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Saturday, August 13, 2016

Sacred Water Ceremony in Bali with Ida Resi Alit


Re-post by request -- February, 2013:

When we arrive, the high priestess is about to begin her mid-day prayers, and graciously invites us to meditate while we wait. Afterward she will do the water purification ceremony for us. We sit and meditate with eyes open so we can see her Hindu-Buddhist rituals -- holding a vajra, ringing a bell, flicking water and flowers into the air, chanting for 30 or 40 minutes. We are entranced.




She turns toward us with a radiant smile, motions us over and explains: we will be completely wet with water and afterward we will change into dry clothes. Of course, we didn't know, so brought none. When my turn comes, I step up to the high platform  where she sits. Her young niece fills many water bowls. Ida Resi Alit asks me to pray. I put my hands in front of my heart and bow my head. 

The water begins to cascade over me. I tilt my head down to avoid breathing water. Rushing water surges over me. She tells me to wipe my head. I brush the water through my hair many times, feel tension release, yield to water, then raise my hands high above my head, receptive.
 









Drink, she says, and I cup my hands right over left and drank the sacred water she offers three times.


She invites me to pray. I hold my hands near my forehead Balinese style and feel an expansive wholeness words cannot describe. 





On my next visit, two European women come along with me and my friend Yolanda from Mexico. This time, many Balinese families are there also.






Many people respond strongly, with motion, cries, and laughter releasing as the water pours over them. Ida Resi gives instructions to help move the energy: stamp your feet, breathe deeply, pull the energy up into your heart.



There we are—Balinese, Mexican, Belgian, Hungarian, Romanian, American, and British all drinking in the ineffable healing transmitted in Ida Resi Alit’s own star language, the mother tongue we all share.


Of all my journeys in Bali, all the ceremonies that raise my spirit and awareness, these water purification ceremonies are the ones that touch me most deeply because they affirm the sacredness of water.



Through all our water woes and water wars, this is the reason we struggle and fight—because water IS sacred. Most of us have forgotten, but some still remember and offer water blessings to anyone who appears at her door.




After these three ceremonies,
I am moved to make a vow:
To learn more about healing water
to balance all I’ve learned about water ills.
Mara  
Asmara (my Indonesian name)

 
You can enjoy my documentary "Sacred Waters of Bali" at
vimeo.com/channels/maraalper

Ida Resi Alit's unique story:
From "A Little Book on Ida Resi Alit:" Ida Panditha Mpu Budha Mahaseri Alit Parama Daksa, also known as Ida Resi Alit, was born I Komang Widiantri on March 14, 1986, in a small farming village in the central highlands of Bali. She lived as an ordinary girl for the first twenty years of her life. At the age of 20, due to external events, she fell into a deep depression. Ida Resi Alit’s uncle, a village Mangku, concerned for her well being, introduced her to meditation and yoga to soothe her. As she started practicing, the girl who had no previous spiritual training or deep desire, began to have out of body experiences and download information during her practice. She was instructed to perform a special ceremony, the meaning of which she did not understand. At the ceremony she fell into deep unconsciousness. She stopped breathing and her pulse was gone. Her family wailed, crying and reacting hysterically, scared that she had died. Ida Resi Alit has no memory of this time. At 2am she started to regain consciousness, to be able to blink but not to talk. Then she saw a laser, like a bolt of lightning in the sky, and found herself able to fully return to her body. She slept until the afternoon and when she had awakened spiritually. She was able to recite mantras she had never been taught. High priests were called in to confirm this. Not only were the mantras valid, she knew many more that the priests had not yet learned. Soon after she was ordained by the highest authority, the Hindu Dharma Council, and she became Bali’s youngest and only female High Priestess.

Another article about her: http://www.i-mag-online.com/2012/09/bali%E2%80%99s-high-priestess/

 
 








Tuesday, July 19, 2016

"Sacred Waters of Bali" video online

Enjoy Mara Alper's documentary "Sacred Waters of Bali"

vimeo.com/channels/maraalper


             We enter the beauty of Bali without a word, witness the connection to water that transcends the practical. Water is sacred in Bali, not taken for granted. It graces every offering and ceremony, purifies each prayer. Sensual, poetic rhythms and images layered with music, chanting and natural sounds reveal rich Bali Hindu traditions that endure amidst modernity.
Deep interconnections with each other, nature and the gods are expressed in a cremation ceremony, water purification ritual, new year water blessing for sacred statues and daily life.


New Year Melasti Ceremony

Ogoh-Ogoh Procession

High Priestess Ida Resi Alit

Saturday, July 25, 2015

"Sacred Waters of Bali" video coming soon

Mara Alper's documentary "Sacred Waters of Bali" will be available on Vimeo.com next week. Watch here for the link to view it.

This evocative short film shows Bali Hindu devotion to water in ceremonies for cremations, New Year's Melasti, Saraswati and water purification with High Priestess Ida Resi Alit. Beautiful images, music, sounds of water and nature draw the viewer into Balinese daily life and ceremonies.


Saturday, April 25, 2015

A Perfect Day

What makes a perfect day? For me, it's one where my spirit leads me where I need to go. I may have an agenda but it interlaces with the present moment, until the plan becomes secondary and the river takes me where I need to be.

It begins: I come downstairs from my room, ready to find a motor scooter ride for a late breakfast at Kakiang, the best bakery in Ubud. Agung, the hotel manager, stops his work to chat with me, offers a ride with his wife Made and off we go with three helmets for her, their son Nanda and me.
Agung
Made (Ma-DAY) and Nanda

We take the long way round, uphills and down into the jungle ravine and when we arrive, I ask what is her favorite cake, dash in and get it in return for the favor.

My next ride is a short distance past the monkey forest to a bead store. I search for a missing stone for my beautiful pendant.

 
They direct me up the block to a silver shop. The woman there is friendly and offers to polish the necklace for me and then we find a better clasp. It is a necklace made for tourists but the Balinese like it and comment on its beauty. It is serene and prayerful.  She sends me to a stone shop for the missing piece.



Outside, a man offers me a taxi ride. I decline, but when he reads my t-shirt from the Green School, he breaks out into a song and dance to the words "Bye-bye plastic bags!" I laugh and add "bye bye plastic water bottles" and ask him to do an encore performance for video-- he does! And I can't resist joining in.

This made my day! The other side of his sign said "Taxi"

                               (Not sure if this video will play- hope so)

The stone store is well stocked. I sift through the amethyst bin and find none like the small teardrop stone I lost. I browse the other bins and find a green peridot, so perfectly cut that when I put it in the necklace to see if it fits, the shopkeeper cannot dislodge it -- clearly meant to stay there.

 A short stroll -- passed orchid seller on bicycle, tourist buses, lunch stand and workers -- to my friend Koni's garlanded pathway.



Today, Koni tells me how his destiny was shaped by Bizet's opera "The Pearl Fisher," that it led him to live by the sea in Sri Lanka for years when he was young, in search of this love story come true. But that's another tale, much better than the film "Big Eyes" that we watched afterwards.

A feast with Koni on an earlier visit
It is still light when I leave -- 5:30 p.m. It is dark every night here all year at 7. Equatorial. I meander down Jalan Sukma and savor the street life of this community as the day closes down to night.


I wander into a store with fabrics, see a beautiful old metal Singer sewing machine. After I photograph it, the tailor asks me to take his photo too. I will bring him a copy next week. So easy, so open, so friendly. 





The tailor's wife
His wife gets up to help customers at their fried chicken stand. Many stop to buy it so I get some too.



My perfect day of ends back at home, eating the chicken with the evening star bright in my window, a candle, incense and this page.



Friday, April 17, 2015

7th World Water Forum, Korea - Pt. 1

What an intense and remarkable experience at this week-long event. It was truly international, with panels and presentations were from every continent-- except the coldest one. The stories that were strongest for me -- restoration of the the Upper Jordan River for Jordan, Israel and Palestine; ideas for the food-water-energy nexus; innovations in irrigation that use smart phones to control timing and flow of water.

OK, I have no photos to show yet because I'm posting from my iPod, so this doesn't have the "wow" effect of my usual posts but . . . Wow! I spent 5 days listening, talking, eating with 1000s of other people working for water. Very gratifying. And the range-- from indigenous rites and rights to the World Bank. A rare event.

More in a few days once I leave Korea and go "home" to Bali.


Monday, March 30, 2015

To The Sea -- Water Purification for Balinese New Year

It's 5 a.m., still dark. We are all assembled at the village temple in Nyuh Kuning where I live. Hundreds of people in ceremonial clothes are busy loading trucks with sacred objects from the temple. The dark moon is a thin waning crescent, new moon approaching to mark the New Year. A gamelan orchestra plays music.


I heard about the New Year water ceremony performed by every Balinese village once a year; this is my first time. I could ride in a car, but instead climb up onto an empty open truck with many others and ride in open air.


We reach Purnama Beach-- Full Moon Beach. The shrines and offerings are unloaded and we join the parade to the sea.





Thousands of people from other villages are already here. The ceremony is spaced through the week, but this is the assigned time for many. The energy is electric, the colors are dazzling, the sacred objects are beautiful. 



An essential part of all Balinese ceremonies is waiting. We wait for priests to arrive, for their special mantras to be chanted, for our turn to accept the holy water and the blessings. While waiting, people do what they do . . .

Modern times in ancient ceremonies . . .


and things that never change . . .
After an hour or so, my village prays together, then marches to the sea where the priests gather water for blessings.


Everyone goes to the sea with offerings, shrines and protector figures.


At the sea edge . . .
Receiving the water blessings . . .













New year photo ops






















We return -- a five hour journey all in all. I am honored to visit the sea for its blessing. This is what re-imagining water is all about for me, having a strong relationship with water, a deep connection. This is why I am here.


The next day is the parade of Ogoh-Ogoh from my last post. And the day after that is actually New Year's Day-- Nyepi  -- the day of silence and introspection. The entire island is silent, with all families at home. The rules: no electricity, no fires for cooking, no talking, fasting. The devout follow it precisely, the rest . . . Even the international airport is closed - no flights in or out of Bali this one day of the year. Amazing.

A friend snuck out to shoot the empty Ubud street. I will shoot another on a normal day and post it to show you the contrast!

Ubud street