Charting Your Journey

We're here to talk about the gifts and the integration of your journey and the intentions you set in making a pilgrimage. When you set an intention to take a big journey like this all the way across the world to another culture, it's hard to know exactly how to set yourself up to really make the most of the experience and you'll get a lot of suggestions from your friends along the way or people that you meet who hear that you're taking such a big trip. Here's some things that have really helped me and the people I host and friends in making the trip happen in a really comfortable and good way. The first thing that's really, really important as you set your intentions is to just consider yourself and to honor all of the resources and the time and the space that you've made and given to making this happen and to start to just chart down a list of things that you hope to see or things that you hope to experience. You might think that your expectations set you up for disappointment, but it'll just help you clarify your intentions as you experience things along the way.

Really be mindful of what wants to come out of your heart in these intentions. As you travel to India and you meet many people from all over the world as well as people that live in the places you visit, it might be nice to have some things with you to share about your life at home, maybe some photos of your loved ones or just some photos that you keep on your camera or maybe some photos of yourself when you were younger or just things from your life back home. Everyone will be so curious about you, who you are, where you come from, what do you do with your life, what's your job, what is your family like, is it cold where you live, is there snow? Just try to keep in mind that this world you're going to is full of people that are curious about you because they've never met you. What are some other important things that you can bring with you to help you on your pilgrimage?

Well, you can chart your experience, so bringing a travel journal with you is a really, really good idea and setting an intention to write down some of your experiences every day, even if it's just in a haiku form of just one word of things that you experience like the food or the street or something you see, just chart everything down that is even in the most minute detail just flashes because you'll appreciate having those to share with your friends when you get home or just to keep for years from now when you think about your experience. Another idea is to start a blog and to keep a blog while you're gone so that your family and your friends can see some of your experience. An important thing about keeping a blog though is to keep in mind that in India, the internet isn't always reliable, so don't count on being able to upload photos every day along the way and since it does take longer to do such things in a lot of places in India, just be really patient and keeping the journal will help you so that you can come back to that if you do decide to keep a blog. Take photos, lots of photos. Be respectful about how you take your photos and also observe yourself along the way because the experiences in India are so full that sometimes the camera will separate you from what's happening.

So just try to be mindful and also respectful to people you see. As you travel, lots of people will want to take their photo with you. So when they do say, can I take your photo? Say, yeah, can I take yours? This is a great way to make new friends.

So as you chart your pilgrimage and you take hold of these experiences in the forms of notes or photos or a blog or however you've decided to just keep track of your experiences, it's sometimes easy to get too attached to the charting. So take a step back and keep yourself vulnerable and sometimes the emotions that arise when you're on a pilgrimage, they can be overwhelming. Don't expect to go on this trip and think that things aren't going to come up because they will. It's inevitable. Part of this seeing and doing and being in a new place like India somewhere so vast and so different is that it will remind you of maybe past hurts or things that you hope to forget about and not come up again.

So as these feelings arise, observe them, ground into them, slow down, sit in yourself. Remember mantras that help you if it's a mantra just as simple as I am love. Take a mantra that works for you and remember it and write it in your journal. A fun thing in India can also be to collect some new mantras. If you're staying in an ashram, that might be really easy but it might just be as simple as you ask someone on your morning walk, what's the mantra that you like best?

As you chart your journey and you notice yourself being vulnerable, I've spoken about this boundary before so keeping your safe boundary, if you start to feel yourself spinning out of control or needing to just cry and you feel that you need help, sit down and ground yourself. I've had so many experiences in India where I felt really, really sad and someone just showed up to help me. So listen to the signs and this way of being in India is so beautiful because you really get to see how the gods are always there to support you. As you start to feel towards coming home, there is some kind of stress and anticipation because you can tell that something new has been born in you during this time in India or something has been exposed that maybe you didn't feel before, that the crazy streets and the sounds and the beauty and the death, that everything has sort of stripped away at you and you're feeling something new that's kind of raw and vulnerable. I suggest that you, again, set intentions for coming home, that you make out a list of the things that you loved about your trip, some of the things that you hated about your trip.

Write those down too. And then some of the things that you hope to preserve when you come home. So allow all of these things to move through you and know it's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to be raw. It's okay to feel afraid about coming home and being a bit different, but this is the beauty of what your pilgrimage has given you and you get to share it.