Bali Wonka and the Kula

Writing a blog has become difficult.

It occurs to me that both shocks and mortifies me to know anyone is reading. It is like the mental/verbal equivalent of flashing one’s boobs, or pulling down one’s pants. If one is being really honest.

Therefore I had to begin writing my stories, most of them in the “unblog”, the one that might be published after my death, the one that holds the stories like those of “You’ll Never Say Namaste in This Town Again”, my unwritten, unpublished tell all book about the real truth of teaching yoga in LA. The unblog flirts with plots of countless films and books(as a former screenwriter I realize I’m constantly coming up with loglines:” She gave herself six months to live- during that time she has to make amends to all the men she has wronged throughout her life….meanwhile her pembantu is turned into a goat…”)

Likewise the unpublished blog, like the unwritten unpublished book, should probably remain as such, unread.

So, then what to write here, and WHY write here. There is something truly tantalizing, perhaps in the same way as flashing one’s knickers about throwing something out there and seeing if anyone reads it, resonates with it, and also to practice a responsibility in writing which is unaccountable when you are writing something that should not be read until you die. I imagine someone pouring over my unpublished book thinking, “So many misplaced modifiers…” Probably my mother. Why dangle such a tantalizing carrot in front of the eyes of readers?

Probably I want to take all my masks off- but not yet.

Back to THE BLOG:

“This place is amazing! Tom is like Willy Wonka of Bali. Bali Wonka…” another visitor to Desa Seni (translates to Art Village), remarks on our village resort.

And it is true. It is undeniable the small “art village” of Tom’s creation, looks like a storybook. You wouldn’t, in certain areas of Desa Seni, feel surprised if you saw an oompa loompa cutting the grass, or a small pan with pipe running through the rice fields heralded by fairies. The storybook setting, the organic farms, the gorgeous yoga shala with has turtles and geckos, , bridges over small streams, and the lumbung (OH! The lumbung!). The setting has been well forged.

It was to this setting Bali Wonka invited me to run the yoga program. And honored me to help co-create what he has started. Maybe I am his Charlie Bucket. All I know is this, Bali Wonka has met the notion of Kula. And there really is no better way to say this, It’s on.

Something bigger than I could have imagined seeded in his Bali Wonka mind. And now me and Bali Wonka are having a baby, it is in it’s fourth month.

Kula is often described as a community enjoined by the heart. Paul Muller Ortega, one of my beloved teachers, describes somewhat more elegantly:

Whether one examines the body or the entirety of the universe, each is understood to constitute a kula, a grouping or assemblage that achieves a kind of temporary structural integrity, continuity, and identity. They enjoy a certain kind of autonomy: a living body, an embodied person, appears to exist as a relatively autonomous organism, sustained in invisible and complex ways in its continued existence.

But to create a Kula, in the midst of the travelling destination node of consciousness called Bali, is a many-layered thing. How do we magnetize, those that will create a healthy body collective?

So far we have been blessed to see the yoga classes grow, local expats that live here are the blood and bones of our body. We have returning kula members from the States, Singapore, Germany, Australia, Holland,

We have created an entity called I-LAB (Bali backwards, ) to show films, and hopefully eventually to hold satsangs, music, book clubs, maybe community projects.

We are holding teacher trainings to create a level of depth and collective knowledge in our body.

And hopefully this body will grow and awaken. It feels very much like mothering a child into walking and talking self-sufficiency. And yet, as every mother must feel, at some point, her own un-examined traits are often passed to the child. In Kula, every cell reflects the others.

The cells of this child, the cells of Bali, are a fascinating plethora of past lives. Almost everyone here, came from a life that was drastically other. They, like myself, consciously left a familiar culture, family, career, a certain lifestyle and came to the other side of the earth. In some ways we are bound by that decision, but in other ways that decision defines a self that potentially eschews collective body. So the heartbeat must be strong. Strong enough that it overcomes the simultaneous entropic desire we harbor as humans.

And as parents must feel, what I see in this process is this. My weaknesses. Where am I, as a parent/member of this kula (one of several) creating a body that harbors disease. In a village, which we are, it is so easy to see the microcosm of society. When I am foul, I create foulness around me. When I am love, I create that.

Why did Willy Wonka create his chocolate factory? And look at all the children that had to be eliminated to ensure the health and longevity of the future factory. Veruca Salt: my selfishness, Augustus Gloop, my hedonism, Violet Beauregarde- my crass impetuousness, Mike Teavee- desire for fame. None of these work in the collective body, if there is to be health. Only the heart filled, integrous Charlie Bucket prevails as the heir.

I see so clearly, maybe clearer than ever- that what one is one magnetizes. And if I want our baby, our community, our self to embody beauty, love, kindness, I must by necessity be that. Not stealing fizzy pop with Grandpa Jo.