Prompt 9

Although Ketut’s purpose was being a medicine man, I think he does offer up some good advice to Gilbert. I love the quote, "To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy (231). It reminds me of the whole ideal in yoga that positive thoughts lead to positive experiences and in order to have positive thoughts, you must control those thoughts. For me, I like meditating with a relaxed face, so when I read this I was a little alarmed that Ketut thinks that meditating with a smile is better than a relaxed face. Then I looked at it again and read it more figuratively, and thought that smiling with the mind doesn’t necessarily mean actually smiling but really just being happy, which will then bring positive thoughts because no one really smiles when they’re sad.

I also loved the part about age and how Ketut justifies the different ages he tells people. “When he’s really tired he’ll sigh and say, “maybe eighty-five today” but when he’s feeling more upbeat he’ll say, “I think I’m sixty today.” (239). I think it’s kind of clever to justify your age on how you’re feeling. I think its sometimes true for us, we feel older when we wear certain things or we feel younger when we do things that little kids do. Sometimes we even say, “I feel like a little kid,” which brings back old memories. I think this isn’t really “yogic” but I like that he chooses his age based on how he’s feeling. Sometimes we even say we’re older than we really are because what we’re doing makes us feel older. I know sometimes I do things that a 17 year old shouldn’t be doing. Or I sometimes feel like my parents treat me like a kid, which makes me feel a lot younger than I really am. So I think it all depends on what you’re doing and how you feel that can determine your “feeling age,” your real age.