What is a Spiritual Journey?

In my line of work, which is developing spiritual travel and leading spiritual tours, I get this question a lot. People usually ask for one of two reasons: either they want to know if it works with their personal development path or they don’t understand the concept and they want to know if something they’re considering applies.

For the purposes of this piece, I want to make it clear that I’m not considering astral projection, out-of-body experiences, or visits to realms other than Planet Earth.  While in a bigger picture sense all of these types of “trips” qualify as a spirit journey, I’m more interested in examining how we can achieve growth through travel while our feet stay more or less planted on terra firma.

Travel is merely the movement from place to place.  What people like to experience as travel is more accurately described as a vacation – a trip to someplace (hopefully exotic) that allows one to remove oneself from the routine of daily life.  What I do, spiritual travel, adds a component of intention and usually depth — deciding in advance what changes you want to make on your trip and what emotional “luggage” you will leave behind once you get there, coupled with the shifts that take place on your spiritual journey.  We pick a place, we create a safe haven and also a cauldron where you can bubble, and then we step back to let you pass through into your next phase of growth.

But what about when you can’t get away for a week or two or longer? Can you experience the growth that you crave in shorter spurts, when you’re visiting your Aunt Sandy, or even on a business trip? For most of us, it’s all about the intentions. It can be as simple as the difference between packing your schedule so tightly you come home more exhausted, and choosing to have a spirit journey where you select rejuvenating activities with space in between to process your experiences.

It can even be just opening to the opportunity; I’ve had profound conversations at business meetings, with strangers on airplanes, and every time I go to visit Aunt Sandy I stop at Lookout Vista and speak my intentions to the ocean below and to the gulls that soar at eye level right in front of me. It’s an amazing way to start my trip and it gives me a reminder of how far I’ve come since the last time I passed that way.

Everything can be a spiritual journey; it’s about making deliberate choices.  What can you choose that will allow more growth into your travel and into your life?