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Summary: Travel as Spiritual Practice
Review: Last year, 600 million people took trips in airplanes. I like to think of these people as citizens of a global confederation that hovers above our planet, 30,000 feet out from earth's surface -- a faraway country with its own laws, customs, folklore, philosophy, and psychology. It is a land in the sky, that, taken with its citizen counterparts on the crust of the planet, form the population of a huge airborne continent of wanderers. In our day, more and more people are away from home. I take that as a positive sign, because I see all travel in the outer world as a metaphor for the inner journey. Imagine a world in which one-tenth of the species are at all times on a spiritual quest. This is our world at the start of the Third Millennium, AD. But this colossal movement also has its frustrations. For years, I had returned from trips exhausted, depleted, and depressed. The delays, the annoyances, the irritations of travel had become so vast and pervasive that I began to dread going on a trip. I knew that if I could get at the deeper meaning of travel, and connect with it, I would begin to enjoy travel again. I dug back into the literary classics to see what they had to say about travel...the hero's journey, the quest, the crusade, the expedition of exploration and discovery. What I found in the great stories from mythology, religion, and history was the archetype of travel -- travel as spiritual practice. This inspired me to write a book for people who were looking for a way to elevate their travel to a higher plane of consciousness -- and who wanted to see all their life, and every day of their life, as an inner journey. I sincerely hope that you will enjoy reading "The Way of the Traveler," and that you will find in it a way to help spiritualize your travel -- in the exciting world outside, and the vast mysterious cosmos inside. If you have a story of personal transformation relating to travel, please send it to me so I can share it with others in an electronic newsletter. May all your journeys be safe -- and sacred.
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Summary: Amazing book
Review: My first book by Joseph Dispenza, but not my last! I loved the information in this book. I could not put in down when I first bought it. I leave it by my bedside and read a passage every morning upon awakening. It's my jump start for the day. I totally encourage everyone to buy and read this book. I am so grateful I bought it and did not leave it on my bookshelf to read "later". Thank you Mr. Joseph Dispenza for such insight into how to handle our lives on this planet......
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Summary: This book is pure intention.
Review: Owning a small business leaves little time for travel. Yet after reading The Way of the Traveler, I was inspired to make a long-held dream trip to Italy a reality. I began by researching the home of my grandparents and trying to locate relatives there.Soon small "coincidences" began to happen. I met someone in Santa Fe from my hometown in Upstate New York whose family was also from that very region in Italy, people I meet in business are constantly mentioning their travels there, and two good friends asked me to join them on their trip to Italy next year. I have no doubt I'll do it and what a journey of self-discovery it will be!
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Summary: The kind of book that gives "New Age" a bad name
Review: Pint-sized and poorly written, this guide would be a great gift for someone you dislike. After all, you're just trying to say, "Get outta here!" right? Besides the numbingly dull text, the author sucks the lifeblood out of travel saying it's the interior journey that counts. This is the kind of book that gives "New Age" a bad name.
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Summary: A Wise Book of Spiritual Insights
Review: Practitioners of alternative medicine recognize that disease brings with it the opportunity to move beyond our habitual, and often unconscious and limited, beliefs about who and what we are. When healing occurs, it is usually accompanied by a shift in awareness that brings us closer to our deeper nature, while revealing our hidden strengths, talents, and spiritual gifts. As Joseph Dispenza makes clear in "The Way of the Traveler," that same potential for growth and spiritual expansion lies at the heart of every journey we make as well, even those we take for granted. "Each time we take a trip, we have an opportunity to expand our awareness and thus to grow spiritually," Dispenza writes. "Travel, when undertaken with mindfulness, can be a powerful vehicle for personal transformation." An avid traveler himself, Dispenza is the co-founder and director of the Parcells Center for Personal Transformation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he carries on the healing work of Hazel Parcells, one of the 20th century's most visionary alternative healers. He is also an accomplished speaker on the subject of spirituality, having spent eight years as a monk, during which time he passed an entire year in total science. All of this is reflected in the many spiritual insights that "The Way of the Traveler" contains. At the heart of the book is a call to recognize that "All travel is inner travel." In Dispenza's view, all trips, even those as seemingly mundane as going to the grocery store or commuting to and from work, hold within them the seeds of a sacred journey. The key to discerning those seeds and allowing them to take root and grow is learning to first be aware of them. According to Dispenza, cultivating such awareness requires a sense of respect, wonder, and reverence for travel itself. Throughout his book, he guides us in this process using a collection of reflections about traveling, followed by simple activities, meditations, and affirmations intended to "elevate travel and bring to it the richness of a sacred event." Dispenza divides his book into five sections, each of which corresponds to one of the five stages of travel. In Part One, he discusses "the dream of the journey," which begins as an inner yearning born from what he calls "a kind of sacred restlessness." As he points out, often such a yearning can arise unbidden, bringing with it feelings of apprehension related to unplanned change, in much the same way that mythic and spiritual literature recounts the dream messages and visions that beckons the hero to begin his or her quest. Dispenza encourages us to heed such dreams, recognizing them as a signal that it is time "to move out of the familiar here and now." The remainder of Part One offers suggestions for how to allow ourselves to be "pulled" towards where we need to go without having to preplan every step of the destination, and to discover the meaning of the place we arrive at, moving into the unknown with a new way of seeing. In Part Two, further suggestions are provided regarding the journey's preparation. Here Dispenza again refers to myths, emphasizing the importance of packing spiritual, as well as material, provisions for the journey ahead. He invites us to contemplate the virtues and values that can most serve us during our travels, as well as the goals of what we wish to accomplish during our sojourn, and the gifts we can offer to those we meet along the way. He also encourages us to trust that the call to travel contains within it the means to see the journey through. "Look for miracles to happen," he advises, pointing out that, although money and other material provisions are certainly required before proceeding, being open to the abundance of the universe can often result in our needs being met in surprising ways. Part Three focuses on the journey itself, which includes not only arriving at our destination, but also the process of getting there. In order for it to most fully be appreciated, we must be present to each moment. "We cannot receive nourishment if we are not open to it," Dispenza writes. In this section, he provides a number of ways in which we can become more grounded in our experiences and better able to perceive the lessons and gifts they contain for us. Doing so, according to Dispenza, enables us to transform the strangers we meet into reflections of ourselves, thereby opening us up to new friendships while helping us to discover aspects of ourselves we previously may have neglected or failed to perceive. In the midst of this process of recognizing ourselves in a stranger, Dispenza writes, we also discover that the gifts we exchange with the people we meet further our transformation by bringing about a union between "the familiar and the new, unfamiliar parts of ourselves." This process also helps ready us for when the time comes to return home. In Part Four, Dispenza outlines a number of rituals that can make our homecoming a more complete and conscious experience. "With a few handmade ceremonies, you can make your departure one of the most important phases of your journey," he writes. In this section, he shares the ceremonies that are most meaningful to him, providing new significance to an element of travel that we often pass through in an unconscious swirl of last minute packing and a rush to "get home." Finally, in Part Five, Dispenza provides instruction in how best to recount the tale of our adventure, so that we can answer the questions, What has happened? Where have we been? In doing so, we are able to assimilate the gifts and lessons each journey imparts, using them to prepare ourselves for new adventures looming in our future. Reading "The Way of the Traveler" deepened my appreciation for the sojourns of my past while kindling my desire to travel once again, and soon. Dispenza is a poetic writer, and the wisdom he imparts can inspire us to explore new vistas within ourselves, even during those times when we are most homebound.
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Summary: A Book for the Journey Through Life
Review: Some books have uncanny timing and appear in one's life at exactly the right moment. For me, The Way of the Traveler is such a book. I have no travel plans; I am not preparing for a trip to Macchu Pichu or any other lovely and remote destination. Instead, my journeys are inward, to places I have never been. For example, who knows how to travel the road with a dying friend? And then comes The Way of Traveler with its comforting advice and wonderful ideas for letting go of fear, and making each journey one of awareness. I could struggle, or I could make these encounters healing and strengthening. After reading The Way of the Traveler, I like to think I have chosen the latter. This is a beautiful little book: to look at, to hold, and above all, to take heart from. I sincerely recommend it.
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Summary: Review - The Way of the Traveler by Carole of TravelSITE.com
Review: The Way of the Traveler - Making Every Trip a Journey of Self-Discovery
By Joseph Dispenza
Published by: John Muir Publications
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Reviewed by: Carole Herdegen
Editor of www.travelSITE.com
In his stimulating book on the spiritual aspects of travel, Joseph Dispenza has given the reader a new look at the reasons on not necessarily why we travel but how we should travel. His is a not the typical travel book advising on where to travel and what to see or what to do once we reached our destination but a book of insight into the goals, rewards and preparations of travel from an intellectual if not a spiritual point of view. As far back as 500 BC, philosopher/travelers like Herodotus and Hieronymus of Rhodes traveled great distances recording not only what they saw but what they emotionally experienced. Generations of travelers ever since have proceeded to record their own traveling experiences.
This then is but the first example of a book devoted especially to the change in the way we travel from a spiritual perspective to the rewards in the concept of self-transformation. The very first sentence of his book, Joseph Dispenza writes, "All travel is inner travel." He asks the traveler to keep a journal, but not ordinary journal. The journal he has in mind is a written record of how we feel about the various things we encounter in our travels. In reality, it's a "journal of feelings" and not simply a photographic record of people and places visited.
Joseph Dispenza concludes that travel becomes so much more meaningful when a common trip of superficial discovery is elevated into a journey of "self-discovery". We should be challenged and changed by travel and this is a good thing. And, by doing so, we will discover a new way of looking at the world and everything it offers.
This sharing of feelings about certain places or encounters with particular individuals is something I frequently do by orally telling my travel stories. I diligently try to record events and places in a diary and then rely on my memory and recall to share with my audiences my own personal feelings and emotions that I experienced on my journeys. However, these feelings and emotions will diminish if not completely disappear in time unless they are duly recorded. This was the strong message I got from Mr. Dispenza.
I strongly recommend this book for everyone from the armchair traveler to the seasoned adventurer.
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Summary: A great resource for personal growth AND a great gift!
Review: This book is beautiful and meaningful! As a person who travels a lot for business, I often find myself "checked out" emotionally and spiritually when I am on the road. This book gives ideas on how to not only stay more "tuned in" but how to get the most out of my travels. I can't wait to put it to use on my next trip!! I am also going to give these as Christmas gifts to my traveling friends this year!
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Summary: A Guide for Life As Well As Travel
Review: This extraordinary book is a guide for the thoughtful traveler, but I found it a guide for life, as well. I have read it through now three times, and I still am finding remarkable insights in the writing. The arc of the book is the structure of 'the hero's journey,' a beautifully conceived way of looking at not only traveling out into the world, but also within, as the author continually reminds us. This is highly-charged spiritual material, exquisitely written and lyrically set out. I recommend it for travelers who are truly interested in enriching their spiritual lives as they travel either 'out there' or 'in here' -- or both. The book is stunning.
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Summary: a true guide
Review: This is a special book. It is a true guide in every sense.The author sites various examples in mythology and history as well as offering up his own personal experiences to illustrate how significant and important our journeys are and how much we have to gain and learn about ourselves if we simply focus and honor the process of the journey.I am very grateful for the insites and will put them into play in my next journey,which will now be sooner than later thanks to this wonderful and stimulating work.
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