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When I was in Ubud in Bali, I met Surya.
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I had heard about Surya when I was looking for information about Balians, the Bali traditional healers.
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Surya appeared to be a man with great knowledge of Balinese culture and, among others, traditional healers. Thirty years ago, he created a company that allow people who are interested in Balinese traditions to understand and experience them – masks carving, traditional dance, trance…
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I wanted to meet him because among others ideas, in the way I see myself working as an empowerer, I imagine I could bring people in inspiring places for transformational journeys.
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I have made the experience myself : while traveling over the last 8 months, being far away from my usual environment and facing the unknown, I learnt so much about me and I really grew differently.
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I discovered more my authentic self, I developed awareness and freedom to decide what I wanted for my life, I learned to tame fears.
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And then I saw what happened for friends coming to travel with me, or friends I met and travelled with. I had amazing informal coaching sessions in a bamboo palace, on a South Indian beach among the coconuts, on the top of a hill of a Filippino island, or in pijamas after breakfast on the terrace of a guesthouse…! Unforgettable shared moments.
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So, while in Ubud, I also wanted to connect to people, discover places, experiment, in this perspective. Ubud seems to me a fantastic place for transformational experiences.
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My appointment with Surya was at Café Tutmak, just in front of the football field.
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I was just going out of a healing session at the Yoga Barn – a great place to explore so many yoga disciplines, and much more.
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I was feeling a bit strange at the beginning as I just had worked on energy balance and once again, I had felt how I was so much into my mind, into ideas, thoughts.
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However, in order to feel great and transform our ideas into realities in a fluid way, we need the energy to flow in the whole body.
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I realized once again how hard it was to fully « inhabit » one’s body.
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Jana, the healer, was a wise and talented person. We had worked on grounding and I felt a little different in my body.
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And now I was meeting Surya.
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I introduced myself, asked him about his life story. And he also explained to me fascinating things about the Balinese culture.
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We started speaking about « Eat, Pray, Love », the US movie starring Julia Roberts.
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Part of the story is in Bali, in Ubud.
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You may be not be familiar with the story. In this film – inspired by the best-seller by the US writer Elisabeth Gilbert – the main character Liz feels disillusioned about her life – she gets divorced, she realizes her work is not fulfilling, she feels life has no flavor and she is on automatic pilot. Crisis of meaning.
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So she decides to travel. She goes to Italy to reconnect to her body through eating delicious food. Then she goes to India to spend time in an ashram to grow spiritually. And then, she comes to Ubud, where she meets a healer, and later a charming man – Javier Bardem. And they fall in love.
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This book is seen both as a benediction and a curse in Ubud ! A benediction because it made Ubud very famous, and a lot of Eat Pray Love people come here to connect to themselves, take a « spirituality bath », and find answers. Which is very good for the economic development.
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A curse, because there are many many people coming, and some of these people behave as if they were in the Walt Disney of spirituality. They do not have a lot of respect for the culture, they do not approach spirituality with much conscience.
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On Surya’s website Bali Healers, I could read that some people want to see healers but do not try to understand what a Balian is, the way they work, the protocol to respect. They do not think that the healer will not speak English, etc…
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So what Surya expresses is that what he does is sharing about what there is beyond the surface.
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He shares knowledge about the Balinese way of life, which is deeply rooted on the the belief system on the island.
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« Healing is not only about the physical body. »
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In a way, he corrects the wrong information that people may have, and shares the information he has about the Balinese culture and traditions.
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I ask him how he developed this wide knowledge.
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His uncle was a traditional healer. Since he was very young, he had a spontaneous fascination for Nature and all its plants, and trees. He was very interested in the way they could be used to heal people – their therapeutic effect.
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He tells me that when he was playing football with his friends, he was actually more interested by the plants along the football field that the ball ! From that interest, he became attracted to chemistry.
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In the same time, as he grew up, he could not imagine only studying plants.
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He wanted to study something « practical ». He chose … accounting !
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He studied accounting in a university in Denpasar. Then he studied International Marketing.
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When he is not at the university or studying at home, he spends time doing things he loves.
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He studies plants and medicine.
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He loves walking in the woods. « I love spending time close to big trees. It gives me comfort. »
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At the university, he joined the Climbing club, because it allowed him to spend time in Nature and to look for trees and plants.
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Thanks to his father he had access to many books gathering knowledge about plants, their therapeutic effects, the way to harvest and use them so that they can heal people…
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He became passionate about Lontar – palm leaf manuscripts, that are part of the Indonesian culture.
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The ink is made of herbs and burnt canel nut.
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…He became more and more interested in Balinese culture and architecture.
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He adds : « I am also a singer and a dancer. I sing and dance in traditional Balinese performances. » He explains to me that he carves his own masks.
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While he is explaining all this to me, I feel that this learning process is a great example of what Robert Greene expresses in « Mastery ».
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In this wonderful book, the author explains how masters developed excellence in their field and were therefore able to bring high creativity.
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Robert Greene shares that at the beginning, it is about following one’s intuition to explore and develop knowledge and experience in what we feel attracted by.
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No matter if we have no perspective of earning money from it. No matter if it seems that it will lead us nowhere professionally. No matter if we struggle financially – learning is a moment we have to accept financial tightness. No matter if it seems that we are interested by different things and there is no coherence.
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Because as we find – maybe without being aware of it – our calling, then we will work a lot, with passion, with the feeling that we are not working. With time, we will develop expertise and legitimacy. Our brain will get so used to the « gymnastic » of the field that, after a few years, we will be able to bring to the world high creativity and innovation and value in our field. And abundance will be here with no effort.
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Surya follows his heart, spends time doing things he loves, even if he has no idea about what he will do out of that.
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« I was so hungry about all this knowledge ».
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(« Hungry ». I like the word ! It reminds me of one of Steve Job’s speech, when he talks to young graduates from a prestigious university. He says : « Stay foolish. Stay hungry. »)
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He gets his diploma and starts working in accounting in a US company based in Denpasar.
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After 3,5 years he starts thinking : « Oh my God, I am sitting all day at a table working on numbers ».
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In his free time, he still reads, studies with his father, sings, collects lontar.
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At some point, he decides to quit his job.
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At the time, the economic situation was complicated in Indonesia, his company was not very stable financially – he did not have a very high salary, he was getting paid late. So there was no big risk to leave such a situation.
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A comment on that, a parenthesis :
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Sometimes, not having much to lose helps a lot.
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I heard many people around me telling me that when they lost their job they were shocked and it was a drama, but after a while they feel so grateful because they are much happier in the new life they have created – while they would never have dared to leave a comfortable situation.
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By the way, this is something that happened to the wonderfully enthousiastic French author Florence Servan-Schreiber who wrote «
3 kifs par jour » – no English version I think – it could be « 3 bliss moments a day », if I try to translate.
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She explains that one day she got fired. She was shocked at first. Then she decided not to be passive but be active instead. She decided that she was on a forced sabbatical – and in France we are lucky to be very protected and get unemployment benefits. During her free time, she did an online class on positive psychology – the recipes of happiness, in other words.
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She had a lot of time, so she did all the practical exercises and found it amazing. She ended up having the idea to share her experience through her book ! Awesome.
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A message to those who are unhappy in a comfortable professional situation. Do you want to wait for external events to decide when your life could change ? Or wait for your body’s ultimate burnt-out message ? There are ways to start the transition smoothly !
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And if you do not know what you would like to do (which is very frequent !) here is the
link of a wonderfully empowering presentation by the entrepreneur Ryan Allis : it is inspiring and contains tools for reflection.
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I come back to Surya’s story !
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At that same moment, he meets a group of foreign students who are traveling in Bali. He understands that they are very curious about his culture, and that he has a lot to share.
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This was a very important moment to him, because for the first time he perceived an opportunity to make a living out of his passion.
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And this is how he started helping people organizing journeys in Bali.
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In 1986 he was the first one to organize a trip in Bali dedicated to Balinese yoga traditions – mainly yoga mantras and pranayama – respectively, chanted mystique formulas, and breathing.
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« I love to talk about my culture, about our belief system. I am passionate about the « Classical Bali », about the influence of history. »
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He explores.
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He explains to me that everything was connected : history, culture, the masks, healing, beliefs, the dance, the singing.
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As he was curious to know more about where he came from, he started investigating about his ancestors. He could go back to 1348. They were from Java island, just West of Bali in Indonesia.
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I asked Surya to share with me about the spiritual Balinese beliefs.
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…He explained to me that the major Balinese spiritual tradition is a blend of hinduism, buddhism, and animism known as « agama tirta », now simply called Hindu Dharma.
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In the Hindu Dharma tradition, people acknowledge that there are limits to their Human condition – for example, their age, the knowledge that they are able to develop, their ability to solve problems faced in life…
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They accept these limitations.
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And they believe that there are other forces that exist in the invisible world.
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They represent these forces with symbols and images. It is a way to acknowledge their existence and their power.
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It is very important to live in peace with these spiritual invisible forces. To maintain harmony with them. Because they can be both helpful and harmful.
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Balinese people perceive them as powerful beings that can create problems.
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All over the year, there are many ceremonies (such as the very important ones Galungan, Kuningan and Nyepi) in which all the people of the villages work together to create sacred objects : masks, statues in papier-mâché, or decorated pillars made of natural materials for example. Then, they gather, and invoke mystical forces, perform purification rituals, try to scare bad spirits, make offerings, ask for blessings.
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It creates a powerful collective energy whose intention is to maintain balance.
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For Balinese people, it is important to maintain positive relationships at different levels : Human to Human, Human to its environment, Human to spirits.
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I ask Surya to tell me more about the offerings.
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They are everywhere in Ubud, and to me they bring so much beauty and magic to life here.
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(Come and discover Bali ! The atmosphere is so unique !)
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Surya starts explaining to me that these offerings are a form of holy sacrifices. It is a tradition which is deeply rooted in the culture.
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He tells me that « Bali » comes from « wali » which means ritual, or offering.
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« Everything we do involves offerings. »
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« It is connected to our perception of the forces out there. »
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« The offerings are a way to cohabit peacefully with the invisible world, to ask them to help us and not to harm us. »
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At that point, Surya stops and wants to make sure I am not confused : « We are not evil spirits worshippers. », he says. « But out there, we acknowledge that there are both positive and negative spirits, and we need to maintain this harmony with them. »
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And so they choose the place where they put the offerings : on specific altar, in front of the house, of a shop, in a temple…
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The offerings represent the Universe and its major forces.
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They are composed in a very symbolic way. Each component, color, position has a meaning. Creation, transformation and dissolution. The 5 elements of the Universe – earth, water, air, fire, ether. The 4 cardinal directions. « For example, the color of East is white. »
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« We create the offering with natural materials such as betel leaves, or young coconut leaves… »
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Waouh ! Fascinating conversation.
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Life and the world really are a matter of perception and culture. Each of us, as human beings, we tend to believe we know the world, the truth. We actually know our world, our truth.
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Now I know very well there is so much I do not know.
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Time flies and soon Surya and I have to say goodbye to each other.
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What else can I tell you about Surya ? He is really passionate and it is a great pleasure to listen to him. But he is also very open and curious, he asks questions and listens. He lives part of the year in California.
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Thank you Surya, for all you shared with me, and all the best to you !
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Know more about his activity
here !
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