Last year, 4.3 billion of us humans were taken off the surface of the planet at one place, transported about six miles up into the atmosphere for several hours, then taken back down again at another place. We went willingly, and, for the most part, we enjoyed the experience.
Alien spacecraft did not abduct us. We took trips in airplanes.
That statistic from the Federal Aviation Administration – more than thiree-fourths of the human race up in the air – may be difficult to get our minds around. Even allowing for the fact that one person could have made two or three or a dozen trips in airplanes in that twelve-month period, the number is still staggering – and meaningful.
All travel is, ultimately, inner travel – all the travel we do in the outer world is really a metaphor for the travel that we are doing at the same time inside ourselves. Every journey we undertake in the world outside ourselves is also an inner journey into the deepest parts of our psyches, our hearts, and our souls.
Given that all travel is a journey within, it is encouraging that so many of our human family are leaving the comfort zones of home – our present state of awareness – and venturing out and into the wild blue yonder: the hidden, yet undiscovered parts of ourselves.
Making a journey is always about going from where we are now, to another place, a higher realm of consciousness. Seen this way, all our travel has a spiritual character – and all our travel is sacred.
So, as a species we appear to be embarked on a spiritual quest of vast and unprecedented proportions, searching for the “stranger” – us, undiscovered – at the most profound levels of our individual being.
Looking at travel as a spiritual experience is not new. As far back as we have recorded stories, heroes have left their homeland to perform some mighty feat or find some lost treasure. Pilgrims, too, have left home on journeys of faith, and their tales have become the subject of great literature. Sages and spiritual leaders have compared life to a journey, and have likened us to travelers along a path to higher consciousness.
We are the hero of every journey we take, and all of our journeys are spiritual forays into the unexplored center of our being. Every time we go there, we have the opportunity to bring back the great prize – for the hero it might have been the head of the Medusa or the Golden Fleece or the Holy Grail, for us it is self-knowledge, self-awareness.
Once we begin to see travel as an inner journey, it’s possible to turn every trip we take into a spiritual practice – a hero’s adventure that enlivens our hearts and enlarges our souls.
* * * *
Travel becomes a spiritual experience for us when we are conscious every moment that our physical transportation from place to place has a metaphysical counterpart. Understanding that, the road takes us inexorably to an encounter with the “stranger” at the heart of the journey – ourself transformed.Undertaken with awareness, travel surely is one of the most available and most effective means to nourish, broaden, and quicken the soul. The destination does not matter as much as the attention we give to the understanding that all travel is inner travel. Seen this way, all our travel has a spiritual character — and every place we go is sacred.
When we venture out into the world (into ourselves) with that knowledge, we are giving meaning to even the most mundane trip – and giving ourselves the opportunity to grow our life of the spirit in ways we might never have imagined.
I believe we do this even if we are not fully awake to it yet. This is why when I see travel statistics that indicate we are evolving into a race of travelers, it is cause for joy. To me, the numbers mean that our species is flying back to the Creator with the news of our dawning spiritual awareness – and we are doing so at supersonic speeds.
Joseph Dispenza