Travel: the benefits of exploring the world

What the hell is happening to the world?

Financial sectors are being brought to their knees around the world, jobs are at stake and we feel compelled to see this happen and feel powerless to do anything to stop it. But are we powerless? No. Reason enough to want to survive this ruin. In fact, the key to surviving this difficult and unprecedented time in our planet’s history is to take responsibility, completely alter our thought process, and change the way we see the world. Travel and exploration of our world provide us with the perfect platform for this change to occur.

When approached candidly and humbly, the benefits of travel are endless. But for the sake of simplicity, I have broken them down into 5 points.

1. Traveling gives us the opportunity to silence the mind.
2. Traveling gives us the opportunity to be touched by beauty.
3. Traveling encourages us to grow.
4. Traveling feeds our imagination and awakens a feeling of lightness and joy.
5. Traveling fulfills our desire for Unity.

1. Traveling gives us the opportunity to silence the mind. Hugely underestimated by modern society, silence creates a nurturing environment for contemplation and the appearance of inspiration. However, we find it extremely difficult to silence the mind in the midst of our daily routine. This is where getting out of our comfort zone and exploring unknown lands can play a huge role. We find it easier to focus our full attention on a chosen object, such as a sunset, a beautiful landscape, or a piece of art, when we are outside of our normal surroundings. We allow ourselves to experience that sense of wonder and ecstatic wonder at the harmony of natural laws, and feelings like euphoria, joy and peace are triggered. Time seems to have stopped. Our intuitive capacity increases, leading us to reach the Being and fully contact it. This is called insight or “Enlightenment”, that “AHA” moment, where we reach a new level of consciousness. And when an idea or insight strikes, it sometimes reveals something that may even have been staring us in the face all along.

The opportunity to quiet the mind during my own personal journeys has allowed me to find practical solutions to problems, the courage to change the direction of my life at crucial moments, and has provided fertile ground for creative thinking. I have also observed that intuitions come as “feelings”, so the intuitions fade when the feeling fades. I have found that recording perception at the mental level, such as recording it in a diary, journal, or workbook, completely assimilates perceptions at the mental level. By recording ideas, you anchor your thoughts and thus form the beginning of a gradual development.

2. Traveling gives us the opportunity to be touched by beauty.
Beauty can be described as a certain visual harmony, a spontaneous aesthetic experience. It is elusive, highly personal, its impact is unpredictable, and yet it is as integral to our human survival as oxygen. Beauty is healing, regenerating, uplifting. Beauty allows us to put aside our pains and problems and helps us to forget ourselves. Reveal unknown worlds and nameless possibilities. Beauty lightens our greed. As human beings, we have the option to increase our aptitude in the art of appreciating beauty by opening ourselves to it and making ourselves available to experience it. Traveling and exploring the world gives us that opportunity in spades. After all, planet Earth is the “paradise planet” of the universe.

3. Traveling encourages us to grow.
To grow is to understand what we have not been able to conceive before. It is feeling what we have never felt, or doing what we have never done before. It forces us out of our comfort zone and into the unknown. Growth can sometimes be a joy and sometimes it can be uncomfortable or even painful. But one thing is for sure. The personal growth experienced through travel and exploration of the world translates into a much greater sensitivity to pain in human beings in general. And through this, we begin to see our own life in perspective, which in turn gives us a greater sense of purpose.

4. Traveling feeds our imagination and awakens a feeling of lightness and joy.
What has happened to our imagination? Have our life experiences, upbringing, and conditioning discouraged us from using our imagination so much that we now see it as a frivolous word? Take a look into the eyes of a child. That gaze reminds us of a time when anything and everything was possible, unhindered by past experiences and without exclusions. Travel reminds us not to take things too seriously in our lives. It awakens a sense of lightness and joy, and the understanding that life is a dance. And the dance, although powerful, is also a great pleasure.

5. Traveling fulfills our desire for Unity.
It is instinctive for human beings to naturally seek union with larger units, since we want to share and participate in something that we consider larger than ourselves. It’s natural. Traveling fosters a sense of oneness with all beings everywhere. Through the journey we acquire the feeling that we all share the same destiny. So instead of limiting ourselves to our own local communities and remaining in a stagnant mindset about the world, now more than ever, it makes a lot of sense to explore our wonderful world and travel more. The planet is in dire need of human beings beginning to resonate with each other, despite our cultural differences. No man is an island, as we have seen in the most recent financial crisis. What has happened on Wall Street has affected us all on a global scale. Now we have the opportunity to raise awareness and reverse the process through the art of travel.

Our outer world is simply a reflection of our own inner process. As outside, so inside. And as wonderful as the world is, it is no match for the beauty and depths of our imaginations and our very souls. And yet, we can reach those depths through the richness of our world. The colors, the languages, the peoples, the cultures, the sounds, the smells, the taste sensations, the art, all form part of a rich tapestry that forms our world heritage and is waiting for us to discover and enjoy it.

So act now and book that honeymoon travel destination, or that summer vacation somewhere you haven’t been before. Bring your journal, journal, or workbook to record all those great thoughts and ideas that come to mind along the way, and don’t forget your camera so you can capture the beauty around you.