This is perhaps the strangest takeaway, but if my time in Bali has done anything it's made me think I've been intellectualizing my spiritual path a little too hard. I want to get into it, but first I want to be explicit that the below comes from my understanding as a Western tourist who visited Indonesia for two weeks. Everything I learned comes from my tour guides, all of whom are Balinese people. They were the experts!
So Balinese religion is a combination of indigenous religion and Hinduism + Buddhism that was imported from outside the country a number of centuries ago. The Hinduism contains the Triumvirate, made up of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Similar to their functions outside of Bali, they contain the roles of creation, protection, and destruction/recycling. The deities are represented with the colors red, white, and black or blue with variations across regions as to who corresponds to what color. They also hold specific flowers and cardinal directions for Balinese daily offerings with Shiva at the top represented by pandan leaves.
The type of Buddhism that was initially introduced to Bali was an esoteric or Vajrayana type. We can assume that it's the type of Buddhism that came from the Himalayas that developed alongside Shaivism based on the continued pairing we see in Bali. I asked my tour guide about how the Balinese saw Buddhism, and his answer was basically that they still aim to achieve Enlightenment so that they don't have to reincarnate any longer. He also said he and others resonated with the Buddha's message of attaining peace via working to not view themselves as any different or better than other people. There was an emphasis on meditation and maintaining humility. These goals are evidently not seen as distinct from the devotional practices toward the deities, who are in fact seen as expressions of one god.
Then finally there's the Good and Bad spirits, who represent the Balinese people's respect for two poles. They hold that you cannot experience good without experiencing challenges, difficulty, and discomfort. You also should not internalize the Bad otherwise it becomes evil. It is in the human's responsibility to take care, show respect to both the Good and Bad spirit, and maintain the balance of both within. The Good Spirit of Bali is still more commonly seen throughout the island on t shirts, tattoo shops, and the like, but my primary tour guide Yogi has both the Good Spirit and Bad Spirit tattooed on on his arms as a very physical example of what that balance looks like.
These two poles also correspond to the three realms. There's the lower realm, where nature and smaller spirits dwell. The ancestral realm. The divine realm. The offerings that Balinese people put out on their shrines and in front of their businesses every day are actually to appease the spirits of the lower realm (who I am going to say as an intuitive can be VERY loud and present as you're walking around). If you give them offerings, their energy will be neutralized or they will turn it toward positive ends toward you.
I see a lot of parallels with the morality of the Balinese people and my rationale when I first invoked Lucifer and then went on to approach a number of so-called demons. The books in which these spirits' names are recorded come from a Christian framework, which overall believes that demons are evil to be banished or destroyed. But I don't believe in evil or even the notion of destroying negativity. Rarely is anything truly gone; instead, it changes or moves. So approaching anything and asking for its help goes a much longer way than placing yourself at odds with it.
To my initial point, I also have a three-part spiritual path that contains Shiva worship, Vajrayana Buddhism, and a third set of spirits. For the last year as it has developed, I have been almost been at war with it. I felt like I had to have all these cosmological and philosophical questions answered and that somehow everything I practiced (and as an extension, I see now, every spirit I interacted with) had to fit into the other components in order to make one cohesive whole. I thought I had to have an airtight case so if any other Buddhists or Shaivists questioned me, they would in fact see that my path is very Intentional and Well Thought Out and earned some stamp of Approval or, even better, Legitimacy.
I'm now seeing that I was being too hard on myself.
I will never be Balinese or follow Balinese religion. But I am very grateful that this island has showed me that spirituality can look eclectic while following a moral outlook that matches my own. That you can just be a peace-centered, open-hearted, self-improving person who accepts pain, challenge, and negativity in a way that leads you to wisdom. That you can have a number of divine allies, maintain a deep connection with the endless spirits around you, and make daily recognition to the ecosystems you live within. It also showed me that having 1000 temples on one large island is pretty fucking cool and I wish the US had that but anyway
I'm still here for a couple of days and going to try to make the most of it ✌🏻 So grateful to my tour guides for helping me learn about their culture and belief system. Also incredibly fond of the land of Bali itself for carving out more space in my brain to show me that life and experience can be so much different than my tiny perspective from the West. Big ups for the multiple local spirits as well for just staring at me whenever I approached them instead of doing something scarier. May Bali see much prosperity, I pray that I have properly restituted all who I have come across on my journey.
