It’s amazing. You think you can travel 8000 miles and never have to deal with the old shit again.

But guess what folks, turns out you do. Turns out you could move to a whole new galaxy a million light years away and that shit would still find you.  You’d still be dealing.

Luckily I’m living in Ubud, land of the crazy, land of the Tarot and the theta healer and the ecstatic dancer where you’re only a phone call or a green juice order  away from someone who can heal you.

This is a list of the things I have been told to do in order to overcome the obstacle flying at me from 8,000 miles away.

1. Cleanse (but of course)
2. Attend laughing yoga
3. Be authentic
4. Surrender
5. Chant ‘I am sorry. Forgive me. Thank you. I love you ’ until the person who was mean has a change of heart.
6. Read Eckhart Tolle’s chapter on the pain body and ego. Oh, and live in the now.
7. Meditate

So in the spirit of trying things I started a cleanse. Even bought myself a juicer. Told self I was only going to drink fresh juice and water for a week. Lasted three hours before I ate a sandwich with mozzarella and tomato.

Was going to attend Laughing Yoga. Ended up sleeping instead. Might go next week because for sure there’s a brilliant blog post in that.

Contemplating authenticity but the only thing I have concluded is I hate the word and that people who use it are smug, self-righteous fools. Or people who attend Landmark Forum events.

Surrender. Same as succumb. I’m not a natural surrenderer. This I have learnt. The only thing I’m surrendering to is the bottle of Absolut in the freezer.

Tried chanting. Managed five minutes of it but the whole time I was wondering who I was supposed to be telling I loved and who I was supposed to be apologizing to. I am going to keep going on this because apparently a whole ward of criminally insane people got cured when one dude started chanting this in the room next door. So I figure it’s worth a shot, as a control experiment if nothing else. Because not to cast doubt on its ‘authenticity’ I’m not sure I totally believe it works.

Read Eckhart. Trying to live in now. Involves not thinking which is ok because having dropped caffeine from my diet I’m pretty much a walking zombie and thinking with any kind of clarity is off the menu.

Meditate. I’ve already charted my successes with meditating. At the moment my meditations go like this:

One breath two breath urgh how much longer three breath I’m hungry but there’s no food I really want to buy a puppy no I really want to buy furniture what would look good on the balcony so tricky hmmmmm ooooh woops four breath no I’ve done that ok start again one breath no if I start again it’ll take me forever to get to twenty let’s start at five. Is that cheating? I’m going to go into town and check the dvd store today because I really want to see if Mad Men 4 has made it yet. So miss Donald Draper. Focus sarah focus try to focus on light and energy travelling through your body….nope. not happening. Try to imagine laser death rays travelling eight thousand miles. NO. remember Eckhart. I forgive. Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you. Who – who am I talking to? Who do I love? Who do I forgive? I am going insane. I am becoming one of those bug eyed yogis who inhabits Ubud wearing stretchy leggings and drinking only reverse osmosis water. Next stop laughing yoga. Eighteen breath. Nineteen breath. Bored.

It’s funny because in my ‘want to do the same?’ page I talk about thinking that if you up sticks and move abroad you’ll suddenly become rich, successful, beautiful, thin and spiritually enlightened. I couldn’t even manage the thin. And that was in India.

Let me be a warning to you.

You can’t run away from what’s in you. Remember that before you book a flight. But also if you do want to face up to it then Bali’s the place to do it.