Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Where in the world do you need to go?

Travel is a learning experience and for some travelling can challenge the paradigms we use to manage our  life and our loves.

Some places may represent psychological, spiritual or aesthetic states of being as much as physical locations. Such places can offer us a certain “energy” to discover and sit with essential questions

Travel allows compelling ideas to first come to us as metaphors or abstractions. 

Spirit places can take all shapes and forms. Listen for places that are beckoning to you…put your ear close to them.

When we see something that we cannot explain and when our assumptions are turned upside down, we know our culture is probably playing tricks with our ability to see accurately

When you are travelling the trick is to pay attention to what you’re paying attention to. But more importantly  pay attention to what habits prevent you from seeing with fresh eyes.


When we are on our journey on some days our senses can’t take it all in! So much happens in a day…if we could just slow it all down! 

And yet we often stop looking when we get home-- the landscape’s too familiar…or appears that way


Keeping notes or a journal helps anchor us when we travel. By Asking provocative questions, drawing, lists, shaped writing, dialogues with  persons and places we use techniques for seeing the several sides of our experiences. The gifts of travelling expands when we reflect.


When you travel try to cover the events of  the day in 10 minutes so at least you have the basics down. Then focus on the intriguing bits that are signalling you. When you’re home, try bringing the same attention you give to a travel day to being at home. How does that change your experience of the day?

Travel introduces us to people’s stories. Many, by their own account, reflect lives stifled by class, location and history. What can we learn from our own reaction to other’s stories about our values and possible future actions?


Travel reminds us that time is elastic--people have different attitudes towards time and what to do with it. If you lived in a different “time” culture, what might emerge for you?


Travel lets us try on new identities. What rules are you living by that may be keeping you tied to an outdated identity? If you could try out a different life for a while, what might it look like? 


You may know where to start but chances are the road will turn and you will have to trust in the turning and to trust in the new paradigms you have or will create for yourself

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