Letting Go in Bali

Last week, we ran a Personal Excellence programme in Bali, Indonesia, for 16 delegates from our client GoTyme. Most of the delgates came from different countries in Asia and a few were also from South Africa. Bali is a beautiful place to do this work, and our venue, Nandini Jungle by Hanging Gardens, was quite extraordinary. I think we all left wanting to return.

There is an exercise we in every Personal Excellence programme, whether we are in South Africa, Pakistan, Sweden or Bali. It is about letting go of the things we cannot control. I won’t explain the exercise in too much detail. That would spoil the experience for those of you who have yet to attend the programme! But I do want to share something of what happened in Bali, and why it matters. At the heart of Schuitema’s work is a simple proposition: We are here to give. In every moment, there is something appropriate for us to contribute. To be able to see what the situation requires, we have to be present.

We have to see things as they are. That is not as easy as it sounds! Most of us spend an extraordinary amount of time worrying about what has happened or what might happen. We revisit the past, trying to change what cannot be changed. We anticipate the future, trying to control what has not yet happened.

Meanwhile, the present moment passes us by.

One of the central questions we ask during the Personal Excellence programme is: How does it feel to be in my skin today? It is a surprisingly revealing question, because when our attention is constantly occupied by things we cannot control, it becomes rather unpleasant to be in our own skin. What we want to practice is to bring our attention back to what is actually ours to do. What comes from us: our conduct, our contribution, our giving. And this brings me back to the exercise. In South Africa, we ask participants to find a fist-sized rock, write their worries on it and throw it into the veld. In Sweden, we use sticks, which participants leave beneath a tree in the forest. In Bali, we used green frangipani leaves. And what a place we had to release them!

The grounds of Nandini Jungle descend steeply through lush vegetation, down countless staircases and stone steps, until you reach a river flowing between enormous rocks. According to local Balinese beliefs, sacred spirits travel with the water from the volcanoes through the rivers of Bali. We were told that at this particular spot, where the water collects in a pool surrounded by steep rocks, the spirits sometimes become confused and linger. You can make of that what you will. But I can tell you that there was something very special about the place!

After spending some time in meditation on the deck by the river, each participant was invited to take the final few steps down and release their leaf into the flowing water. On those leaves were the things they had been carrying. Their worries and fears. The things they wished were different. The things they were trying to control, but couldn’t. And then they let them go. It was interesting to see how differently people approached that moment. Some seemed a little hesitant to release their leaves, while others could hardly wait to see them carried away by the current.

I have noticed the same thing when we do this exercise in South Africa and Sweden. Letting go is not necessarily easy, even when we know that what we are holding on to is beyond our control. But afterwards, there is always a lovely sense of joy and lightness among the group. That is what happens when we finally put down something we were never meant to carry in the first place. The delegates left their worries with the river, with nature, with the sacred spirits, with God or with the universe — however each one understood it. The point was not where the leaves went.

The point was that they no longer needed to carry them.

And something interesting happens when we recognise that we are not in charge of everything: we begin to notice how much has already been taken care of. We have been carried through life to this moment. We are being sustained in ways we seldom stop to consider. So much of what makes our existence possible has never been under our control. When we begin to see this, gratitude becomes a very natural response, and gratitude was everywhere around us in Bali. Every day, we saw the little flower offerings called canang sari. They are placed outside homes, workplaces and temples. Small, beautiful expressions of gratitude woven into everyday life. One day, we were invited to make these offerings ourselves, guided by local people who not only explained the practice but clearly embodied the gratitude behind it. It struck me how closely this connected with what we had been exploring in the programme.

When we are preoccupied with what we lack, what we fear or what we might lose, our attention is on ourselves and what we need to get. When we instead recognise how much we have already been given, something shifts. We become less concerned with securing things for ourselves and more available to contribute.

We become more present and perhaps that is the real significance of letting go. It is not simply about feeling better or becoming less worried.

It is about freeing our attention so that we can give what the moment requires.

That, to me, is what Personal Excellence is about.
And Bali gave us a beautiful way of experiencing it.