Here on the blog, we discuss our journeys in depth. Whether it be the sacred travel to Buddhist festivals in the mountains of Ladakh or the sacred caves in the jungles of the Yucatan, we reveal the what of our sacred journeys in great detail and fairly frequently.
We also, however, recognize the why of our sacred journeys and wish to speak on it in detail. This amounts to recognizing the transformational power sacred travel has on our lives once we return home.
So what do we mean when we write that sacred travel can transform the way you live?
We mean adding loads of divine inspiration to your consciousness that, in turn, transforms the way you live, love, and create. This article will go in-depth on exactly those things: transforming the way we live, love, and create through sacred travel.
Transforming the Way We Live Through Sacred Travel
The archetypal hero’s journey, or, the “monomyth” as some call it, describes through story the way in which heroes (we included) take journeys and return to provide gifts, powers, and service to their communities at large. The communities can sometimes be towns, yet also often the entire world.
The story reminds us of how we’re all here to unlock our gifts and unique powers for the betterment of the planet. Andrew Harvey, founder of Sacred Activism and journey leader who guides our India pilgrimages writes that “What we are here to do is meet and become the person we are.” As Andrew would agree, traveling, particularly in sacred places such as India, provides ideal environments to reach newfound realizations about the self. This is true whether they involve epiphanies about culture or inspiration about how to better live.
How to better live is a core component of who we are and why we’ve come here to earth. Mythologer Michael Meade, in his book The Genius Myth, writes that “We may be closest to hearing the call when we feel most alone or in trouble, for genius hides behind the wound and one of the greatest wounds in life is to not know who we are intended to be or what we are supposed to serve in life.”
Meade agrees that the deeper part of ourselves wishes to serve a higher purpose in life, a purpose we lean closer to when leaving the comfort of what we know and traversing the ecstatic (though sometimes uncomfortable) world of the unknown.
Transforming the Way We Love Through Sacred Travel
While abroad, we’re bound to experience the dichotomies of ecstasy and injustices. We experience the inspiration from cultural eats, temples, and festivals—but also the unfair treatment of a country’s citizens. Regardless, both sides of the spectrum can lead to action through love. This leads to something like Andrew’s Sacred Activism.
According to Andrew, “When the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic and social institutions, a holy force—the power of wisdom and love in action—is born. This force I define as Sacred Activism.”
Whether it be through deepening spirituality or experiencing injustices, we can bring what we’ve learned home to further our action through a medium of love.
But what might that look like?
Well, if you’re an artist, that might look like using your passion for creation to bring about messages of social change. If you’re a mother or father, perhaps you’ll use love to revolutionize the way you parent (whatever that means to you) while being more conscious of the lessons you’re implanting in younger beings.
The list can go on here; there are numerous ways to bring more love into our lives and plenty of possible experiences to have abroad to inspire them.
Transforming the Way We Create Through Sacred Travel
Sacred travel can save your creative life by providing fuel for creativity.
That’s why, among our numerous offerings, we provide journeys such as our Hydra’s Writer’s Retreat in Greece where, with author Phil Cousineau, you can gather with others on stunning Hydra to spark new material, deepen your craft, or know when to release your work into the world.
Phil Cousineau combines his popular mythopoetic (literally the making of stories) approach to writing with the nine-stage creative journey model presented in his book, Stoking the Creative Fires. Every afternoon during the workshop offers consultations at one of the outdoor tavernas, and every evening we gather to discuss our work over dinner and traditional Greek music.
The retreat is a perfect example of using culture and adventure to stoke both creative fires and the fires of passion (which is important for creativity in the first place). By retreating to the Greek island of Hydra, for example, we leave the territory of the known and enter into the transformative unknown. As mythologer, Joseph Campbell, one of Phil’s heroes and teachers, says: “You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first, you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”
That’s what we’re doing when we take journeys, especially sacred ones. We’re leaving our day-to-day lives to “simply experience and bring forth what [we] are and what [we] might be.” With that, we focus our energies on “creative incubation.” The experience is life-changing at the very least. Sacred travel can save our lives.
