Stuff Your Rucksack

As part of my experience I want to travel light. Really light. Everything I own in the world needs to be able to fit into a small rucksack. So how come I have a 20kg baggage allowance?

I wandered across an interesting post on Psy Forum entitled ‘Stuff Your Rucksack’. Stuff Your Rucksack enables travellers who have spare baggage allowance to make contact with charities all around the world in order to take out items needed by the local community. What a great idea!  

I have made contact with Yaowawit School in Southern Thailand and have received the school’s wishlist. With many of these items lying around at home and some kind donations from friends and family there should be no problem using my 20kg baggage allowance!

Although carrying a cumbersome suitcase around from KL to Southern Thailand may not be ideal, I’m really looking forward to spending some time at the school and helping out there.


Bring on the adventure!

Logistics

After receiving and email from my housemate about free flights from Air Asia I got myself online at midnight when they were released. After much fervent clicking I managed to secure myself a one-way ticket from London Stanstead to Kuala Lumpur for £127. Bargain.

Next came what I thought was going to be the hard part; saving money. After a couple of weeks of not going to the pub every night and making packed lunches for work I realised actually how much money I was spending on callous items and that not going out all the time really isn’t that bad. 

There were also a couple of things that need sorting out. New passport; sorted. Australian working visa approved within four hours of application.  Clothes, books that I wouldn’t be needing anymore; given to housemates and friends. Travel insurance is just a click away. This feels way too easy.

Introduction

As a self-confessed observer, writing does not come naturally to me so any readers of this blog please bear with me until my inner critic can be held in check.

I don’t recall where the idea for travelling originally sprang from; perhaps it’s in my Sagittarian nature – if you believe in that kind of thing. One thing that I am aware of is that it has always inhabited the back of my mind. 

Looking back there have been several life stages which were always looked forward to as a rite of passage; moving into a house on my own, finishing education and entering a full time job. These were, perhaps naively, thought of prior to as holding one of the keys to life’s happiness and fulfilment and I guess, in a way, maybe they were.

So now I am about to embark on my next rite of passage.

Advice For Vision Quests

Richard Ebbs writes some advise for vision quests in his website :

Stalk the unconscious.

Hunt the clues to an awareness of consciousness.

Know that you are part of a web of causality where everything is connected.

Listen to what is going on.

Look for clues in everything you sense.

Look for clues in everything you think, everything you feel, and in everything that happens to you.

Feel your connection to the earth. Breathe. Try and maintain a sense of the web of energy that surrounds you.

Try and let an intuitive sense of this energy give you direction.

Believe that you may find new and deep guidance, of profound importance to your life, if you are open to this.

Remember that if you want to find yourself, you may have to lose yourself first. Maybe 'you've got to get out of it if you want to get into it' (as somebody said) and before you can integrate yourself more effectively it may first be necessary to go to pieces.

Suspend your disbelief.

The world as you know it is something that you (re)create every moment. So, you can create the world in different ways if you choose to do that. What happens to you is determined by the totality of who you are. So, take responsibility for who you are, accept yourself totally, and run with the grain of the Universe.

Stay vigilant.

Engage fully with what is going on. (So that if you choose to go off in some new direction, you do that with commitment).

Allow yourself to be both the one who acts and the one who watches. Avoid 'possession' by whatever aspect of yourself is currently to the fore: be creative with identification, so that even in the middle of ecstatic experience, for example, you know that this is just one face of many. See the addictions, see the fear. Be aware of the sleepwalking parts of yourself. Choose, for a while at least, not to energise them. Don't overindulge in thoughts and feelings whose origins are in 'scenes from the past'.  Be focused.

Hunt the 'ally'.

Have courage. Be a warrior. Do not underestimate the importance of the challenge.

Look for the clues. Guidance may come from anywhere: from dreams, from a tiny creature of some sort. From seeds planted in you at this time that do not sprout and grow until months have passed. You may find a spirit guide, perhaps in a totally unexpected way. You may find an ally of some unexpected sort, also in a totally unexpected way. You may be tested. You may not be tested at all. Only you know what you should do. Be strong. Extract all that you can from this. If nothing happens, that's fine!

Let an intuitive 'body-energy' awareness guide your steps. Don't hang around in places that don't feel right: do hang around in places that do feel right.

Try and recall your dreams after you sleep.

Recover everything that makes you whole.