“I see my life as an unfolding set of opportunities to awaken.”

~Ram Dass, Author and Spiritual Teacher

After over a year of living the dream life in Europe, my fiancé Serge and I have returned home to my apartment in the United States.

We were glad to see our old roommate and our cats, but we were instantly struck dumb by the “reality” of returning to what seemed a former lifetime to us both.

People who weren’t traveling with you can never fathom how much you have changed inside. They still react to the “old” you that they think they know, they still buy you gifts that you would have liked in the past. But inside that image, of the person whom they expect you to be, is someone that you can barely recall ever being. Like when you look back at your childhood and it feels like someone else’s life.

You come home from not just travel but from growth, from inner transformation, and you cannot simply stuff your new roots and branches into the old pot that you once lived in. Because you’ve outgrown that pot, it is difficult, even painful sometimes, to see that other people have not outgrown their pots, that they may not even know what growth is anymore or that they are being stifled by their pots.

I come back to my apartment in New England and I remember having fond thoughts of this place, of the people, of my belongings, while we were away. At times I even lamented not being here. Yet now, when I have returned, I feel crushed by all of the stuff, the people, the places. I pick up a previously cherished little statuette off my the bureau and, though pretty, I try to recall what value it brings to my life. But I can’t. I only recall the freedoms of Europe, of small cars and neat modern apartments, of communities that actually have centers and people who live for something other than rush hour.

It is painful to see how things and people “back home” seem to have stood still while my inner life, my relationship with life, has changed so much. That’s not about snobbery, “Oh, I’ve been in Eurrrrooope…” It is about observation.

Traveling isn’t just for seeing new places in this world. It is about seeing new places within yourself, and your traveling companions. It provides a sense of freedom, from your set patterns and from the expectations of those around you, which offers up a clearer lens through which you can view the world.

Obviously learning to function in, and appreciate, new cultures forces a readjustment of your values and preconceived notions. It makes you rely on yourself and your abilities much more than you would ever be made to in your comfortable, settled life at home.

Because Serge and I planted ourselves in new apartment in England, and then used that as a home base for our other travels, we also got to live a more settled, perhaps more authentic, version of the European lifestyle. But our choice of location, though deliberate, was also an even bigger catalyst for change that even “normal” travel can be.

The decision to make Glastonbury our home base thrust us very deeply into facing our own stuff, as the Isle of Avalon is notorious for it’s energy and for the way in which that energy holds up a mirror to your own baggage and makes you consciously decide whether to put it down forever or to bear it onwards into your future.

We were slowly called to task for our most major hang-ups and blockages and made to release our preconceived notions about ourselves as individuals. This transmutation of energies and beliefs and the letting go of sore spots, all while consciously trying to maintain our spirituality, our health and the creation of our book, many times brought us close to the brink of ending our connection, ending our journeys together and running back to our old comfortable perches in North America.

But Glastonbury’s energy is not a destroyer by design, it is an amplifier designed to help individuals to consciously purify and free themselves from energy patterns that are not beneficial to their higher good. We are both good for each other, as both balance and instigator of balance, so Serge and I made our changes, observed our own growth, rededicated to our goals and to each other. That is why we have thankfully grown so much closer and why we two people are not the same two people who left the United States over a year ago.

In Europe we were able to see what community could look like if it were built on something other than just commerce. Oh, there is plenty of commercial noise going on over there, to be sure, but it is not the basis of communities and how towns are structured. That is why we were not only able to live there without a car, but to actually thrive there without a car. We never used one, at all, and our lives were the better for it. But that is just one of the things that made life for us there much less complicated than life for us in New England could ever be.

In New England we live in a quite rural town of less than 3,000 people, most of whom have moved there within the last 40 years. There is no store of any kind in our town, only a pizza joint. The Post Office is not in the town center, but three miles out of town near the town line. There are no forms of public transportation that come through this town, not even a bike trail.

We must drive 20 minutes in one direction to get a grocery store or pharmacy of any kind and over 50 minutes in another direction to get to a Whole Foods (necessary for vegans and vegetarians.) If we want incense or spiritual books or acupuncture then it is 40 minutes drive in totally different direction.

We live just like most other Americans, chained to our car for want of any viable local community. We live in this town by choice, exiled from the nearby cities because we like to hear the breezes and see the stars, we like quiet and nature and history, and we have to live this far from “civilization” to get it.

Now take our European home town, Glastonbury, in Southern England. It has a population of a little over 8,000 people, many of which come from families who have lived there for multiple generations. The town is over 900 years old and yet still has a town center, one that is bustling and alive. Though in the middle of nowhere it has access to several kinds of public transport and one can get from there to a small town in northern Scotland and back again without ever using anything but public transport.

Glastonbury was once a thriving medieval Christian pilgrimage site and has now become the same for Neo-pagans, Hindus and Buddhists from all over the world. Perhaps more famous for it’s music festival, the town itself is a welcoming place where people from all walks of life and mindsets co-mingle quite peacefully and cheerfully.

Our apartment was four minutes walk from town center, six minutes walk to the top of Glastonbury Tor and, though just out of the center, was dark at night and quiet with sounds of crickets and visibility of every star in the sky…something we would have to move 15 miles out of the city to achieve in the USA. Though it was a small town it was safely walkable, day or night and had sidewalks even on the side streets.

With no more than ten minutes walk in any direction, Serge and I could get everything we needed to make a great quality of life. There were acupuncturists and shamanic healers, a vegetarian natural foods store, library, post office, two farmers markets, two grocery stores, a goddess temple, a Hindu temple, a sauna, bike and hiking trails in all directions, hospital and dentists, yarn and craft shops, cafes galore, book shops, charity shops, oodles of places that sell candles and incense and crystals, not to mention all of the ancient sites and magical power spots dotted throughout the countryside. And yet there was more community and more peace and quiet than we get in our tiny, isolated New England town, go figure!

Amazing how people in these ancient European countries, societies and cultures that have been around for two-thousand years or more, have not sacrificed their local communities or their personal freedoms to modernization, industrialization or pseudo-political Christianization. Yet America, such a young nation and culture, has given up nearly all semblance of local community and religious acceptance in fighting to develop some economy and identity of it’s own. Which is what makes coming back to North America spin my head a bit, and makes me begin searching deeper for the lesson and the purpose in our situation.

So, we have returned “home” to an automobile and to credit cards and to bigger houses, bigger mugs, bigger waistlines and bigger media, and we do not lament it. The United States has it’s own benefits, like actual service in restaurants, the ability to buy peroxide and aspirin in the pharmacy without explaining to the pharmacist why you need it, and a complaint phone number when something you’ve invested time or money into turns out to be unsatisfactory. But we return as wiser people, more observant of ourselves and what makes a good life quality for us. We have learned to disregard behaviors, products and thoughts that do not come into alignment with our own personal values, and to face the challenges put up in front of us by our own personalities and by that human tendency toward complacency.

It is creepy to find half-burned candles, scribbled stick-it notes and unwashed pairs of socks exactly where we left them in January of 2007. It reminds us of how much we have changed and makes us want to scrap it all and start again afresh. But there must be a balance in all things, even new beginnings and home-comings, and those half-burned candles help to remind us to see the world as it truly is, to remain aware and not to fall back asleep into complacency and stagnation.

What is important for viewing the world as it truly is, instead of how one might lazily assume it to be, is action. We are living in an increasingly cerebral world, one based on computers and television and virtual realities, where even that very cerebral action of thinking is nearly completed for us by the media and those who make goods to be consumed.

But the real world, the true purpose for living is in taking action. Life is for choosing living, not for choosing a slow death of atrophy. Nature acts, she doesn’t sit around thinking about making the flowers bloom and the lambs be birthed, she just does it. And by her active nature are we kept alive, year-in and year-out, by her creations. If she only ever just dreamed about a harvest, none of us would be here to dream or to act.

When you choose action, you do not get the weather from the television, you get it by going for a walk outside. You don’t just buy what is placed before you but you learn about what you value and buy according to those values. When you choose action you do not read a fitness magazine, you get on your bike and go for a ride.

When we do not act, or act only within the bounds of our small set daily patterns, we are making an active choice, the choice to not act and thereby to poison our potential for forward growth. We severely limit the chance for new opportunities to arise and for us to become more of who we truly are.

Don’t press the pause button on life by becoming complacent to what you have and to who you are. Your future self is waiting for you, just down the road and active personal growth is all it takes to move towards it. It may be at the farmer’s market, it may be atop that ski mountain, it may be out in your garden or down at the local basketball court or it may be somewhere in Europe in a cafe sipping a latte.

The only way you will ever know is to get up and go find it, to act now and create the future that you want for yourself. You’ll be glad you did.

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