November 20th 2007 - Why Sacred Travel?
At one time or another many people that follow a spiritual path feel that what they are not doing is enough. We practice, meditate, pray, go to classes, groups and with all of these it seams that we are not expanding to the level and or the capacity of our true potential. We know that we are far more and we struggle a bit, we wrestle with the How, not only if we are doing it right but how to keep and contain what we have learned or acquired.
The moment we take a break from the session or the class the cell phone rings and there comes the distraction, it is no different from getting home and having something going on that will do the same thing, open the computer get into returning emails, driving the car and being attacked by the energy of other drivers and on and on…
So what do we do in order to maintain and keep an experience anchored in our cellular memory? How do we keep an experience that will sustain us during crazy and difficult times?
If we give ourselves the gift of having a powerful experience in an extraordinary place, if we remove ourselves from ordinary reality and go to extraordinary reality, to a place or places that are so foreign to us, places of power, places that are super charged with the energy of antiquity, beauty, spirituality, places where we can escape the cell phone, the computer, car, home and all other distractions in our lives and just sit, with the teaching and the teacher. We sit in the energy of the environment and we drink the energy of the place that we are visiting, we allow all of our senses to be immerse in this way of being.
For the most part we are all visual, this is one of the ways we learn from the times we are babies we start associating visually the world and the sight allows us to remember and we have some imprints that will last for the rest of our lives.
This is precisely what will happen during a Spiritual Travel experience, we take in visually the place a place that will move us to an extraordinary space in our lives, but wait that is not all… We do have other senses that will come to add to the experience, after all many of us use sight to navigate through life but we are not visual learners. So this place of magic and beauty has the ingredients that we incorporate with our hearing... Have you ever been to a place so magical that the sounds make you close your eyes and take in the place or event by hearing? What about if to that experience you could add scents and now you have the sound and the scents to add to your experience and you still have your eyes closed.
You begin to feel intoxicated by it all, your body feels different and that is creating new sensations that now you are adding to your experience. Many of us are feeling people and we need to feel in order to learn and here we are sitting and feeling, smelling, hearing and seeing creating the totality of an experience that bursts with it all, colors and sights so different from our reality. Imagine sitting on a balcony or a Ghat, where you could be doing all of this without being disturbed where people are doing just the same and you are able to create the totality of this experience by simply sitting and taking it in.
Imagine that you open your eyes and before you is an golden orange sunrise, the vibrant colors are being reflected in the calm waters of a river right before your eyes, the Ganga is right there giving life, providing for you and for thousands the sacredness of the experience. You look around and there are hundreds of people walking freely to the river to pray, to do ritual, bathe, and honor the mother, the giver of life and you… Taking it all in and allowing all of the cells of your body to drink of this experience, nothing else matters right now, this is your time, you have created this experience and it is so extraordinary that you are creating a cellular imprint that will last forever.
Thousand of colorful saris, or sarongs, man and woman walking in front of you, looking into your eyes without the fear of being seen, smiling at you with an honest and open smile. You look different to them but they acknowledge the Sacred in you, they honor you and they give you this from the heart.
With this you feel and become so open that you don’t experience the fear or the uncomfortable experience to enter someone else’s eyes, it is an invitation to be and partake of the beauty of the soul an invitation to see through the eyes as the windows to the soul. How do you expose your soul to others, others that are inviting you in and want nothing in return just to be there and to share sacred space with you?
This kind of experience can happen to you in India Holy land for many and for many centuries, it can happen in many other places Like Bali where the people are sweet and well balanced in their male female energies, where they honor the female and they have true devotion and ritual, this can happen in the forest, in the desert in places where you bring into your life the extraordinary, places that take you away from the mundane and you imprint in your cellular memory by using all of your senses an experience that will last for a lifetime.
Sacred travel for me has been this and more over the past many years as I have traveled the world, it has and continues to change me with each place, with each experience, with each interaction that I have with the rituals that I am able to create for me and the groups that come with me. We learn, we honor others and ourselves in the group, we grow and we have fun. Because after all we live in the prime piece of beautiful universal real state call the earth and it has been created for us, so we can enjoy it and share it with others humans, animals plants, so during this journeys we have fun. And this to me has been my primary method of learning with fun and joy with the child like attitude that all of us had before we where 12 and that little by little we left behind and became adults.
An open heart, devotion, ritual, love for what we do and the gift of sharing it with others is what make it worth wile and an experience like that, will last for a lifetime, it will sustain you and in difficult moments and will bring a smile to your face.
So take the time and give yourself the gift of embarking on a journey to a far and distant place remove yourself from your ordinary reality and step into the unknown create an adventure with a certain amount of risk, become the explorer, the adventurer and conquer from within, and you will see that after this you will be different the new you, that comes back with more to offer to your family, friends, community and the world.
From the heart…
Ernesto
Journey to the Heart/ Thermo Therapeutics
9199 SW 97th Ave
Miami, FL 33176
United States
Ernesto Ortiz