Excerpts from Returning to My Mother's House
Bali: Searching for the Wisdom of the Deep Feminine (page 3)
Overlooking river gorges and palm forests, our bamboo Balinese houses were called Cahaya de Wata, meeting place of the gods. In the cool evenings the jubilant sounds of the village gamelan orchestras would drift across the gorge tempting us into wild dancing, spinning like dervishes across the wide porch floor. Cocooned in mosquito nets and entranced by the tropical night sounds, we slept naked and let our dreams run wild. Each morning we held a dream circle, honoring the potent realm of the unconscious, that place where the irrational ruled like a regal queen. One morning I shared a powerful dream with the women in my circle:
I come to a round black and white door designed like the yin and yang symbol. The door opens at the curved line that separates the yin and the yang. Through this door I am following my female lineage where I can see the faces of my mother and grandmothers, and women ancestors going way back. We enter a stone chamber where there is a large yin and yang symbol on the floor. The yang half is very dominant and the yin takes a much smaller space. My grandmothers are trying to bring the pattern back into proper balance. Suddenly the dream switches to me as a young girl with Mom. Mom is handing me boxes filled with the gifts of her feminine, then she starts to dissolve. But before she disappears I can just hear her say to me, “Help us balance the pattern.”
I awoke from the dream weeping. Though Mom had abandoned her authentic self later in life, we had enough years up to my early adolescence where I had fully imbibed her essence. It was inside me; all I had to do was remember it and take it back. And in this dream, in Bali where her true self would have felt so at home, my mother was inviting me to take back what she had lost. Not just for myself and for her, she was telling me to do this for so many of our sisters around the world.
The time I most ached for my mother during these trips was in the experience of Bali’s exuberant artistic expression. It brought me back to the days of my childhood, sewing circus outfits abundant with fake rhinestones or painting bright wild flowers on handmade jewelry, when Mom’s generous imagination poured out effortlessly, nourishing me with its richness. Unlike the Western world’s constant emphasis on the rational left brain, the Balinese culture was a celebration of the instinctual right brain. We were immersed in a vital process of dance, theater, music, painting, wood carving, and mask making, not just as art forms but also as interpretations of life. We learned that creativity is so natural and widespread in Bali that there is no actual word in their language for art or artist. Rather, creativity is the natural means of honoring the gods and serving the community. Many women came home from Bali to take up forgotten passions of dance, piano, singing, painting, or poetry. I vowed to return to my love of writing.
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Copyright ©2008 by Gail Straub. Excerpted with permission from the book, Returning to My Mother's House, by Gail Straub, published by High Point Press, ISBN 978-0-9630327-5-1. Please request permission before duplicating or distributing this material.
