a little voice kind of whispers....and i can either listen and obey,argue with it, just be lazy or ignore it...and when i listen there is always a surprise! today i was sweeping the house for "shabbat"...the landlord had said that its good to wash the floors once a week....he had left the house spotless for me when i arrived a week ago, and after having been "bad mouthed" by a former acquaintance that said that if i live in the house without taking a balinese maid to clean it it will be a pig stye in no time...so i decided "i'll show him!" but in fact he was probably right, and if he hadn't said that i doubt i would be so responsible, but who knows....anyways...to get down on my hands and knees and start washing the floors of this two story house is not really my style, and the balinese don't have the israeli style "squeegie" but at least i could sweep.

having a weakness for new brooms that sweep, and not the kind that are all smashed up and out of shape and leave half of the dirt on the floor, i had gone out and bought a real balinese broom. there are two kinds...i bought one of each. one is for sweeping floors and is made from black hairs that grow on special coconut trees (i think, or at least it sounds exotic) the other is made from the stalks of the coconut leaves once you have taken off the leaves to make offerings, and these are gathered together and tied with a piece of plastic and are used to sweep beds, or the earth, or like a rake to collect grass that has been cut, etc.

so today was the day i was going "to sweep" the whole house! it looked spotless, but i decided not to take the lazy way out and that if i just do this each week, the house will stay clean, instead of waiting until it is dirty! and for sure there must be some dirt even though i don't see it...some dust, some insects, something....i decided to be methodical (am on guard not to turn into an OC about this, and can easily see the tendency!) and start from one end to the other lining up with the tiles so i can really be sure that i cleaned the floor, since it looked clean to start with. what happened was that my new broom, proceeded to shed a good portion of its hairs as i swept. it made me laugh...to sweep a clean floor, but end up with a whole pile of long black hairs from the broom! i wondered if the balinese had invented this type of broom on purpose, kind of like how the jews go around the house the night before passover with a feather and candle to search for "hametz" and PURPOSELY scatter bread around to make sure you really search well and collect it too.

when i got to my meditation room, which is empty, other than 2 cushions on the floor, i swept the room and when i got to the 2 cushions, and the only dirt that had been collected till then were the black coconut hairs from my broom, i thought "oh, you don't really need to pick up these 2 cushions and sweep underneath them." and then that "little whispering voice" said "i would lift them up, who knows, there could be a scorpion nestling in there for all you know." so....part of me is lazy and says, "ah, c'mon....there isn't a single insect in this entire house! the balinese build their houses with doorsteps that you have to step over, which is really to make it more difficult for the demons that crawl on the ground to come into your house, but i think that goes for insects too....but then the other part of me said "if you heard the message, just follow orders." which i did. and as i lifted up the 2 cushions, i laughed. there beneath them was the tiniest baby scorpion i had ever seen.

that same whispering voice had given me some other messages the past couple of days. one was that i need to be more responsible with my money and possessions and not just trust everyone blindly. when i set my purse down against the wall and sat down far from it at the orchestra practice, with 2o balinese women, that voice said "is it safe here, so far from you?" of course....and i left it there. after the 2 hour practice i went home, and when i went to take out my wallet, it wasn't there. "c'mon! it can't be that one of the women from the gamelon, my fellow villagers, STOLE my wallet?! and just after i had put all of my possessions in a safety box so that i wouldn't have to worry about them, and just left myself some 1 million rupias (about $100)...i searched and searched my empty purse in disbelief. why didn't i listen to that whispering voice? why did i leave it far from me? ooof! then i remembered that i took out a plastic bowl that i had bought and that had been in my purse and placed it in my room, maybe maybe maybe it fell into the bowl? and as i walked over to it, there was my wallet...what a nice surprise...and what a good exercise to teach me to put it in a safe place in the zipper side of my purse, and not just laying there where everyone can just slip their hand in and take it....okay whisper...thank you for the warning.

the landlord had told me i should keep the open air bathroom locked when i am not in the house, because maybe some kids will want to hop over and take something. i didn't think that was likely, and actually suspected him, if anybody....and i kind of poo pooed his locking of the door, and now that my only valuables (a camera, laptop, passport and$) are in a safe deposit box at a nearby resort, i'm cool...if someone wants to steal something, i am willing to "let it go" and will face the consequences. the voice whispered "don't even think that thought about someone stealing things. you are inviting it into your reality"....then the voice whispered "just lock the door like he told you to". so i did. and then this afternoon i filled up my little plastic tub in the bathroom, to do some laundry and when i turned around to take a handful of washing powder from the bag of powder i had just bought, the bag was gone. what?! someone STOLE my washing powder? i don't believe it. i looked left and right on the floor where i had left it, but not there....maybe i left it in the upstairs bathroom,,,,and checked there....no washing powder bag....went back to the downstairs bathroom to check again... in shock that someone, from the straw houses that live in the woods nearby, would steal, of all things, my washing detergent. i guess that is what they need, and not my foot scrub or body cream or comb....aha, so now i get to feel what it feels like about "being cool if someone steals something from me, hah!" and it isn't fun....especially when the clothes are already wet in the tub and there is no detergent to wash them with....i decide to go back upstairs again to check, even though there is nothing to check because the floor only had my detergent on it and an empty box that i put the laundry in. i stood there, in disbelief, and something made me push the little box on the floor to the left our of desperation that the bag is nowhere to be found. and lo and behold, the small orange bag of detergent suddenly appeared, and had been hiding behind the top flap of the box unseen. i laughed, was grateful, and decided to start relating to that guardian angel with the whispering voice, more seriously. and realize that the universe is trying to help me grow in such a kind and gentle way, and if i can be sensitive and respectful of those little whispers, then they don't have to turn into full blown dramas....i think...