Finding Balance in Bali: Anaïs Nin’s Message for the Island of Gods

By Tess Joyce
“The colors, the perfumes, the dances, the music of Bali stay with you because they all penetrate deeper into our psychic life; it is one of the Bardo states we are allowed to live, a privilege, a voyage through a karma of joy not granted to Western man, a joy which comes from shared work and symbolic oneness with nature, with religion and with other human beings. We could not create this, but it was given to us as an offering, perhaps with the message: Do not corrupt it.” Spirit of Bali (1975)
 
One of the first female writers of erotica, Anaïs Nin is perhaps most famous fo...