Travelling to sacred places is no longer only the realm of followers of religion. The spiritual journey to experience a sacred place attracts many travellers who seek to find something other than the usual holiday souvenirs. Ancient paths walked by many before are feeling new feet upon them. Spurred by a deepening desire to look inward for answers, many people are travelling to places of long-standing spiritual significance in hope of finding something that their everyday lives has failed to bring them.
A Spiritual Journey for Spiritual Healing
A spiritual journey offers more than typical holiday travel. The destination is overshadowed by the journey. Sightseeing is replaced by insights. Photographing the image of the picture postcard view is less important than being in the presence of a sacred place. Taking a spiritual journey is a unique kind of travelling experience that can bring spiritual healing.
While the individual spiritual journey is unique, it is not new. The practice of making a spiritual pilgrimage to holy sites has been part of the world’s religions for centuries. Traditional pilgrims have followed the road to their own spiritual Mecca, Jerusalem or Rome guided by the teachings of their religious masters. The contemporary spiritual journey, however, is not necessarily part of a religious faith but is still a search for spiritual healing.
Why Travel to Sacred Places
In his book The Art of Pilgrimage, Phil Cousineau explains that the spiritual journey begins when something vital in life is missing and that travelling to a sacred place attempts to fill that emptiness. How that happens, is unique for each traveller and that is what makes the spiritual journey special. It might be through releasing, risking or rejuvenating that the missing link is revealed.
The spiritual journey is a search for meaning and sacred places are a reminder of the mystery and grandeur of life. Imbued with the reverence and respect of thousands, they open our mystical imagination and, as Cousineau writes, “the ability to respond from our deepest place.”
Destinations for a Spiritual Journey
A sacred place might be a holy site of significance to major religions like Jerusalem in Israel or Mecca in Saudi Arabia. It might be a walk like The Inca Trail in Peru or El Camino de Santiago in Spain. Long revered features of the natural environment can be sacred places like The Ganges in India, Uluru in Australia or Mount Fuji in Japan.
Structures of significance built by ancient civilisations like the Pyramids in Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru or Stonehenge in England are also destinations for the spiritual journey. Sacred Destinations is a website specifically designed for people seeking a religious or spiritual journey. It profiles over 1600 sacred sites and religious places of all faiths across 61 countries.
How to Visit Sacred Places
Recent years have seen boutique travel companies specialising in spiritual journeys to sacred places. Companies like Spirit Travel offer small group pilgrimages to sacred sites in India, Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan. Canadian-based Sacred Earth Journeys develops small group tours and custom itineraries to sacred places in India, Mexico, Peru and Egypt with the specific mission of promoting spiritual growth and personal transformation.
Many general travel companies also feature sacred places among their travel packages for India and South America. While their focus is generally on delivering a vacation rather than a spiritual journey, such tours can still be a catalyst for personal growth. So too can independent travel which is the way of the traditional spiritual journey.
Visiting sacred places of long-standing spiritual significance is not new but this type of spiritual journey now attracts a broad range of people from traditional pilgrims to new age devotees. They may be different in how they pursue their journey but they all share a common longing for meaning and spiritual healing.
Sources:
Carr-Gomm, Philip, Sacred Places - Sites of Spiritual Pilgrimage from Stonehenge to Santiago de Compostella, Quercus, 2008
Cousineau, Phil, The Art of Pilgrimage – the Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred, Conari Press, 1998, pp15 and xxvii
Sacred Destinations, Sacred-Destinations.com/about. Accessed September 4, 2010.
Spirit Travel, SpiritTravel.com. Accessed September 4, 2010.
Sacred Earth Journeys, SacredEarthJourneys.ca. Accessed September 4, 2010.
Gail Rehbein - Gail Rehbein lives on Australia’s Gold Coast. Her special interest areas are creative writing, socially responsible business and ...
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