There are multiple paths to spiritual advancement. One is to quiet one’s mind, to calm outside influences and nervous chatter so as to discern the deeper, stiller waters of one’s soul. That is the path of the mystic who finds her refuge by escaping from the mainstream.
Surrender was the second, the willingness to fall on one’s sword sacrificing self-protection for mission. It is the Samurai who takes his spot in the center of the economic hurricane, finding out what he is really made of. The Samurai does not take his commitment to responsibility and turn it against himself, feeling guilty for forces beyond his control. He does not allow ill-winds to blow him off course, wasting vital energy that should be heading towards loftier goals. He does not allow himself to get swept up in a whirlwind of mea culpas.
Knowing all this, however, was not the same as doing it.
Thank God there was another path: that of the lump of coal, with at least the possibility of becoming forged by heat and pressure into a diamond. While I aspired to the glory of the Samurai, I had more in common with the lump of coal. For the truth was that within moments of leaving Joan’s office, I was already once again roiling in insecurity about my job, worrying about not having saved enough for retirement, and suffering a general lack of faith in everything … especially myself.
The futility of the first path, refuge, was underlined when I lunched with my friend Fanny, who touched down in L.A. briefly from her new life in Bali. Dan and I had toyed with the urge to move to an exotic port around the same time Fanny and her husband Ben actually transplanted themselves. (For us it was to be Mexico.) In better times, we spent many an evening over sushi with Fanny and Ben at our favorite restaurant, talking through the possibilities. Dan and I went south of the border on a scouting trip. I saw a scorpion. And that was that.
They visited Bali and, on their first day there, found a tropical pavilion overlooking waterfalls. And it was cheap—so cheap that they could both quit their jobs, put in a marble bathroom, and hire so many house boys and girls that Fanny hadn’t unpacked a single bag of groceries since. But over an egg salad sandwich at her favorite deli in Los Angeles, Fanny told me that she was panicking because Ben had undergone emergency surgery and suddenly, they needed extra cash to pay for things like the airlift to Thailand, where hospitals had the right medical equipment.
Moreover, their investment rental in Santa Monica—the one they counted on to provide a steady stream of income—had burst a pipe and was sitting vacant. With Ben in recuperation, the only skill she could think of to call upon in Bali was one she’d thought she’d left behind years ago: administering colonics. Work of any sort is illegal for foreigners in Bali, even those who put marble bathrooms in their homes. She had quietly begun taking clients, constantly wary that any one of them could inform on her.
Chapter 10 from The Year I Saved My (downsized) Soul by Carol Orsborn See all published chapters
