Last week Mona Tannous shared her first hand perspectives on the mechanics of how travel (or taking on an experience like Camino de Santiago) changes someone.
It is almost impossible to capture the intensity of an experience like undertaking the Camino de Santiago, but Mona took the time in her travels to inspire the piece she wrote whilst walking the Camino.
If last week was the practical guide, this is the emotion.
Take it away Mona…
“The Phoenix willingly places itself in the bonfire of its own making to destroy the old and make way for the resurrection of the new soul…
Putting the past behind you, wiping the slate clean to write the chapters of your future.
Camino teaches you silence, teaches you to bring up and relinquish old habits on ‘The Way’; the journey you must walk to complete the next phase of your life.”
“I reflected through the many kilometres of Camino where I walked alone and just the road ahead.
On Camino it’s your foot print on a well trodden path to carve your own trail in this world. It allows you to break the barrier of your own resistance (if you allow it) and give your mind over to your body and heart to direct you.
Separating your mind from the pain, listening and being in tune with your body; separating the ‘humanity’ of who you are in the physical form and becoming one with your body – feeling with your heart.
My first day resulted with blisters on my right foot and metaphysically, blisters mean ‘resistance’ and that was the anchor, the one thing that said “this is what you are here for – to face, recognize all the resistance that I had in my life about ‘walking the right path’.
The act of walking…
The act of opening your eyes and really using them to see.
The act of tuning in with your ears to hear and deeply listen.
The act of letting go of burdens.
The act of just being present where nothing else exists except taking the next step on the journey.
An experience like Camino strips you back, soul bared for all to see.
The emotions that overcome you each day can’t be analysed , they just exist and you honour them. They just allow you to sit with the vulnerability of your humanity and face the fact that our emotions liberate is from the strict rigours of society that tell us to ‘hold it together and be strong’.
Why should we? Why shouldn’t we allow ourselves to be emotional? Vulnerable? Free?
We shouldn’t conform but allow ourselves to be beyond what ‘is acceptable’ and the limitations of our own mind.
Think ‘soar like an eagle’; it flies as high as it needs to, wants to, is able to. It knows it’s limitations but in moving above the mountains, oceans and seas, it takes the higher ground to look down upon the vastness of capabilities.
We seldom ‘fly’ above human limitations to see things from a higher perspective.
If we look over and above and over our daily lives, what height did we limit ourselves today?
Did you fly above your height? Are you taking the higher self point of view or just grounding yourself in the body that limits you?
Camino is about finding your own rhythm which is exactly what life is about but again, we forget this simple law. We can’t walk through life to the beat of somebody else’s drum. We have to create our own beat and know intuitively when to change it.