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Discovering "I Am"

I started the day calmly alive. After several days in Ubud, I found that I am slowing to the pace of life in this place. Actually, though, people do things here at many speeds. Among the fast movers are the motorcycles, gamelan players, and dancers. Many other activities move at a leisurely pace.

When given a smile, Balinese people readily return a bigger one. They live in a cosmos where everyone is connected to the others, and that includes the foreigners who come to explore and enjoy Bali. No wonder it is such a popular place for visitors.

After breakfast, I met Kusia Gallery’s owner Marjaya, whom I had first met one and a half year ago during my previous visit. After I told him of my interest to explore real estate, he showed me his steeply sloping land where he is building a house.

We had lunch together in Ubud’s famous Dirty Duck Restaurant, and Marjaya kindly helped to arrange a visit to a temple tomorrow, on the eve of my birthday. After lunch he helped me buy clothes for that occasion, a combination of colored and white sarongs and a Balinese headdress.

More talk about real estate followed as I visited the local real estate agency and had a long discussion about the pros and cons of buying and leasing land and houses around Ubud. I made an appointment to visit some properties tomorrow for a better look.

On return, I found myself stuck in a traffic jam on Ubud’s narrow streets, and decided to park the car and have a cappuccino at a roadside coffeeshop. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have noticed the shop that sells artisanal wrapping paper, a perfect fit for the presents I had bought yesterday.

The past 81 days of my journey to rebirth at 50 have not been about searching for life’s truths. Rather, it has been a non-search. I have focused on opening up and peeling off identity labels collected over the past five decades. Some of these labels I had stuck on myself, and others were put there by other people.

My spiritual roadmap tells me that when I become aware of these labels, my self-identification with them will fade, and space is created for the real me to manifest itself more. Not “I am this or that”, but simply “I am”. After my morning stretches by the plunge pool of my villa, I found that my openness is growing, and with it the space for the real Me. I know now that nobody can give me what I already have.

I look forward to enjoying myself in the next days as well. I will attune myself to Ubud’s rhythms. When things move fast, I will go fast too, but avoid rushing. And when things are moving slow, I will be leisurely, without succumbing to lethargy. In each rhythm, I intend to be deliberate in my actions and choices, in each moment.

Photograph: Serenity in Komaneka Tanggayuda Resort (top), and Building New Villas in Paradise (bottom).