"This is It"

Ketut is usually soft spoken at home. But suddenly while we were all in the kitchen busy making pumpkin and coconut steamed sweet cakes together, he yelled out "this is it!" I turned around from cutting chunks of pumpkin on the countertop to where he was sitting cross legged on the floor, grating the coconut. He continued grating it, with a big smile, emphasizing his elbow sturdily and steadily supported by his thigh as the coconut moved effortlessly on the grater..   I laughed so loud at the discovery! "But of course! How could I have forgotten?! I just wrote a blog about not forcing (pushing) not rushing and when you start to worry to change direction, but THIS is the secret; that we can never do it alone!".

 The week before, I had suddenly found myself "shaving" very thin pieces of the leaves for the flower offering, after 3 years of trying and improving. Previously, Ketut had seen my daily attempts and offered to help, even though it is womens' work. He does everything perfect and beautifully, understanding the components of what allows something to be done properly and in the flow of life, with minimal effort and  right action. And even though he had never tried cutting the leaves before, within a few minutes, they were thin and long and perfect. He happily cut them for me for the next two weeks, as I sat there, staring at his hands trying to figure out what he was doing that made it perfect. I think just watching so intently for two weeks during the ten minutes he worked, made some kind of impression within me.  When I tried again after two weeks, there was already a big improvement without me even having practiced. But it still wasn't relaxed and in the flow. I accepted my level, continued to make efforts and hold the vision of how I wanted them to turn out. And then the following day the thin strips were flowing onto the tray from my knife and hands. I tried not to break the magic, but continue and observe what was making it possible now that I was not doing before. I noticed my body was like one unit, nice and snug and being supported from below.

 When ketut came to see if I needed him to cut the leaves again for me, i told him that I NOW know how to cut the very thin pieces….that the secret is that my hands are stable and resting on my body, supported by me sitting on the ground. That until now my hands were either in the air and unstable, or contracted and making staccato efforts to try and get the results I was looking for. But when I lifted up the knife to begin to shave, my hands and arms took a new position, on their own, and I suddenly "found" myself shaving the perfectly thin slices that I have been striving for, for so long. They look like the easter egg filler grass.

I had shared with ketut that the secret is to have my arms close to my body and stable and then my hands can be supple and flexible to flow with the knife and leaves. I told him that this was also how I had taught pottery to my students. That the whole Idea is to feel the support from something greater than myself, and then I don't have to hold on so tight. I can "lean back", stay centered and enjoy the ride. Whenever my students tried to center the clay or pull up a cylinder or open a bowl on the wheel with their arms in the air, and wondered why they weren't succeeding, I would repeat again and again "support, elbows on thighs, arms close to your body, feet on the ground, and from there you receive the energy, stability and freedom needed to reach where you want to go to." And now he had suddenly realized too, while grating the little triangle coconut pieces for our sweets, that indeed the secret has one more element to it that he was doing naturally:  support from something beyond our own will.  Suddenly he had noticed it and understood the most important ingredient in life' connecting to something greater than ourself. As he observed his position and sensed his body he said he realized that it was just like with the shaving of the thin strips of leaves and what we had spoken about last week.  'The Balinese always work like that".