Macro Diving In Bali - Tasting the Lotus - Reflections On Living An Uncharted Life
Macro Diving In Bali - Tasting the Lotus - Reflections On Living An Uncharted Life
The wind is blowing through the palm trees, and the Sea of Bali has some small ripples rolling gently to the shore.
I am laying on an outdoor divan, contemplating the mysteries of life.
In the past few days, I have caught the flu, which clogged my sinuses with mucous, preventing me from being able to dive.
It is a good time to think, to reflect and to write.
I enjoyed my days of diving before I got sick.
It was great to see Bentar, my dive guide and buddy, again.
I bought him a neoprene jacket to dive with, since he dives with a shirt full of holes, but I was sent a size too small and was not able to exchange it, since we were leaving Japan too soon after I got the Jacket.
Bentar took it anyway, happy to get a gift. Any gifts are highly appreciated by the locals.
Our lives are so different.
Bentar dreams of a life of simple comforts, possibly enriched by a few luxuries.
A house, food, air conditioning, a new scooter, perhaps a car to take his family to festivals and to the temple.
But his salary as a dive guide cannot offer most of these luxuries, even with the generous tips he gets from his international clients.
Bentar built a house recently.
It is a simple home to house his parents, his wife and their three kids.
One builder, all he could afford, worked for a few months and built a solid stone house for about $5000, which Bentar borrowed from the bank.
This time, he proudly told me that he added an air conditioner to his house.
A car is still a dream, and he gets around on his old scooter.
I once asked what color was his scooter, and he laughingly told me that it is colorless.
It once had a color, but now it has faded away.
Bentar is amazed that Jules and I leave behind a comfortable life with an air conditioned house and good cars, and come to spend months in Bali like sea gypsies.
“Who starts your car’s engine when you are away?
Who takes care of your house?,”he fathoms frequently.
I try to explain about a “trickle charger,” which charges the car’s battery while we are away, but the idea seems so far fetched to him.
Bentar is bright and brilliant and very intuitive.
He is a real island boy, walking barefoot everywhere, despite the fact that he is in his late thirties now.
We usually dive two times each morning, with an hour long surface interval break between dives.
This week, in between our dives, Bentar took two fresh fish from the fishermen who are related to him, and he grilled the fish on a stick by the fire.
The dive sites often have a “Warung”, a small shop which offers drinks, snacks or food to the divers and their dive guides.
The warung owner made us a Sambal, which is a paste made from crushed spicy red peppers, garlic, lime and shallots.
They eat with their hands in Bali, and the baby tuna fish was so delicious with the spicy sambal.
The dive sites are serviced by porters who meet every car or truck that arrives full of divers.
They take the air tanks from the back of the trucks, and after the dive guides have assembled the dive gear, they take the heavy tanks with the BCDs, regulators and weights, to the shore.
The full sets of equipment weigh more than 75 pounds each, yet the delicate looking and often elderly men and women carry them with grace.
Bentar’s parents are porters in one of the dive sites.
They are strong and agile, and only look frail because we are used to seeing pumped up muscles as a sign of strength.
I am in love with macro diving, trying to get the best photos I can of the beautiful creatures that Bentar finds for me.
Sometimes we find amazing situations of courtships, fights, mating or unlikely friendships between the creatures.
I always finish the day of diving feeling so grateful for being able to dive and see the colors and beauty of the creatures that live below the waves.
There is no doubt that I have tasted the lotus, and can never go back.
The phrase “tasted the lotus” (or “to taste the lotus”) comes from Homer’s Odyssey, one of the earliest works of Western literature.
In Book 9 of the Odyssey, Odysseus and his crew land on the island of the “Lotus-Eaters.”
The inhabitants there eat a sweet, narcotic lotus plant.
When Odysseus’s men taste the lotus, they forget their homes, lose all desire to return home, and want only to stay and eat more of that lotus.
Odysseus has to drag them back to the ships by force.
Over time, the phrase has taken on a complex set of meanings that are worthy of reflection.
On one hand, “tasting the lotus” could imply inertia or laziness, even hedonistic tendencies like getting seduced by pleasure and losing motivation for one’s duties.
The phrase can also mean becoming forgetful of one’s goals because of a desire for comfort and over indulgence.
It essentially can be seen as a metaphor for distraction, through searching for sweet pleasures.
Writers in the late 19th century used the term “lotus-eater” to describe hedonists, people who are more devoted to beauty rather than to work.
It became shorthand for living a life of pleasure without purpose.
“Lotus-eater” or “tasting the lotus” is nowadays used to describe someone who gets too comfortable while on vacation and wants to prolong it indefinitely, or someone who abandons his goals after discovering a pleasure, or someone who lives an escapist life.
An escapist life is synonymous with island life, a life of indulgence and luxury, drugs, or fantasy.
The Lotus-Eaters represent seeking to prolong pleasures that erase duty, and the pull to escape from the fragility and sadness of the human experience.
On vacation, we all have a desire to forget the hardships of work and life.
We tend to want to leave it all behind us for a while, and maybe look at it with fresh eyes later on when we return to our regular routine.
We search for a new reality through forgetting our past traumas and pain.
Trauma, means never allowing the emotional wound to heal.
But keeping our memories is important.
Memory was sacred to the ancient Greeks.
Memory was seen as equal to Identity.
To remember your home, your lineage, your oaths, your past actions, is to know who you are.
Forgetfulness was seen as a form of self-loss.
If you think of it, dementia and losing your memory is a serious and sad disease which leaves families broken and everyone hurt, not just the person who is suffering from it.
Mnemosyne was the Greek goddess of Memory.
Mnemosyne was the mother of the Muses, who inspire the arts.
This means that having no memory means no art, no storytelling, no meaning.
Poets of ancient times relied on recitation and memory, so losing your memory was like losing your soul.
Lethe is the river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology.
It is one of the five rivers of the Greek underworld, flowing through Hades, the realm of the dead.
It is famously known as “the river of forgetfulness” (Lethe literally means forgetfulness or oblivion.)
Souls drank from its waters to forget their earthly lives before being reincarnated.
Lethe is often paired with another river, the Mnemosyne, the river of memory.
It was believed that ordinary souls drink from Lethe to forget their past lives and all the sorrows that they created in them, to themselves and to others.
On the other hand, Initiates, or Truth seekers, should instead seek the river of Mnemosyne, in order to retain memories and to gain spiritual insights.
To the Greeks, forgetfulness wasn’t a form of relaxation, it was a kind of death.
In the past five years, Jules and I have been spending more time traveling each year.
We now travel for eight months out of each year, spending only four months at our beautiful home.
I have been thinking about it and wondering if we are eating the lotus, or if there is a deeper meaning behind it all.
The lotus fruit makes men forget their homes, forget their mission, forget their identity, just like a sip from Lethe.
But I remember it all.
In fact, I don’t seek to forget myself, my mission in life, my past nor anything or anyone.
I have discovered my mission in life.
In fact, despite our apparent differences, we all share one goal and one mission in life.
It is the desire to know who we really are.
To discover our true identity as gods, the all powerful and creative, immortal children of the Oneness of life.
I do not seek luxuries nor fantasies.
I am aware that hedonistic traps are no different from those hardheaded individuals who insist that life is one dimensional, and that all other ways to live are escapism or fantasy.
People who live ordinary lives often seek pleasures that feel good momentarily, but stall growth, like binge-watching, comfort eating, or addictive scrolling.
These are modern “lotuses.”
Many retreat into comforting activities to avoid stress or to avoid making changes and decisions, and they believe that they are living reality, not a version of reality that they are creating.
The brain loves easy rewards.
Many “digital lotuses” hijack this dopamine loop and make you forget your intention to live your best life.
People pass their time surviving, numbing the pain, living days filled with sweet small drugs.
So are we really that different by seeking to live an uncharted life?
A life that changes every month, every season, every year?
Only time will tell…
Meantime, I am eternally grateful, blessed and happy…. Most of the time.
Sending you love, healing and blessings,
Tali
