneer of cheerfulness, which greets the tourist, there lies, for most of the people of Bali, very deep poverty and hardship.
On one occasion, I saw an elderly woman, probably around sixty years old (but seeming much older), asleep on the cold stone of a shop front as the endless bustle of Kuta swirled around her. This was an unusual sight, since most of the homeless are hustled out of view by the authorities.
My usual westerner's dilemma popped up- do I give her money (I was going to tuck some under her sleeping head) or do I walk on? I decided to leave it to the universe to sort out and that if I saw her again, I would give her some money. In fact, I saw her twice more, once at a distance and once more when I actually had the opportunity to give her some cash. She smiled up toothlessly to me, but I did not feel good about the act - it felt somewhat condescending and by no means an answer in itself.
"Rescuing" someone goes against my principles in the work that I do. It suggests that I know better than you what you need. What can seem like charity can actually be a form of controlling another. I see real help as being more in the form of helping another to stand firmly on his or her own feet, calling on his or her own strength and encouraging him or her to actively seek his or her own solutions.
In this case, it may have been more appropriate for me to have taken the old lady for a meal. Who knows?
The thing that struck me most, however, about this woman and the people of Bali in general, was their acceptance of their circumstances, no matter how dire.
Anyone who has travelled to Bali is familiar with the endless pestering of the hawkers, but few of us realise that the urgent nature of their ministrations is often a matter of whether they eat this week or not, and yet, despite this, they are endlessly patient, mostly (with a very few younger exceptions) polite and honest and apparently happy.
At the heart of this cheerful acceptance is a belief system which supports them. Most Balinese practice a variation of the Hindu religion called Agape Hindu Dharma. The basic tenet behind hinduism is that the soul is reincarnated after death and, depending on how well one has lived, will reincarnate accordingly, until eventually, the enlightened soul achieves unity with the divine.
In this context, the hardships of life are seen as no more than lessons from which the soul can learn and become stronger. Fighting or resisting the challenges is seen as a futile exercise, since, on some level, the soul has freely chosen this particular "script", based on past attitudes and choices and must embrace present challenges as a means of gaining greater wisdom.
In many ways, I see this as relevent to the passage out of anxiety.
Resisting the experience of anxiety only adds to your distress. Coming to realise that choices you have made in the past in terms of suppressing emotions, not asserting, endlessly worrying, having impossibly high expectations and running negative thinking have contributed to your anxiety, immediately places you in a position of recognising that your anxiety is asking you to do things differently from here on.
In this light, anxiety (or any other imbalance) is not a punishment, but a consequence of a stressful approach to life and an invitation to make the changes you needed to make anyway, if you wish to live well.
Seen in this way, you have the opportunity to make new choices and to gain insight and wisdom as a result of what initially may have been seen as a disaster.
Another aspect of the Balinese approach to life is to find balance between the ever-present forces of "good" and "evil ". The Balinese believe that one cannot exist without the other and that cosmic stability depends on the co-existence of opposites.
In our society, we tend to be constantly leaning in one direction only - trying to achieve only good and fighting off evil. No wonder we're out of balance! And no wonder we get so much of the very thing we're trying to get rid of!
To explain this: to live without any anxiety, sadness, anger, disappointment etc., would be to live without any motivation or sense of purpose or achievement. In turn, to live totally in despair is to negate life itself.
To live well is to see both sides of a situation as being of value - anxiety, while challenging, can serve as a motivation to unhook from all that has held you back in the past.
I learned a great deal from the beautiful people of Bali - their love of quiet ritual, their sense of community, their patience and their graciousness. In fact, a few days in Bali and you start to realise how much trivial stuff you get so worked up about at home and that it just doesn't seem to be that important when you have the sky and the sea and smiling faces all around. (Plus, the fact that we got engaged didn't hurt, either!).
by Bev
Bev Aisbett has produced a new book as a follow on to the highly successful "LIVING WITH IT".
"THE LITTLE BOOK OF IT" was created after Bev had received numerous letters from readers of the first book that told her that sufferers slept with the book under their pillow or "I carry it everywhere in my handbag". The logical next step seemed to be to create a pocket-sized guide using the same cartoon format as all of Bev's self help books but with updated material based on the recovery program that Bev has conducted with ADAVIC for the past three years.
Subtitled "Ten steps to overcoming anxiety", "THE LITTLE BOOK OF IT" condenses the key points covered in the recovery program, exploring the how, what and why of anxiety and the steps involved in recovery. The book's tiny format and simple presentation are deceptive - in fact it covers a wide range of information that urges the reader to think deeply about each step and promotes understanding about anxiety in a succinct and amusing way.
Published by HarperCollins RRP$ 7.95
