Dakini Grace Blog

As I write, I’m coming to the end of Paula Constant’s story of walking across the Sahara dessert.  It’s called ‘Sahara: A journey of love, loss and survival’.

I’ve always loved tales of people taking on incredible challenges; be it walking across the Sahara, ascending Mount Everest, or choosing to live in foreign countries where they don’t know the language or customs and even sitting down to order a simple meal becomes a momentous accomplishment.

I too have had my fair share of travels – over land, air and sea – and I guess some were more adventurous than others.

Sailing from Toronto to the Bahamas is amongst my most memorable travel experiences.  As are walking in the Andes, canoeing in the Amazon, and swimming in the billabongs of Kakadu National Park.

As an Australian, I was born into a world fascinated by exploration and adventure and I have been blessed to be able to take advantage of that.

Reflecting on my travels and adventures though, the thing that strikes me most is that I have as much appreciation for the challenging times as I do the blissful experiences.  I feel equally full when I reflect on my ‘great’ travel experiences as I do when I remember:

• walking in the exquisite English countryside in gale force winds which literally knocked me off my feet;
• camping in the Rockies wearing every piece of clothing I had with me and still shivering through the night;
• travelling non-stop for 36 hours on planes, trains and boats to get to an idyllic Thai island where it then rained for a week; or
• sleeping overnight on top of a cafeteria table in Caracas airport because it was too dangerous to travel into the city that evening. 

In fact, the most challenging moments are amongst my most cherished.

And so it leads me to wonder; why is it that we’re so averse to challenges and difficulties? 

If travelling teaches us anything it’s that these moments are worth savouring.

When I think of circumambulating Uluru, I remember the heat, I remember being thirsty and sweating a lot, I remember the spectacular rock formations, the waterfalls, the incredible blue sky against the terracotta of the rock, and I remember the feeling of absolute serenity and stillness.  I remember it all and despite moments of discomfort, I wouldn’t change a thing.

I find the same with day to day life.  Some of my most rewarding experiences have been my most challenging and I wouldn’t give up one of them – not illnesses or violence, not breakups and divorce, not grief for loved ones passed.

I wouldn’t give them up because this is the stuff of life.

This is what makes up a life and at its core, this is why we were born.  To experience life. 

When we give up our judgments about what is a ‘good or bad’ experience, we simply live in awe of it all.

To live shallowly on the edges of life is not for me.  To dive deeply into the juiciness of it all; that’s why we’re here.

It’s all beautiful when we’re surrendered to it.

Travelling teaches a very clear lesson; when you fight what is, you suffer.  Whether it be trains not running to schedule, weather not working out as you had hoped, or discovering that your accommodation is decidedly less opulent than it appeared on the hotel website’s photo gallery. 

When you accept what is, there is a peace and tranquility to all experiences.

Of course, you don’t need to travel anywhere to discover this.  For the most sublime of all journeys is the one within yourself. 

Nevertheless, like me, you may have found external travel to be an excellent means of turning within.  You might have experienced a moment of pure presence whilst skiing in the Alps, surfing in the Pacific, swimming in the Mediterranean, or walking through the streets of Paris.

All experiences of pure presence offer us a gift; the gift of life moving through us, as us.

And once we’ve experienced this in a deep and lasting way, then there is no longer a need to search for those things on mountaintops or in the waves because we carry the mountains and the waves within.

At this point, our journey comes full circle.  Travelling afar and travelling within become one and the same.  We become the mountains and the waves.  We stop having experiences of life, as though there were a point of separation between us and the world in which we journey.  Instead, we come to know ourselves as the very thing we were searching for.  We come to know ourselves as life.

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Photo credit: Faby Habib

This entry was posted on Friday, January 20th, 2012 at 10:00 am and is filed under Freedom, The Art of Living Fearlessly, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.