Huna Light

TRAVELLING MAGICALLY:

How to turn your journey into a life-changing experience

By Dr. Rima A Morrell

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Piatkus Books

The moral right of the author has been asserted

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-7499-2818-6

Introduction: Why travel this way?
Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We all desire to leave our chains behind, but we don’t know how. We all long for freedom but we don’t know where it lies. Some of us seek religion or aspects of the spirit, others go out and explore new lands. The lure of travel is well known. It has been documented in poetry, books and films and is the subject of many individual and collective desires. This book focuses on how to travel, particularly through using your intuition – the best travel guide of all.

There are many tremendous travel books in the world. But this is the only one to help you find your true home. I wish I’d known the things I am now sharing when I started travelling. I wrestled with so many questions and situations, from ‘who can I trust?’ and ‘when do I travel with other people?’ to ‘where do I go and when?’ and even ‘when do I have sex?’ Most importantly, ‘what did it all mean?’ For your true home ultimately is in what you know, not where you have been. As far as I know, this is the only ‘how-to travel’ guide – much needed considering travel is the world’s biggest industry.

Magical travel: the five principles

Let’s look at the five principles of magical travel, and at how they differ from more ordinary travel:

First principle: Only follow your intuition
Be prepared to travel solo – with your intuition as your travel guide.

Second principle: Travel spontaneously
Go from place to place according to what feels right.

Third principle: Go local
Leave the beaten track. Go local, travelling cheaply and ethically.

Fourth principle: Allow the sacred
Prepare for mystical experiences, in sacred places and elsewhere.

Fifth principle: Integrate your journey into your life
Make your magical experiences part of your everyday life.

There are five main distinctions between magical travel and ordinary travel.

The first is that you choose the silver road of your intuition to travel, out of the many possible roads, all of which lead to different destinations. We shall talk more about what your intuition is and how to follow it. For now, let’s leave it as the road to your magic is an inner journey, which will always lead you to the best possible place in the outer world. You are prepared to travel alone. Even if it seems scary at the moment, there are plenty of tips to help you.

The second is to travel in an unstructured way, according to where feels right at the time. You won’t go to places because they are famous or other people say you should go there, but because it feels right for you.

The third is to often leave the beaten track and explore the local culture, travel by local transport, and so on. You will not go on organised tours and you will need relatively little money.

The fourth is that you are encouraged to prepare for your own mystical experiences, for instance in sacred places, which can lead you into states of bliss.

The fifth difference is that you are given tips on integrating your experiences into your life. For your trip, unlike other trips, isn’t disassociated from the rest of your life. Magical travel is your silvery portal into a new world.

By teaching you how to follow your intuition, not only your journey but your life, will be transformed. Your intuition will lead you to a high world of freedom that lasts for far longer than your trip. In reviewing it, you may discover that some of your experiences actually provided ‘tests’ for you – lessons you needed to learn to make your life better. They may be simple, like ‘you don’t need money to be happy’, or more profound, such as on the nature of reality. Through learning these lessons, you will be catapulted away from your familiar, plain grey life towards a life of light and excitement. Your experiences will crack you open and change you forever, even if you don’t believe it’s possible – that’s what happened to me.

My story
Much have I travel’d in the realms of gold …
John Keats

I was miserable when I set off alone to India, Nepal, Pakistan and Australia when I was 18. I had the next few years mapped out and was on my way to Cambridge University to study anthropology after my gap year finished. I was an atheist who didn’t believe in God, because it simply wasn’t rational and there were so many bad things happening in the world. I certainly wasn’t expecting my life to transform.

When I arrived in India I had an odd feeling of coming home. I suddenly knew I could go anywhere, do anything. My Lonely Planet guidebook was very useful, but the best guide proved to be my intuition. I was led to amazing places. A turret over the most sacred village in India, when elephants were being bathed at sunset in the lake below. Desert rides on camels and the most perfect powder snow in Kashmir. In Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, my blood started to sing and zing, a feeling better than falling in love. What I felt was magic. It was the magic of truly being at home for the first time. At home with myself.

What was going on? I had lost my belief in magic when I was a little girl and stopped writing about fairyland. But unknowingly I had followed four out of the five principles of travelling magically. I started alone, and while I met some great people along the way, I retained my freedom to make decisions, which I did following my intuition. So I covered the first principle. I travelled in an unstructured way, going from mountain to city to desert according to what felt right, so fulfilling the second. I had left the beaten track and became fascinated by the local cultures; that was the third. To my surprise, I encountered some incredible ’mystical’ experiences, even though I didn’t believe they were possible, that was the fourth. But I didn’t know how to integrate them with my previous life experiences or philosophy. Thus I failed the final test, the fifth principle, integrating my journey into my life. I had to give up university and got very sick with a tropical disease. Yet somehow an inner voice made me carry on. Even though I had no idea where it came from, and it made no ‘sense’ to me, I knew it was important.

Following intuition
Straight path escapes the winding roads
I leave home for the truth
Akiane

It wasn’t surprising that I had no idea where my intuition came from. For lessons in mainstream schooling did not teach you me to access it, nor did they acknowledge it existed. The downplaying and ignoring of our intuition may be the hardest thing about growing up in the West. Sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) said that we have lost meaning, a state of disconnection that he termed anomie. Unlike smaller-scale societies, we work hard, play hard, travel a lot, often don’t know the people around us and feel empty inside. We don’t know what it’s all for. Do you recognise this state?

If you are like most people, other people will have decided what you will do with your life. You are born into a family, a society, and your role is merely to live the life you were born for, whether you are a check-out person in a supermarket or a barrister. You have been formed to fit a shape that is probably not appropriate for the essential you; you have been told that your hopes and your dreams are not significant. Most people are simply going through the motions and escaping from the humdrum reality of their lives through drink, drugs, the Internet and other media. Yet in truth there is a reason and a purpose to everything that happens to us. We do need to be free to find it, and travelling magically provides the opportunity. For your free time, even if it is only an afternoon of a weekend trip, will help you realise who you are, the essential you. Your best guide is always – you.

Luckily one mistake I didn’t usually make in the hard years that followed my magical trip was to deny my intuition. As I was on the right path to begin with, I didn’t need to change it and eventually got back to Cambridge to finish my degree in anthropology. I learned about other cultures and belief systems, and focused on local and tribal ones. I studied alternative economic systems, shamanism, art around the world and topics such as development, the East–West divide and medical anthropology. Then I travelled around the islands of the Pacific and finally completed a Ph.D. on Hawaiian language and culture and a few books, for which my first degree was perfect preparation. My intuition led me better than ‘I’ ever could have. And most importantly I realised that everything – even my years of illness – has a purpose. I believe in God, although not a fatherly God – God to me is more of a sense of connection. And I got over many fears, including death. I don’t believe in miracles, I know miracles because I regularly experience them.

I still travel magically. In the USA, I have been led, quite unknowingly, from pow-wow to pow-wow, in a way I could never have planned. Each was in full swing, the cloaked dancers treading, their feather headdresses shining in the sunlight. I have bent and picked up a lump of jade, seals barking nearby, in front of a glittering sea on the only beach in the world where the rainforest and glaciers fringe the coral reef. I have hung-out in faraway bars and danced at Polynesian festivals where I was the only Westerner. I love my work, which has developed as a direct result of my finding my truth. So my seemingly going off-track actually led to me being on track. For my intuition always knew, even when I didn’t. My life is now rich and full and I reached this ledge of light by following the five silvery principles of magical travel.

Who is this book for – and not for?
We shall not travel, but we make the road
Helen Friedlander

We are all special. And all it takes to use this book is the ability to dream and the courage to let go and take the first step. You don’t even need money, but you do need a bit of time – even if only a weekend. This book is for gap-year students, for career-breakers, it’s for OAPs. It’s for those off on their big OE (overseas experience), it’s for empty nesters. It’s for weekenders and it’s for flashpackers – those used to going to destinations fast. This book is for ‘backpackers’ (people who travel cheaply, often with backpacks) as well as those used to travelling more expensively and less expansively. It’s for a fortnight, a year or a lifetime. It’s for all those who want more in their life – more love, more meaning, more people you ‘click’ with, more memories, more fizz. For ultimately we can make our dreams reality. All of us. No one is ever in our way but ourselves.

But not everyone will choose this book, and that’s fine too. It’s not a post-colonial diatribe, of the kind beloved by so many academics. There are indeed numerous problems in the world, but the way to change them is by changing yourself. Then you will instinctively make the right decisions. But if you would rather focus on the problems – and analyze them on a mental level – then this book is not for you. Nor is it for you if you have an addiction such as drugs or alcohol, in which case do get some help. Otherwise your addiction will block your magical experiences. If you are on anti-depressants, try and get off them, and allow your true feelings coming through. Nor is this book for those running away from situations such as debts or custody cases – deal with them first. And you don’t need it if your life is already full of myth, meaning and magic, which is probably only likely if you’re a native of a traditional society. This book is also not for those who don’t want it, like Will and Lisa.

Will and Lisa
A journey is like marriage
The way to be wrong is think you control it
John Steinbeck

Married for a few years, Will and Lisa look forward to their annual holiday abroad. They have decided where they are going before they leave the country, booked the accommodation and car hire in advance and agreed on their excursions. They stick to the same old circuits and meet the same people. The biggest surprise might be the hotel plumbing not working as well as it should. When they return they show off their memorabilia and slot back into their familiar life as if they’d never left. When their suntans fade, they have their photos and dinner-party conversations to sustain them.
There is so much more they could be experiencing, but like the tourists who look at an iceberg, nine-tenths of which is under the surface, they will never see the rest. When they have a sense of something (and they do), they don’t talk about it, even to each other; they ‘act like they’re happy’ as Lisa calls it, and carry on with their trip. They do exactly the same at home, so the trip is an extension of their life. By working so hard to stay in control they have not exposed themselves to other ways of doing things. Their travel could change their job, their character and bring out their hidden potential. It could expose them to experiences that they would never have at home. It could transform them into people they have never known. But Will and Lisa would rather stay the same and stay safe, and not open the door. That’s okay.

But how about if you do choose to open the door and allow some change into your life?

Opening the door

There upon the beach the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand! Edna St. Vincent Millay

That beautiful quote was on the dorm room of anthropologist Margaret Mead, when she was in college. In later years she went on to help us redefine many of our familiar notions. By leaving your familiar land and drawing in new experiences like iron filings to a magnet, you are ready to find a new world. By the end of the book you will know what to do – cheaply, easily and spontaneously – to restore meaning to your life. For in the end, what is there to lose but your chains? And you will certainly have a very memorable trip that is far more than a holiday – whether it takes a weekend or a lifetime.
Magical travel opens new doors, not only to other countries and other cultures, but to the most important journey of all, the journey inside yourself. Within you lie the realms of silver and gold. They are the home of your deep knowing and your sense of peace and rightness. They are your core, the true home of your soul. Your journey will become an alchemical journey, as you are guided on the most important one of all – your life path.

How this book works
Teach us the road to travel and we will not depart from it forever
Satank, Kiowa

The book is divided into three sections, ‘Before you go’, ‘When you’re there’ and ‘Coming home again’. Even though some of the advice, such as ‘when do you come home?’ is only relevant for those on a longer journey, the inner wisdom applies whatever the length of your trip. The book consists of stories, some from my early magical travel experiences, some belong to others. Where people are published or otherwise well-known, so they are already in the public domain I use their full name, otherwise I use first names, which have sometimes been changed. Yet the point of the book isn’t in the stories, it is in what lies below the stories. For the book works on an intuitive, as well as a mental level.
For instance, every chapter is discrete, and the book can be read straight through or by going to the relevant parts concerning where you are on your journey. As you open the book you may find you are drawn to one section rather than another. Follow your intuition – this book does not have to be read in chronological order. It can be used as and when you need it. The references, including websites, and suggestions for further reading, can be found in the Resources section at the back of the book. I would recommend dipping into it as you please. Over 80% of travel resources now are web-based, so for those of you so far unfamiliar with it, why not try a course? Your local library or college often offers inexpensive ones, even free for the ‘silver surfers’ amongst you. Remember that not all websites are independent, indeed most travel websites are sponsored. Be aware of their limitations and always trust your own intuition above all else.

Unusually for a travel book today, I include references to books. The range is wide from travel and guidebooks, to the odd academic text to personal stories of awakening. If you wish, you can bring them on your trip according to the particular qualities you would like to gain – such as the ability to relax or to be open to mystical experiences. That is why I have arranged them according to chapter. I don’t for a moment expect you to agree with every part of every book, they are selected to stimulate and illuminate. For reasons of variety, I tend to mention only one book by a particular writer.

The astute reader will notice many references to India. Partly the reason is simple – because there are. Perhaps that’s because of the power of place – if every place has its own vibration, then India’s is particularly intense, and it magnetizes people. If you would rather go to Uganda then great. Take the Indian examples and apply them to your experience in Africa. The principles are universal, India is merely the crucible boiling them into worldly form for so many.

This book is an interactive tool and I would love to hear about your travel experiences, and some of them will be put up on the website accompanying the book (www.rimamorrell.com from summer 2008). You can find some photographs of my early travel experiences there as well as some more stories. I have not been paid for any recommendations in this book. But one thing’s for sure, things change, so please look at the website for any additional recommendations in the resource section.

Thank you for choosing to travel magically, it’s time to start moving.