Touching the Sacred in Daily Life

Touching the Sacred
in Daily Life

Ceremonial procession

Tune into the sacred rhythm of Balinese life

For the Balinese, everything is alive with subtle energies interacting with each other in the great unfolding of Life.

The tradition emphasizes respecting the subtle energies of life in nature and ourselves and bringing these energies into balance and harmony.

At Nirarta you can join in with some of the activities which support this.

N.B. Some of the these activities are not open to ladies during menstruation. So please check with Dayu, if this affects you, as we feel it is important to respect the tradition.

Price:	Normally free – some items have fees. See below.
Duration:	Normally a few hours
Facilitator:	Click for bio Peter Wrycza, PhD Peter is founder of the Nirarta Centre for Living Awareness.. He has served as a trainer, consultant, and coach to organizations and individuals in many countries over the past forty years. He is skilled at leading groups as well as one-to-one coaching and counselling. He has been a meditation guide for almost 50 years and has trained extensively in NLP, Person Centred Expressive Therapy, and other forms of expressive work. He has been leading retreats at Nirarta since its inception in the 1990s. He is the author/co-author of a number of books on personal development, including Living Awareness: Awakening to the Roots of Learning and Perception, Moksha: A New Way of Life, (with Prof. Luh Ketut Suryani) Living in the Spirit (with Prof. Luh Ketut Suryani) When Performance Meets Alignment: A Compass for Coaching and Mentoring (with Jan Ardui) A gifted facilitator of deep transformation and awakening in individuals and groups, he is the developer of Conversations on the Edge of Silence for supporting growth and development in individuals, couples, groups, and communities through Generative Dialogue, as well as the in-depth holistic Re•Patterning process. For more about Peter, see A Word from the Founder of Nirarta Peter, Your Retreat Guide Peter has led many individual and group retreats since the founding of Nirarta over 20 years ago. He has been a meditation guide for almost 50 years and trained extensively in NLP, Person Centred Expressive Therapy, and other forms of transformational work. He has been absorbing the essence of Balinese philosophy and tradition for 25 years, drawing inspritation from its exquisite beauty and deep wisdom in supporting a balanced and whole way of life – in body, mind, and spirit. For many years, he has worked as a trainer, consultant, coach and mentor to organizations and individuals internationally. A gifted facilitator of deep transformation and awakening in individuals and groups, he is the developer of Conversations on the Edge of Silence for supporting growth and development in individuals, couples, groups, and communities through Generative Dialogue, as well as the in-depth holistic Re•Patterning process. For more about Peter, see A Word from the Founder of Nirarta Widé, Your massage therapist Gede Oka, known as Widé, has provided massage at Nirarta for a number of years. Widé is an accomplished healer, serving the Balinese for a range of problems, including difficulty in conceiving, with patients coming from as far afield as Denpasar. Widé provides two main services: Deep body massage, which has toning and healing qualities, and is highly recommended by people who know massage as among the best they have received. Reflexology for diagnosis and treatment of particular health problems. Widé tends to be very accurate and skilled in making a shift in health issues. Widé speaks good English. Dayu Mayuni Ida Ayu Putri Mayuni (Dayu Mayuni) is responsible for day-to-day operations and maintaining the spiritual energy and balance at Nirarta in the traditional way. Dayu is from a Brahmin family, with roots in Sidemen. She is Peter's wife and mother of Maya and Mira. Dayu Mayuni is assisted by Gusti Adi Putra, and other members of Nirarta staff. Dayu speaks good English. For more about Dayu, see here. Mangku Mastra Mangku Mastra is a healer, meditation and yoga teacher, and 'permangku' or temple priest/custodian from Tabola Village, close to Nirarta. After a period of searching and study of sources from both Bali and India, he received the elements of the current practices. He is the permangku or temple priest from our local Pura Dalem temple. He is married, with three children. Professor Dr. L.K. Suryani Professor Luh Ketut Suryani is a Balinese psychiatrist, meditation teacher, healer, university professor, social activist and mother of six. She is the co-author of a number of books, including The Balinese People, a critique of Bateson and Mead's perspective from the 1930s. She is also the co-author of Trance and Possession in Bali and two other books with Peter, Moksha and Living in the Spirit. Suryani is dedicated to helping people draw on the extra dimension of spirit in everyday life. Her own full life – including active participation in Balinese public life and a number of social initiatives for the elderly, students, drug abusers, and the prevention and treatment of pedophilia – is an example of what is possible when we draw on the extra reserves of the transpersonal in our lives. Her unique personality and perspective are deeply appreciated by groups she works with and have also been a pillar of strength for Nirarta since its inception. David and Carla Osgood Carla and David Osgood are practising clinical psychologists and teachers from Vermont, USA. They bring groups regularly to Bali to deepen their therapeutic and professional training with personal development and cross-cultural experience. From their experience in Bali, David and Carla have developed a highly sensitive approach to cross-cultural communication, which enriches both the groups they bring and the people whose lives they connect with during their programmes. Their work bridging consciousness, culture, and community is profoundly healing and transformative for individuals and groups they lead. It is an inspiration for what we aim to achieve with individuals and groups coming to Nirarta. David and Carla's programmes link the University of Vermont with Nirarta and other communities in Bali, as well as with communities in Belize and Samoa. Serena Olsen Serena, originally from New York, has been living in South East Asia since 2011. Highly intuitive since birth, Serena has always found solace and connectivity in nature. After attending university in New York City, arriving to the complexities of this urban matrix only two weeks prior to 9/11 and staying for 6 years, Serena was ready to re-immerse in forest living where she could begin to deconstruct much of the social matrices and underlying dissipative structures she found herself in observation of while living in NYC. This brought her to the San Bernardino National Forest where she facilitated experiential science-based ecology and environmental classes for thousands of children all across Southern California. Then, in June 2011, while participating in a Wilderness First Responder course in the mountains of Massachusetts, Serena was struck by lightning. While already having had a strong relationship with electricity before this event, this strange synchronistic moment catalyzed an intense ripple effect of varying phenomena that eventually led Serena to living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – a city with some of the most grounded lightning strikes on the planet. Exactly one year after the lightning strike, Serena experienced her first inner dance – which in it held electric vibrations three or four times stronger than the lightning strike itself. Transformation and hypersensitivity was nothing new for Serena, therefore leading her to deeply trust what her experience spoke and how it would continue to change her life in relation to the greater dreams of a planet and the visions she herself knew as real. Now, Serena combines her love of learning, healing, community, science, and integrative wholeness systems into all she is. Finding flow within the forms and the formless, life is no longer a doing but a remembrance of being while creating spaces for gifting each other with possibilities for resonant change and transformation.

Offerings

Small offerings are placed daily in our temple, little shrines, on the ground, and where food is cooked, honouring both higher beings of the Spiritual realm and the elemental forces of Nature.

Special Occasions

Extra offerings are prepared or purchased and special prayers offered on many special days each month, in the family temple and around the house and grounds, including

full moon
dark moon
the magical 'Kajeng Kliwon' day, recurring every 15 days
special monthly days to honour the different realms of life, such as plants, animals, books and the arts, weapons and cars, etc.

Besides the above, many other vital festival days are celebrated in the course of a year. And every temple, including the family's own temple, has a special anniversary ceremony once or twice a year.

All this activity helps to keep the sense that your home, your surroundings, and the Island as a whole is alive, and the different parts of it are in harmony and balance, and we are, too, with each other and our context.

If you would like to come closer to this celebratory rhythm of respect and reverence, we can propose some of the following activities:

Preparing Offerings

When we have a ceremony coming up, you can join Dayu and her helpers to see how they are prepared. You can also learn how to make some of the simpler ‘canang sari’ and learn about their symbolism as expressions of the basic patterns of life.

Charges:

When offerings are in preparation for our own ceremonies or ritual activities, you are welcome to watch or join in, without charge.
At other times, a 2-hour session is available on request, with a €10 fee per person for instruction and materials, per 1 – 5 participants.

Preparing Offerings at Nirarta

Prayer

You can join us at prayer in our temple or one of the nearby temples if a festival is in progress. On request, Dayu or one of the staff can teach you the simplest pattern of Balinese prayer and share with you a little of its beautiful and subtle meaning.

No charge.

Ceremony

If your visit coincides with a temple festival or another ceremony, where appropriate, you can accompany us or our staff to enjoy a taste of how these activities contribute to the social and spiritual cohesion of the island.

No charges apply for attending local ceremonies, when invited by ourselves or Nirarta staff.
For ceremonies further afield, basic transportation costs may apply and if a guide is requested

Cleansing Blessing

From time to time, the Balinese may visit a High Priest for a cleansing blessing, called 'Melukat'. If you would like to experience this, please let us know, as we will need to let the high priest know and prepare some offerings for you.

It is also possible to visit the High Priest's home and receive a simpler holy water blessing.

Charges:

'Melukat' ceremony 1 – 5 people: €30
Vist to High Priest's home 1 – 5 people: €15

(Charges include transport, donation, offering basket, and English speaking guide).

Blessing from the High Priest

Visiting Temples/Shrines

Large Temple Ceremony

Charges: A number of these temples are included in our guided walks and tours. Other destinations can be arranged on request. Charges for transport, offerings, and guide will apply.

For the Balinese outward actions are the expressions and reflections of inner meaning. Many Balinese will thus visit particular shrines or temples when they receive the impulse or inspiration to do so, as a way of saying ‘thank you’ or of asking for blessings from the manifestation of the divine connected with a particular spot.

Many of these temples and shrines are in natural settings, on hills, mountains or beside the sea in locations, where the energy of nature feels divine in nature. Some, but not all, of these temples are in quite remote locations and may require a lengthy hike, or something of a climb up many steps.

If you would like to visit one or more temples, we can arrange this with you, choosing a place, which will reflect the kind of energy you seek.

Visits to Healers

Faced with health disturbances which prove intractable or appear to have non-physical causes, or to require expensive treatment beyond the family’s resources, many Balinese still visit traditional healers for a variety of treatments – herbal, spiritual or ritual guidance, bone-setting, energy balancing, trance mediumship, and so on.

On request, we are able to arrange visits to a number of traditional Balinese healers. Choice of healer will depend on what kind of help you are looking for. These visits will generally require driving an hour or more from Sidemen.

For the above activities, you will generally need to wear a sarong and a sash. If you don’t already possess these, we can help you purchase them in Sidemen or we may have something you can hire for the occasion.

Healer Jero