Travel with Intention
I believe when we travel with intention, when we are open to outcome, when we stay curious, magic can happen.
Happy New Year dear readers. I’m opening my blog this year with some reflections. I’m not sure it this will be the tone of my writing going forward in 2025 but here’s a taste of what I’m currently journalling about.
I am preparing for a trip to Kenya later this month. Kenya is a place of spiritual renewal for me. There is something profound about Africa, it cracks me open. I have an itinerary, yet I know surprises await. The challenge, and therefore my intention, is to stay open, curious and mindful.
Recently I was asked by a local community organization to speak at their first meeting this year. Today actually. The topic is my book The Wisdom of Elephants. It’s been 5 years since my extraordinary encounter with hundreds of elephants in Amboseli. Like a numinous dream, the experience continues to work me and call me into deeper territory of the heart and mind.
I set the context for my talk outlining the difference between a trip and a pilgrimage. A tourist leaves home for pleasure, to escape, to relax, to experience a new place or culture. A pilgrim leaves home with intention seeking transformation and spiritual renewal.
In January 2020 I chose to go on a solo journey to Kenya. My mother, the matriarch of our family, died 4 months earlier. I was burned out, at a the end of my career as a trainer and psychotherapist in private practice and the beginning a new decade in my life. I stood at a threshold. I had no idea what the next chapter in my life would look like.
I needed time to just be. I needed time away from responsibilities and patterns of behaviour that no longer served me. I longed to see the big tuskers of southern Kenya. I trusted that whatever needed to show up would and that there were allies lining up to support my process. I believed if I maintained an attitude of curiosity and openness, if let go of my need to control, Nature would provide everything I needed and more. And it did. Magic happened.
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