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As I departed the airplane and approached the terminal in Cusco, Peru, the faint echo of music wafted through the air. When I entered the terminal, something I never would have expected happened. My eyes welled up with tears. In front of me stood a band approximately 10 Peruvian musicians playing guitars, wooden flutes, mandolins, percussion and hand drums. Their music, which was traditional Peruvian folk in style, so deeply penetrated my heart that in an instant I felt I was returning home to a part of myself I had long ago forgotten. I experienced my soul opening as it began to commingle with the energy of those to whom I was a foreigner and I had an epiphany right then and there. While I knew my house was many thousands of miles away in California, my home was right where I was in that moment, in the presence of others who looked so different from me, and yet my soul confirmed these "others" were clearly a part of my family. In that moment, any anxiety or fear I might have had about being a stranger in a distant and foreign land simply dissolved.
Shirley MacLaine wrote, "The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends." There is profound wisdom in MacLaine's words. The single common element in my encounters in Peru and Chile and every other country to which I've traveled were the people and their willingness to allow me into, not just their country, but their hearts. When people from different cultures can transcend the sense of separation from one another based upon geographical boundaries, skin color or language differences, we also bridge that man-made chasm called fear that separates us from one another. As this happens we naturally open to what we have in common, which is our humanity, with both its strengths and frailties and our oneness in the same Creator. It is truly extraordinary how people from just about every culture open up to us as we open up to them. By experiencing diverse cultures so unlike that of my own, I've been given the opportunity to witness, marvel at, respect and appreciate our differences and, even more so, the universal sameness we all share. To be able to be so present with others in their own habitat so far from mine and at the same time feel a deep and profound sense of connectedness is a rather disarming experience. Sometimes I wonder what might happen if every human being had the opportunity to travel to other countries and cultures and see for themselves that we have far more in common than we have differences. Perhaps that is where true world peace might begin.
Have you given much thought to traveling the world? I can assure you it is one of the greatest ways to discover the beauty that lies with yourself. When Emerson states, "Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not", I interpret that to mean: Wherever we go, there we are. The world in which we live and the people in it simply serve as a very accurate reflection of some part of ourselves perhaps yet to be discovered. The healing aspect of travel is that sometimes we are so blinded by our own fear of the world we are unable to see the beauty in it, and thus in ourselves. When the Buddha said, "You cannot travel on the path until you become the path itself" he was offering us an invitation. The invitation is to know that the world and the people in it are holding a divine mirror before you right now. Want a closer look into the mirror? Pack your suitcase and hit the road. It's the journey of a lifetime!
Indeed. Travel the path and you shall become the path.
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