218. Crash out at the Buddhist Temple
π 7 March 2025
That Friday night and the following Saturday was one of the worst nights Iβve had in a while. It was exhausting, physically and mentally. I decided to plan a night out with some friends at the terrace. I wanted to have a French party, so I asked my neighbors and my French friends if they could join me having a French night out with alcohol and terrace sitting. Most of them were up for it, some of them flaked, the two people that showed up were my good friends, but they arrived about 30 min to an hour late. We run on SE Asia time down here.
I had a night full of laughter and eventually found my ass in the club. I did not want to be in the club. I was getting dragged around by one of my friends, (who I now call my son) around the clubbing district and I was not having the best time of my life. My friend M is freshly 22 years old, having his first big adult job out here, soaking in his independence and the longest he's ever been away from family.
So I took my friends out for a night out, but didn't get home until 4AM. I had an unexpected house guest, M. My little friend was going through a rough breakup with his long-distance girlfriend. In short, he was a mess, having a crash out in Decathlon actually. I spent the late morning and early afternoon keeping him company, but I was just so tired. I had a lot of stuff on my mind and I wasn't in the right place to be a source of comfort. I need a reset, but by myself. I couldn't just leave my friend out to dry though, so I stuck it out. I was literally running on fumes. My social battery, energy levels, and any semblance of patience were on the brink of collapse.
It was a Saturday afternoon, around 3 PM- I was drained from last night's schenanigans and not getting much sleep. I was with my friends at a coffee shop and we had planned to go to the Buddhist temple a week before. The week prior, I was asking about some solutions for more mindfulness and peace and my friend suggested for me to visit the temple for a bit. They thought it would help me reset, that being in a peaceful place and hearing some wisdom might make me feel better. I tagged along while nursing my slight hangover and a cup of tea.
At the temple, a group of Buddhist scholars sat at a table offering readings. They asked for my full name, waved their hands in circles, and then told me an ancestral spirit was attached to me and blocking my financial success. Then came the price tag. For 900 RM (about 175 EUR / 150 GBP / 190 USD), they could cleanse it.
Basically, this is what they told me:
You have an ancestral spirit attached to you - 3rd generation on your father's side. This ancestral spirit is eating away 70% of your finance and taking away your livelihood, your soul, your well-being essentially. You can only keep 30% of your money (or something like that). You are very intelligent, but you have encountered conmen (yes), strangers that are trying to take advantage of you (yes), and many boyfriends have stole a lot from you (yes). You have to pay (they scribbled a bunch of numbers and did some calculations on the yellow piece of paper) at least 900 ringgit to us to do the cleansing ritual.
I thought it was ridiculous. They asked if I had any questions. I was really confused. I said:
Me: Was there anything that I did that caused this series of bad luck? Why is this happening?
Buddhist scholars: You didn't do anything wrong, per se
Me: Then why this much????
I broke down at the Buddhist temple, crying my eyes out about this. Not because I believed them, but because I was already overwhelmed. They were telling me negative things and asking me to pay them a ridiculous amount of money to cleanse myself? I was exhausted that day. I was so emotionally stretched thin, and now some temple scholars were trying to sell me a solution to my problems, as if a spiritual antidote has earthly monetary value. My friend stepped in actually, defending me, glaring at them. We left, and I was still trying to process everything.
On the way out, I noticed a mosquito zapper in the monastery. A place built on the idea of non-violence had a machine actively killing insects. It felt ironic, hypocritical even. Maybe I was just too tired to brush it off, but it stuck with me. I talked about it with my friend on the train. I thought it was so strange.
That whole experience made me realize something. I couldnβt rely on other people to grant me peace. If I wanted to feel better, I had to create that space for myself.
I started leaning on my friends more, allowing myself to be supported instead of always trying to hold everything together alone. I've spent most of my evenings having some peace and mindfulness by myself, meditating. Not because someone told me to, not because I expected it to change my life overnight, but because I needed a way to sit in stillness and breathe.
Anyway, I had to pay almost 1k to remove an ancestral spirit on me? What the hell?
I took care of it (I didn't go back to the temple at all. That's just completely bogus to me), but damn.
~ meditating,
<3 K