Travel is my spiritual work. I detest car travel and air travel. I find it pushes all my buttons. The feeling of being trapped. The mechanical nature of it all. Mostly everyone is tired, grumpy, including me. Too hot or too cold. Utterly dehydrated or busting to go to the toilet. All the humans get under my skin. The pushiness, rudeness, egocentric ways of people really seam to multiply when you get them to an airport, on a freeway with a traffic jam or at a customs gate. Me included.
So I use it as my spiritual work. How, when faced with these situations can I be more kind, compassionate and empathetic. How can I move from ‘my frustration’ into ‘everyone here is just as tired, frustrated, and a little smile and warm energy goes a long way’. How can I be more calm, gentle and flowing? Dynamic, flexible and adaptable. How can I cool my inner flame of rigidity and WTFing under my breath, and instead of fanning the rage get broad in my perspective. How can I cool down, see the lightness? Can I feel for that mother of the screaming little one? Or will I choose resentment? When those people shove (hard) to get ahead of me in the taxi line, will I roll my eyes and complain (loudly) or will I understand I’ve no idea what’s going on for them. They may be rude, insensitive people, but they also might be racing to get to the hospital as their parents have been diagnosed with something awful. That person that seemingly is out to cut me off at every turn might be disconnected from her exterior as her partner has just left her, and she’s contained in a fog. It’s all fantasy and I’ll never really know, but it’s my work to expand out of my small self ‘it’s all about me and everyone is out to get me’ and move into my higher self ‘this is just a small moment in time when you can connect to your heart and emotionally tread softly’.
It’s all choice. When we are emotional and fatigued we must remind ourselves of this. That we have the choice to respond with grace instead of reacting.
I know this to be true; when fatigue gets the better of me, I’m an asshole and I huff and puff and literally everything goes wrong from that moment. And I know this to be true; when I’m chipper, kind, and hold my sense of humor, I am usually getting better seats, getting taken care of and having a better time. It’s not a silver bullet to making things improve, but the lift in my mood is enough to make if worth it. Even if I’m faking it until I make it…
The reason I write this is I want us all to get familiar with everything being our spiritual work. It’s not just meditation and yoga classes and buying a crystal. It’s travel, and the interaction with all the humans, and at the supermarket and at work and at school drop off and so on. All of life is spiritual work. And this we really do have a LOT of grist for the mill don’t we…
Love Jac x
Photo of Ballina Airport on sunrise when I was walking to my flight last night. I also wrote this on the plane waiting for take off.