درسنامه تفسیری

Pilgrimage – Commentary

So there I was, struggling up a mountain, a big mountain, an all day climb up the mountain. Huge cedar trees to my left and right covering the mountain top, covering the whole route, the whole path, winding my way slowly up. Back and forth, not alone but with my wife as well. Of course, we were pouring sweat soon after we started the climb. My legs hurt. My shoulders hurt, because I was carrying a heavy backpack. It was an all-day struggle.

Finally, we reached the top of the mountain near the end of the afternoon. At the top was a beautiful temple complex, several old temples. We went to one of the temples, lit some incense, lit the candles. It was a feeling of elation to have struggled all day long and to finally reach this incredibly beautiful area at the top. From the top there was an amazing view of the valleys below, so we savored this moment. It was very meditative, very calming.

Now later in the journey, this same pilgrimage this same trip, we were winding along another mountain path, but this path was along the side of a mountain, so we could see off to our left the valleys, the landscape extending all the way to the ocean. There were towns below us. And this time as I was walking I got a sudden rush of ideas, just spontaneously without trying, with no direct conscious purpose or thought, ideas began to flood into my mind, coming into my mind again and again, rapidly.

Ideas about the mission of Effortless English and my own personal mission. This is a question I’d had during the entire trip, this one month hiking trip, this one month pilgrimage was constantly struggling with the question of, ‘what is my purpose? What is the deeper purpose? What is the deeper mission?’

Finally, at this point about midway between the beginning and the end of the trip, ideas came flooding in very quickly, very rapidly. And they were almost random at first, I thought of one of my favorite TV shows, Star Trek. I don’t know why, it just popped into my head so I started thinking about that. Then I thought about a lot of different memories and past experiences I’d had. And then I thought about teaching experiences. Then I thought about the future and what I wanted. They all just started coming into my brain very quickly and mixing.

Then later in the trip as the days went by, all of these thoughts began to organize and I began to get a clear picture of what my mission was and how my mission connected to the mission of Effortless English, and in fact they’re basically the same. It gave me a surge of energy, a big increase of energy this clarity of purpose, of mission. That had a very profound effect on my life, a deep powerful effect on my life and it has continued to influence me ever since that happened five years ago.

That’s the power of a pilgrimage. Why did it happen? Why could I not get those answers in my normal life? Because, I had been asking myself the same questions. I’d been struggling with the same questions back home in my normal life, but could not find an answer that felt good, that felt right. But, out on these mountain paths away from everything doing this pilgrimage, suddenly the answers came.

Let’s talk about why. Why are pilgrimages powerful? Why have people been doing these kinds of trips for thousands of years? Personally, I can day that number one, the pilgrimage, this trip, removed me from my daily routine and not just for a few days like a vacation will. There’s nothing wrong with vacations, I like vacations too but they’re short generally and so they give you a little bit of time to rest, but not really enough time to go deeper.

But a pilgrimage totally removes you from your daily routine. It removes you from your familiar home. It removes you from your routines. It removes you from your job. It removes you from your social connections. It removes you from everything. It’s a sudden break from all of that.

The second thing that a pilgrimage provides is a magnified, an increased feeling of purpose, of meaning, through symbols, through the symbolic nature of the trip. In other words, it’s not just a trip, I’m gonna go see some place, but when you start it you already have a question. You have an expectation of deeper meaning. You’re doing it for some reason that is very personal to you. So, the trip is symbolic. What happens on the trip? You see it differently. You see the events as being more meaningful. You look for meaning in each event.

So as all those thoughts came into my head, I was looking for meaning. Oh, this must have meaning, this must be related to my questions.

The third element of a pilgrimage, especially mine that I did, was that it was also a physical challenge. It was 30 days of walking and walking 6-8 hours every single day. That’s a lot of walking. It’s a lot more walking than I normally do. That physical challenge also had a strong effect on my mind. So indeed it was also a mental challenge.

Why was it a mental challenge? Because for one month I had basically no contact with my business, so all the things I usually thought about were gone, I didn’t need to think about them anymore and so I just had to let go of my whole life for one month. Everything I thought was important. Everything I was used to doing, goodbye, let go. All I did every single day was wake up, walk, eat and sleep, that’s about it. Thirty days of extreme simplicity and also 30 days of physical challenge, carrying this backpack up and down mountains all day long.

This was a very powerful trip for me. As I said it had a very strong powerful positive effect on my life and that’s why I’m sharing it with you and that’s why I’m encouraging you to create your own pilgrimage this month. You don’t have to do it this month,

because sometimes it may take planning. It may take time to schedule. You might have to find the time in your work or with your family. You might have to save money to do it. So this month I just want you to plan and schedule your pilgrimage and do it when you can. Do it when possible.

Let’s review again the important points for creating a pilgrimage, for creating your meaningful trip, your meaningful journey.

1. Step one – choose the type of pilgrimage you want. • Religious • Spiritual • Psychological • Artistic • Family • Health • Something else

If you are a religious person you have a specific religion, many religions already have traditional pilgrimages. Islam has the pilgrimage to Mecca. Hindu’s have pilgrimages to Varanasi or other places. Buddhists maybe go to Bogaya or Japanese people go to Shikoku, like we did. There are many possibilities. There’s the Camino de Santiago in Spain. If you’re religious, there are some actual established traditional trips you can take, and those can have a lot of meaning, because you’re doing them with others, who share that purpose and because they’re so old there’s this rich history behind them that can be quite beneficial and powerful.

But, if you’re not specifically religious you might want a spiritual pilgrimage. Spiritual means a more generally philosophical, we could say, but not connected to one specific religion. So for me, the pilgrimage we did in Japan, this one I just described, for me it was more spiritual I would say. It was not about specifically Buddhism for me, it was more just generally about what is the meaning of my life? What is the purpose of my life? What is my mission? It has a deeper philosophical meaning, but not connected to one religion, for me.

I will also do the Camino de Santiago soon, which traditionally is a Christian pilgrimage, but I’m not Christian so again it’s more generally spiritual for me.

You might choose something psychological, we mentioned artistic in the main lesson, where you might focus on drawing, writing or painting.

Family, this is something a lot of Americans will do sometimes is that, because we are an immigrant nation mostly, some people really are fascinated by their family history and going back as far as they can. If their family originally came from Scotland then they might go visit sites in Scotland where their family originally came from. That could

be a family type of pilgrimage. You can visit your ancestors or sites connected to your ancestors.

It’s up to you, you can design this yourself so that it has meaning for you.

1. Step two – choose a challenging route.

Choose the route of your journey. Where are you going to start? Where are you going to finish? Challenging is an important word. Choose your route and again it should be a meaningful route for you. It should serve the purpose of this trip.

1. Step three – choose challenging limits for your trip.

What do I mean by this? The power of a pilgrimage often comes from the limitations that you choose. The rules that you choose. In modern life now it’s very easy to be comfortable. We can travel conveniently. We can do everything quite conveniently now.

For example, I could have done that trip in Shikoku visiting those 88 temples, I could have done it by bus. I could have just taken a bus to each one of them and finished it quite quickly, in a few days. It would not have been as meaningful, however. It’s the limitations that make it powerful. The limitation we had was we’re going to walk the whole thing, 30 days of walking every day. That was our limitation. We chose that. We didn’t have to do it, no one made us do that. We could have ridden bicycles if we wanted to. We could have hired a private car. We easily could have made that trip much more comfortable, but it was the struggle of it, the challenges, overcoming them that gave a lot of the meaning.

So, choose challenging limitations for your trip. Those might be related to transportation. You might choose, I’m going to walk this whole journey, no cars, buses or trains. Or, if it’s a very long journey let’s say you’re going to go all the way across Siberia or something, maybe you could decide no planes that’s my limitation for this trip. I’ll take trains or local buses but only local transportation no airplanes. Or, another type of limitation might be related to food. You might decide I’m going to fast, to avoid food during certain times of the day, like during the sunlight hours you will not eat, you’ll only eat at night. Or maybe, if it’s a shorter trip, you’ll avoid food completely for the whole journey.

Or, you could have some other limitation, like I will meditate for 3 hours every day, whatever it is for you. If it’s more artistic than I will draw and sketch for at least three hours a day. Whatever it is you have to choose it, but choose the limitations well. It’s generally useful for this kind of trip to have tougher limitations than easier ones.

1. Step four- choose your daily rituals for the journey.

We mentioned this in the main lesson. Have some daily rituals that are meaningful for you that connect to the meaning of the trip for you. In our Japan one, that was something like at each temple we would light some incense, light a candle, do a little meditation, it was a ritual that we repeated again and again, every day. In fact, more than once a day because we usually arrived at more than one temple per day. There were other little rituals for that pilgrimage. It was a tradition for that pilgrimage for pilgrims, people doing the journey, to dress in white, especially people who were walking it. So we wore white clothes.

For your trip, your journey, your pilgrimage, choose the rituals that are meaningful for you.

1. Step five – choose meaningful sites along your path.

You know the beginning point and the end point, well in the middle are there some meaningful locations you want to visit, that have a special meaning to you, that have a connection to the deeper meaning of the trip? Choose those, even if they’re difficult to get to. In fact, if they’re difficult to get to it’s even better.

1. Step six – schedule it.

Schedule the time. Decide when you’re going to do it, put it on your calendar and…

1. Step seven – buy the tickets.

If you need to fly to where you’re going buy your flight tickets. Save the money you need, whatever it is. Ask for your vacation time from your job, whatever it is. Just schedule it and lock it in, commit 100% to doing it.

And finally of course, share this with our members. We have such an incredible group of people in the VIP program, such an amazing group. So share your ideas. Share your experiences with them. They want to comment. They want to hear about you. They want to hear about your ideas. They especially want to hear about your experiences, so do I. I want to read about them on our site. So please get on our social site, get on our forum and tell us your progress with this. Let us know and comment on other people’s posts as well.

This way we build our community. You’ll develop real friendships with people all over the world, but you must participate to do that.

All right that’s it that’s the end of our commentary, have a great month. I’ll see you again soon. Bye for now.