Going on pilgrimage
Over years past, I’ve known several people who went on pilgrimage. Some have traveled to India while others went to Peru or some other sacred destination. Usually my friends and I get a bit jealous because we’re stuck in our hum-drum daily lives. If we aren’t able to take such a pilgrimage, does this mean we are doomed never to have such an experience? Does it mean we can’t have the benefits of going on pilgrimage unless we go on one like these great souls do? What if we don’t ever make it to India, or Egypt, or Machu Picchu? Will we always be also-ran spiritual seekers?
No. We are all pilgrims on this planet living the biggest pilgrimage of them all: daily life! Without taking anything away from the experiences of souls who go on pilgrimages such as the one to India, there are ways we can live our lives that can bring us profound spiritual benefits. Here are some ideas.
Pilgrims make preparations for their trip. They study the places they will go, be sure they are up to date on their vaccinations, and they make sure they take along appropriate clothing and other personal items. They follow some sort of itinerary so they can be sure to see the places and do the things important to them.
What about us? What sort of preparations do you make for your daily life, your pilgrimage? Do you jump out of bed, hit the shower, grab a cup of coffee and a sweet roll while running out the door? Or do you get up early enough to take your time waking up, getting oriented, thinking ahead of what tools you might need for the day? Do you spend some time in meditation and contemplation, setting your inner gyroscope for success, however you define it?
Do you know where you are headed in your life and why? Or do you waste precious days and minutes? Being on pilgrimage means we need to know where we’re going, what we want to see and experience while there, and be sure we have both the time and resources we need.
Pilgrims make their travel sacred. Going on a pilgrimage is very different from traveling as a tourist or for business. A pilgrimage is a sacred journey and is undertaken for spiritual benefit.
Are your days sacred or profane? We can live our lives at the surface, never diving deeply into our work or relationships. We can pretend we are just tourists in our own lives, as if where we are headed and what we are experiencing means nothing. Or we can approach every day with a sacred attitude, being willing to live beneath our own skin, from our heart and soul.
Pilgrims are open to the deeper meanings of everything they encounter. Because they are away from their everyday world and to-do lists, people on pilgrimage can take the time and effort to live at a deeper level. This is, of course, one of the purposes of taking a pilgrimage – to go deeper. This includes the disappointment of getting ill and not being able to experience everything the way we had intended at the beginning of our trip.
What sorts of meanings can we look for in our daily pilgrimages? We can expect the unexpected, being alert and aware of everything and everyone in our lives as if we have not seen and experienced them a thousand times before. We can make each day and event special by approaching life with wonder, surprise, and even astonishment! And, yes, we can allow ourselves to feel the disappointment when things don’t work out the way we wish they would. This, too, is part of our journey.
Pilgrims take pictures and write notes. They bring home special mementos to place on their altars and coffee tables and they treasure their photos and travel diaries. This allows them to relive their trip many times over. And with each reliving and retelling, they glean more from the trip.
We, also, can keep mementos of our days. We can take notes of our experiences, of our insights, of our glimmers and glimpses as written about by William Samuel in his book The Child Within Us Lives. And we can take photos not just with our smart phones but also with our inner eyes, photos and memories that uplift and remind us of the importance of our pilgrimage – our daily lives.
Pilgrims bond with their fellow travelers. Because they are together in a soul-led way, and because they are away from the pressures of their routines, people who travel together on pilgrimage do form special bonds. They have experiences together that they can’t share with people who were not on the pilgrimage. There is a shared intensity.
The relationships we have in our daily lives are capable of being deep if we are willing to be fully present with one another. We share experiences with people all day long. Some of the people we know and some we don’t. Paying attention to everyone in our world, seeing them as our brother and sister travelers through life, allows us to form deep bonds if we are willing. Being involved with some sort of spiritual group helps us form these types of soul-level relationships.
When they return, pilgrims must reorient themselves to the mundane world they left behind for a few days, weeks, or months. Although certainly profoundly changed by their encounters with the sacred energies of their travels, the pilgrims must now settle in to chopping wood and carrying water along with those of us who didn’t leave home in the first place. They have to integrate their experiences and make them meaningful in the light of their everyday lives.
And for us, no matter what happens during our daily pilgrimage, we also must always return back to our home, both to the space we occupy with friends and family and to the home within our hearts and souls. And once at home, we must integrate everything that happens to us during our pilgrimage into the world. We must apply the wonders, the surprises, and the disappointments so it can all make sense. We, too, must sit in quiet meditation and allow ourselves to return to our center where we are able to utilize the sacred energies we contacted during our pilgrimage.
As a pilgrim recently back from India so eloquently stated after sharing the many wonderful experiences she had, “And now we are home and the work begins.”
Living in grace and ease,
Krysta