From crystal sound to crystal light …
A long service leave in Sydney leads to a life-changing encounter with a crystal sharmanes and her bowls — and eventually, reluctantly, to Bali.
It takes a lot to get me to Asia. I’m much more drawn to Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. I haven’t nailed whether my disinterest is for mundane reasons, spiritual reasons or my soul’s timing. It could be all three.
To understand how I ended up in Bali, I need to go back a few years.
The spring and summer of 1999 was a very happy time for me. After several intense years, I finally took “long service leave”. In my profession, there is a choice between three months leave on full-pay or six months on half-pay. Having served the time, I was ready for the longer parole period.
My best friend had moved to Sydney 6 months earlier, so I knew that I wanted to start my vacation there. At that time, J shared a pre-war flat on the hill at North Bondi, just a few minutes walk from the beach.
I still find Bondi Beach breath-taking. I prefer the waves at the northern end – depending on the elements and the hour, the water at that end can be as flat as a lake or the waves over a metre high. Unlike the southern end, with the famous “backpacker express” – an under toe that rips the Brits and the Irish way out in the ocean – or the cross-currents of the centre of beach, the northern end is always safe.
Like most Aussies, I love the beach. And this romance started in childhood.
For 2 weeks each summer our family would holiday somewhere on the Sunshine Coast. As little kids, these vacations seemed much longer. We adored the water and being in the sun and, unconsciously, we felt the respite it offered our parents. Simple things seem to amplify joy on vacation – playing cards every evening, eating icecream every day, going out for dinner. Sometimes our cousins or our grandmother would join us. We stepped into another dimension during these holidays and the ingredients our mother conjured and melded created the deep love of the beach which I still feel.
It became my, largely unspoken, dream to live at the beach some day.
I had visited Sydney several times but I had never stayed at Bondi Beach. For a short time in 1999 I felt like a local. My day began with yoga, followed by swim and then breakfast somewhere local. I got to know the baristas. I read the newspaper each morning. And after a shower and change of swimwear, I was back on the beach flip-flopping between a chapter of my book, surfing and laying in the sun. It was idyllic. The feeling of relaxation was so profound that I can still tap into it a quarter of a century later.
My days were fulfilling. I liked to eat early and crown the day with gelato from Pompeii – a new Italian family business in the heart of Bondi. And sometimes, we would go to the cinema or out for a dance in the evening.
Music readily transports me. And because this was such a happy time, my 1999 mental playlist is light-filled. Cher, Whitney Houston, Ricky Martin and Shania Twain vacationed with me, even though they sometimes pissed off my friends. And, in the spirit of full disclosure, I was probably the only one that got along with S Club 7and Steps. Even Vanessa Amorosi made an appearance but, like absolutely everybody else, I have moved on from her. I thought Whitney was amazing but not everyone wanted to hear her songs on repeat. Of course, now that she is dead, everybody loves her and… her love and your love is my love.
I wasn’t planning on staying in Sydney my entire vacation. While I stayed with friends in Melbourne and Canberra, I kept boomeranging back to North Bondi. And there was a reason for this. J and I met a “crystal sharmaness”.
At this point in my life, meeting a crystal sharmaness was irresistible. But I had no idea what she did or how she did it. But I “knew” I had to experience it. The death of a close family member the year before had sent me into a grief spiral that ultimately changed the course of my life. It inspired me to try all kinds of new healing practices. Layer by layer, I transmuted grief and remade myself.
We were introduced to the sharmaness at the Body Mind and Spirit Festival at the old Exhibition and Convention Centre. The hall was filled with stalls with people selling all kinds of woo woo. And there were lots of damaged people seeking miracles and woo woo. There was an energy of desperation to make a buck. In retrospect, it was a magnet for disturbed spirits. It was not a good environment for concentration or healing but there was a large space in one corner reserved for speakers and performers.
In the centre of the stage in this far corner was a little stool surrounded by an arc of translucent white bowls. The largest about 40 centimetres in diameter, the smallest fitting easily in the palm of the hand. The audience was seated in rows in front of the stage and we were pretty close to the front.
The sharmaness’ appearance was striking. Although late middle aged, she radiated vitality. She wore no make-up. Her hair was long and curly like Carol King at her worst. And her clothes were in a loose, flowing hippie in style but pale in colour. She had mid-western accent and told us her heritage was a mixture of Czech and Native American.
The sharmaness loved to talk. She talked about herself, about wellness and diet and about the crystal bowls. The whole session filled two 90 minute cassette tapes. We learned that the bowls are made of silicon quartz and that quartz can be programmed, such as for electronics. She told us that each bowl corresponds to a major chakra (energy centre) and that our responsibility is to set an intention, surrender to the sound and, afterwards, to bathe in salt water, drink lots of fresh water and eat high potassium foods, such as bananas and apricots. The diet is intended to support the biochemical changes triggered by the sound bath. This was a lot of new information and I struggled to keep my mind open.
We laid on the floor to listen to the crystal sound. The sharmaness reminded us to set our intentions, close our eyes, take a few deep breaths and relax. And then she played the first note. It was a long, very unusual sound but I felt it in my heart centre and can feel it again as I write these words. She overlapped the first sound with another at a higher pitch, and then another. It sounded and felt like outer space or that something extra-terrestrial was triggering my energy centres. As I surrendered to the sounds, my mind receded and I observed the experience from a higher aspect of myself. Occasionally, the sharmaness would sing in a strange tongue that I presumed was from her Native American heritage. I lost track of time. After about 45 minutes, the sharmaness guided us to clear and balance ourselves, then imagine uplifting the planet and all beings. The session ended with a repeat of the instructions for bathing and diet.
After the sound bath, J was fully present more quickly than me. I needed about 20 minutes to integrate the experience and another 10 minutes to buy the recording. I didn’t fully understand what had happened but it felt like something quite special was going on. J was more at ease with it than me. We headed back to North Bondi for a swim and bananas. And wheatgrass for me – the sharmaness was very keen on wheatgrass.
My routine changed the next morning. I began a process of diligently working with the crystal sound – setting intentions, playing the music, bathing in the ocean and eating bananas and wheatgrass. J did this too, but not with the same zealotry.
I felt really good. But I could not discern if this was from listening to sound itself, from the setting of noble intentions or from my yoga practice, swimming and dietary changes. The cause did not interest me so much as the result. I kept it up for about 6 months and entered the new millennium lighter, stronger and happier. I let go of a lot of grief and stress and filled myself with joy.
On returning home to Brisbane, I easily manifested a new place to live, a new job and even some new friends. I continued to use the crystal sound from time to time – bathing at Southbank’s artificial beach or filling the bathtub with bags of salt.
And before long, I manifested my dream job close to the beach in Sydney. While I didn’t live at the beach at first, I got there often and life kept getting better and better.
In 2006, I had a holiday in Greece that activated some spiritual capacities I did not know I had. This experience motivated me go further. I returned to the sounds of the sharmaness, initially using her old recordings and ultimately signing up for a workshop with her in Bali a few months later.
The decision to visit Bali brought up a lot of resistance in me. For us, Bali is relatively close (6.5 hours from Sydney) and inexpensive. Lots of Australians go there, often in packs. And for many, it is their first time abroad.
My plane over was filled with people who look and sound like their team has just won the grand final. Rowdy, flirtatious, inebriated and mostly dressed in shorts and flip-flops. This crowd has me feeling astounded, vindicated and appalled at the same time. When the guys beside me say they are going to Bali for “piss and pouch” before one of them gets married, I am teleported into a terrible lads movie and earnestly want them all to get incurable STDs.
As the alcohol kept coming to the young men in my row, I experienced a different kind of cultural cringe that morphed into shame. I will proudly tell you that I am not nationalistic. I love the way Australians are direct and open. But, flying over the top end, I was slapped in the face by the realisation that I am emotionally invested in foreigners having a positive impression of my country. And the people all around me were not behaving like my family and friends. They were behaving like l’Anglaise en vacances – like badly behaved Brits on a mediterranean summer holiday.
To be continued.
© Paul McCarthy & Iluminar.au
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