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Finding Spirituality Everywhere

About every quarter, we pack an overnight bag, leave the dogs with a housesitter, and drive the two-and-a-half hours from LA to San Diego to visit my favorite cousin, Randy, and his long-time girlfriend, Lisa. Wonderful people, warm, hospitable and friendly, Lisa is a Catholic who attends mass, well, religiously, and Randy is a bit of an atheist. In fact, he seems to have embraced food as his religion, and Greg and I inevitably come home with a “meat hangover” by Sunday evening.

Enjoying Spirituality Everywhere

Enjoying Spirituality Everywhere

So this weekend I thought I would look for the spiritual aspects of the experience. Randy and Lisa are also the most consummate consumers we know, and often our weekend consists of shopping for food, cooking, drinking and eating, with an occasional break to shop for the next meal or items on sale somewhere. Of course, I don’t just mean eating. I mean serious chowing down. Randy’s idea of a mixed grill for four consists of a rack of ribs, a couple of hand-spitted rotisserie chickens, some steaks he couldn’t pass up, and a smoked sausage. And the man can cook! The sausage is, after all, only there to show off his smoker, which is about the size of most people’s refrigerators.

Driving down to San Diego, Greg and I stop on the way (as usual) in San Juan Capistrano.  Home to swallows and an historical mission, for us it is the place where we can get an awesome fish burrito to share, then jump back on the highway. Further down the 5, just after it curves around to hug the ocean, we pull off at Vista Point.

Seagulls enjoying Vista Point

Seagulls enjoying Vista Point

Up on the flat top of a hill, jutting out towards the ocean, Vista Point is one of my favorite spots. Seagulls flock onto the outcropping of rock, which slopes gently to the ocean, sea grasses and rocks dotting the way down. I have passed this way many times at important crossroads in my life and have made decisions standing looking out over the ocean. Visiting here gives me perspective on these choices, the memory of my passages, my milestones.

Once we arrive, they want us to try a new sushi restaurant, Jump Tokyo, where the sushi chef’s warmth is palpable, ratcheted up a notch by the free oysters on the half shell topped with ikura. The artistic quality of the food enhances our experience further, and I realize an important truth: done right, there is a spirituality in food – art, worship, even love.

Plate-of-sushi-oysters

Plate of Love

Back at the house, Randy fires up the grill, makes margaritas. Lisa and I catch up while Greg brings our bags in and checks his e-mail. Lisa usually acts as Randy’s second-in-command, but deferring to my love of cooking, kindly steps aside all weekend to allow free rein to the “Cooking Cousins” (as Greg nicknamed us years ago). For Lisa, this means a weekend of cleaning up, which to me is an incredible kindness. Yet after dinner, as I watch her scrubbing the countertops until they gleam and making sure every last dish is washed, I suddenly see the purity of her choices, the meditativeness of her efforts, the selflessness of this act. If God’s a Catholic, Lisa’s going to heaven.

The next afternoon, as Randy and I race back and forth between grill and stove, kitchen and outdoor barbecue oasis, I am suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of love… for my family, for these little tasks that give me so much pleasure. Spirit says “just be.” Life is the journey. This weekend, which means nothing in the way of accomplishment or advancement, has given me the priceless opportunity to be, and to enjoy it. I think we’ll come again next month.

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Written on November 6th, 2009 , Dispatches from the Road Tags: , , , , , ,
Enjoying Ramadan in Cairo

Ramadan, the most important Muslim holiday, is celebrated for the whole month, and it changes almost everything about Cairo.  Ramadan is a time to get closer to God, making self-sacrifices to be awake and aware of your choices, so people fast all day every day during the month of Ramadan.  This means not only no eating, but no drinking (not even a sip of water), no smoking, no sex, and no smoking!  I think the no smoking stricture may be harder on the Egyptians than no sex.

The result of people not eating all day is that, for the most part, everything is closed during daylight hours. With few exceptions in the tourist areas, where the poor waiters and chefs are serving food they cannot eat all day, the stores and restaurants shut down and open all night instead.  At sundown, however, the whole city of Cairo goes crazy.   One night at sundown, we visited the Al-Hussein mosque, which is perhaps the most important mosque outside of Mecca, to experience the real Ramadan.

The mosque is in the heart of the Khan El Khalili market, but this evening, we couldn’t get closer than a half-mile.  It was like a rock concert, with cars everywhere, parked all higgledy-piggledy.  To get a spot, a kid about eighteen hopped up onto our hood and directed us as we drove down a bizarre narrow alley with cars parked so close we had to hold our breath just to pass.  Walking back out of the alley after cramming ourselves into a tiny space, we saw two more “parking attendents’ and the owner of a yellow car rocking the cars in front and in back of him.  Shifting the cars a few inches at a time, the yellow car finally was able to maneuver out of the spot, whereupon it was replaced by another car.

On the street, it was equally chaotic.  At Ramadan, the rich are supposed to feed the poor, and everywhere we looked, shop owners had set up impromptu cafes in the street, which were full of people breaking their fast by gorging on the free food.  Close to the mosque, we passed a covered hall where huge pots and pans were set out on the ground, and people sat around guarding the meal until it was time to eat.

The Al-Hussein mosque was like a fairground, so full of people you could barely move, part church, part circus.  Every vendor stood by a tiny stand hawking religious artifacts, beads, or spangled LED tops that could fly high into the night sky with a simple flick of the wrist.  Leaving our shoes among the hundreds of pairs at the entrance, my girlfriend and I wormed our way through the crush to the woman’s side of the mosque.  We could barely breathe as the undulating mass of women pushed us forward into the doors of the mosque.  But inside, we fared no better, as we literally couldn’t go another step.  Women sat cross-legged everywhere on the floor, knee to knee, chanting and praying and touching the marble wall which contained important relics.  Disappointed and nearly squished, we turned and wriggled our way back out.

The men had a much more enjoyable time.  Obviously a much larger space, the entrance to the men’s side was empty, so my husband and two other travelers left their shoes with us as they strode into the mosque.  Once inside, they were immediately taken under the wing of several Egyptians who, seeing them, announced, “Sit! Pray with us!” This is typical of the Egyptians, who we have found over the years to be welcoming and inclusive in their worship. While we waited for them to come back out, I looked around the main square of the Khan.  Always bustling, tonight it seemed to almost burst at the seams with the friendly, raucous, joyous celebration of the end of the day’s fast.  It may change everything in Cairo, but I was glad to be there on during Ramadan. Outside the Al-Hussein Mosque During Ramadan

Visit Spirit Quest Tours to learn about our next spiritual tour to Egypt!

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Written on October 27th, 2009 , Ask the Expert, Dispatches from the Road Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Smokin’ Shisha

After lunch, I wanted to smoke a hookah.  Mohamed, our other guide, laughed.  “You mean a shisha, my sister.  What kind of flavor do you want?”  Shisha (called a hookah in places like Turkey), is tobacco is soaked in molasses.  Often, the molasses is flavored, I guess so it’s a little like dessert when you smoke it after dinner.  It turns out there are a lot of shisha flavors.  Apple, mint, and coffee are the most popular in Egypt, but I have also tried honey, cantaloupe, mango, raspberry, strawberry and new car smell (I’m kidding about that last one).  It’s also fun to mix two or more flavors to create a new one, but that’s more likely to happen at the hookah lounges in Vegas than in a little outpost of hookah heaven in Cairo.

For about a dollar a person, the waiter will bring you a huge, standing water pipe, with the flavored tobacco of your choice on the top of the stand, and a hot charcoal disk on top of that. Most restaurant shishas have at least two pipes, long snaked hoses that end in cigarette filter mouthpieces.  To share with others in the States, you get a plastic tip that you can take off and put on as the pipe is passed to you, but in Egypt they simply cover the mouthpiece with a bit of foil.  This means you are fairly protected from the last group of people who smoked this pipe before you, but you’d better be comfortable with the hygiene of the ones you are smoking with now.

 The important thing to remember is that, while you can inhale the smoke, cooled by the water that is the whole point of this method, an unaccustomed smoker (a shisha ingénue) can still get what those in the know refer to as a “harsh toke.” There is nothing more hilarious than seeing your mother trying to French inhale, when she hasn’t smoked in about 40 years, causing her to  hork up a lung instead.  I, on the other hand, occasionally imbibe a ciggy butt when the mood hits, so I am capable of holding my own on the shisha front.  This mightily impressed Mohamed and Emil, who, in addition to the enjoyment of blowing smoke rings on a shisha, also shared a pack-a-day habit.

Eventually, this caught up with Emil, who had a heart attack and nearly died.  Both he and Momo quit smoking, but only Emil, touched by death and knowing he narrowly avoided the rigor mortis dance, stayed the course.  They both lost weight because of this brush with the Great Beyond, though, which of course only added to their pull with the ladies.

After lunch, we boarded the bus, with more music and dancing (and request for tips) accompanying our exit.  Suddenly, those who have had a glass of wine or beer with lunch are dancing with these locals, feeling less intimidated than the rest of us, or else more in tune with the music.  We all clap and take pictures and leave the restaurant very happy. And very full.  Another chance to improve relations with the Middle East, another successful afternoon!

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Written on March 13th, 2009 , Travelers' Tips Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Egyptian Food – Lunch outside Sakkhara

This is the next installment of my book, tentatively titled, “Travels through Egypt.” After visiting the Temple of Sakkhara, we always go to the same restaurant, one of everyone’s favorites on the trip…

In the afternoon, after Sakkhara, we stopped a desert oasis for lunch.  On our way down the steps to the open air restaurant, a tiny crew of musicians and dancers serenaded us with drums and homemade instruments.  On the left, in a covered area about 20 feet square, two women sat on their haunches, busy working fist-sized balls of dough into flat circles.  One by one, they slid the dough a mud brick oven, and pulled it out minutes later.  The layers of dough had parted, and a huge, pita-sized puff emerged.  They smiled and passed it over to those of us watching, and we greedily tore it to bits to share amongst ourselves.  The fresh, hot bread was immensely satisfying, and the women laughed, pleased with our expressions.  They shyly held their hands out for tips, which we gladly gave, then our guide Emil bustled us over to the main restaurant.

It was huge, and would have easily held a hundred or more people at the long tables.  A soda machine leaned against a tent pole at one end, a group of hookas clumped next to it.  The whole establishment was under a big group of tents, and in all the time I have been coming there, we’ve never seen the kitchen.  Our tables, as is often the case when we eat as a group, were already laid with an assortment of Egyptian mezzes, the appetizers so plentiful you could make a meal of them.  Little dishes held hummus (chick pea & tahini dip), baba ghanoush (a dip made of grilled eggplant), tabouli (little granules of cracked wheat with garlic, lemon, parsley and mint), assorted spiced olives, cubed boiled potatoes dressed in oil, a fava bean dip that seems especially popular with Egyptians, and my favorite, fresh white beans cooked al dente, drizzled with olive oil, and topped with chopped onion and parsley.

Everything in Egypt is fresh, and for the most part, macrobiotic.  Especially on the ships, you can see food being brought in that morning that was picked at most the day before, and will be on your table within hours.  The Egyptians eat at least two courses (for those who can afford it); a salad course consisting of these appetizers, and then a meat course, possibly followed by a fish course, with fresh fruit for dessert.  Pork is almost unheard of, and beef not particularly plentiful or popular, with chicken and lamb served everywhere.  After our appetizers were mopped up with plenty of the fresh bread puffs, plates of grilled chicken and lamb took their place, each with a side of local rice, threads of saffron streaking orange through the soft white granules.

The lamb is delicious and seemingly unspiced, the flavor delicate and rich at the same time.  The chicken is tender and perfectly grilled, full of flavor in my mouth.  A few years ago, the Egyptians were convinced to import chickens from Denmark, because they eat so many of them here.  The Danish chickens were larger and fatter, so it was thought they would quickly become more popular than the wiry little chickens so ubiquitous in Egpyt.  But they were practically flavorless, so they never caught on.  Emil talks about a European friend who brought his boy over to play with one of Emil’s sons.  Although the boy was only a year older than Emil’s kid, he was huge in comparison.  But Emil’s small, skinnny boy more than held his own with the big kid, outrunning and outplaying him until the older boy was exhausted.  ”The European boy,” Emil shrugged, “he is like Danish chicken!”  He laughed hard, slapping his knee.  Emil can be weird, but we love him.

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Written on February 4th, 2009 , Ask the Expert, Dispatches from the Road, Travelers' Tips Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
The road to Alex

Today we drove to Alexandria. It’s about 3 hours from Cairo by bus (with a 20 minute rest stop at the largest souvenir mall we can find), through desert being largely claimed by homesteaders, and – increasingly frequently –  builders creating communities out in the middle of nowhere. This is distance it once would have taken days to cover by horse or donkey, but now it’s an easy day trip.

Alexandria is home to the Library, opened in 2002. An amazing building with soaring ceilings and a planetarium that looks like the Death Star, the library is one of only two places in the world which claims to have a comprehensive backup of the Internet. However, it has a dearth of books. One of the shelves, for example, held only 5 books under a section of the Dewey decimal system, one of which was “Horoscopes of 1972″ (I have no idea where the other years were). But the library is digitizing every book they get, perhaps in an effort to ensure that there can never be a repeat of the loss history suffered when the original library was burned.

Alexandria, or as it is affectionately called by the locals, Alex, is largely cosmopolitan. It is also uniquely Mediterranean, and indeed it sits on the sea. Once Greg and I wore our galabeyas (the typical Egyptian dress) to Alex and all the locals looked at us as if the hick tourists were in town. Now we know better and wear hip Western clothes, and the looks we get are mostly approving.

In the library, I go into the ladies room, where a group of college girls, all Muslim, are adjusting their taiyas, the head scarves they wear with their blouses and jeans. As I leave the stall, they surround me so curious, and the bravest ones pepper me with questions.

“What is your name?”  ”Halle.”
“Where are you from?”  ”America.”
“How old are you?”  ”41.”
“Do you believe Mohamed is the one true prophet?”

???

Uh-oh. Danger, danger, Will Robinson! If I answer this one wrong I could set Middle East relations back by 50 years. I consider my answer carefully.

“Well, I believe Mohamed was a prophet, just as Jesus and others were prophets, too.”  She nods, satisfied, and launches into an explanation of Muslim religion that I only half follow.  I remember when I was 20 and every word I spoke was a justified pearl.  I am just grateful the road to Alex is still open.

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Written on January 16th, 2009 , Dispatches from the Road Tags: , , , , , , , ,
New Year’s Eve in Luxor

The price tag was kind of hefty.  I mean, $110 a person, for one night, one meal?  This is Luxor, Egypt, not Luxor, Las Vegas.  We had checked into the hotel that morning, and we weren’t really sure what to expect.  Boy, were we in for a surprise.  It was, after all, the Sonesta St. George, one of the premiere hotels in Luxor, which carries a 5 star rating with rooms and service to match. http://www.sonesta.com/Luxor/

The evening didn’t even kick off until 8pm, giving us a chance to lie down after a long day visiting the temples at Karnak & Luxor, an easy 5-10 minute ride from the hotel.  Dress was semi-formal to formal, and our group of 40 wore either suits and cocktail dresses or galabeyas they had purchased in Luxor or Cairo.  Everyone looked very festive.  Though it is a Muslim country, a nod to the needs of the hotel guests gave us a champagne cocktail hour (well, half hour, really) by the pool.  After that, drinks were available for purchase – I think the cheapest bottle of champagne went for something like $200, though beer and wine were somewhat more reasonable.

The guests drifted into a huge tent set up along the back of the pool, with the total number of people somewhere around 500 at any given time.  Normally, the space is an oversized deck overlooking the Nile, but tonight we couldn’t see the river once inside the tent. Small price to pay once we got to the buffet, though.  The sheer poetry of the food sculptures was impressive enough. Have you ever seen a giant standing fish made entirely of cream cheese, garnished with veggies for fins and face?  And a mermaid, and a pelican? I thought not! Looking at the vast array of food, from the variety of layered pates and savory pastries to the selection of fish, meat, and side dishes, and the desserts (more on them later!) I was struck by the trouble everyone had gone to, by the beauty of the preparations and execution – there were at least 50 kitchen staff on hand, and I suspect many more in the kitchen making sure there was enough of everything for everybody.   

I filled my little plate with giant shrimp, stuffed squid, veal in a savory sauce, and went back at least a couple times to try the variety of pâté en croûte.  The dessert table, which was about 12 feet long, didn’t disappoint, either, with a huge range of everything from petits fours to baklava, chocolate mousse, cheesecake, and that new staple of Egyptian sweets, Spanish flan.  In keeping with the sculpture theme, one dessert featured a piano made entirely from milk chocolate, and the pièce de résistance was the 4 foot long replica of the Luxor Temple, fashioned from gingerbread.

Once the buffet line died down, and everyone got into the important business of eating, the music went live.  This was around the time we noticed the stack of giant speakers, far too close to our table.  Sadly, the first set was an incredible disappointment – two gorgeous girls in skimpy short dresses, wailing away into the microphone on such chestnuts as Volare and La Bamba.  Worst of all, and I really wanted to like them, the lead couldn’t sing and her friend could only do harmonies badly off-key.  We wondered whose girlfriends, or sisters, had been hired.  Who could have owed them a favor this big?  Collectively, we wanted to run screaming from the tent, but luckily we “know people.” Within 10 minutes, the whole stack of speakers near us had been first turned to the wall, and then when that didn’t do the trick, mysteriously disconnected.  Our pals from Quest Travel winked at us and thanked the banquet manager, who shook his head at the unfortunate problem and informed us that there was no engineer who could be spared to “fix the electrics” that night.  Luckily, the girls’ set only lasted another half an hour, and the sound was now far enough from us to be manageable.

The Shrieking Siren Sisters were followed by Egyptian dancers, who wore traditional costumes that looked vaguely Greek or Turkish to me, and then a voluptuous belly dancer.  A young man in our group, only about 22, looked at her and exclaimed, “Boy, she’s fat!” I pulled him aside and gently explained that in many other countries, women are allowed to eat and still considered beautiful.  To be fair, the dancer was curvy, but like most women in Egypt, her rounded belly was considered a great asset.  Judging from the response to her act, many of the men in the room were very happy with her “fat”!  Her performance grew into several others belly dancing, the group eventually flowing from the stage down into the audience where they morphed into a fairly large Conga line that many in our group happily joined.

By this time, we had discovered the party favors, all in gold bags left by our chairs.  In addition to butterfly masks in silver or red, we had various noisemakers and streamers.  But by far the most popular favor was a small baggie of colored papers formed into tight balls.  We couldn’t figure out what they were for at first, but it quickly became clear: why, to throw at your neighbors, of course!  And to be made sport of in return.  We got to know the people at the next table all too well as we lobbed the premade colorful spitballs back and forth at one another, and the men – I mean GROWN men in their 30′s, 40′s and 50′s – quickly reverted to 6 year-olds.

At 11:30pm, I noticed that the dance floor was empty, so I decided Julie the Cruise Director should make arrangements for the most festive of midnights.  I amassed our troops, which despite some atrophy as the magic hour drew closer, still stood at 25 or more.  A few were reluctant, my darling Greg the most vocal among them, but peer pressure is a powerful thing.  At 11:45pm, we all hit the dance floor at once, even Greg, dragged out there by several of the men in our group for solidarity.  Glad for the company, others began to flood onto the floor, and by 11:55pm, the joint was jumping, with an intrepid young man in our group on the stage performing (I swear) several back flips, much to the excitement of the several of the young ladies.  

So it was that at 12pm midnight, still vaguely jet-lagged, the love of my life reached across a crowded dance floor to plant the first kiss of the new year on me.  Since he doesn’t dance and he hates crowds, I took it at a sign that this would be a year of change.  For sure, Luxor lived up to its promise of a great New Year’s Eve party. By 1am, now thoroughly exhausted, we dragged ourselves upstairs to sleep. Yeah, the price tag was well worth it.

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Written on January 3rd, 2009 , Dispatches from the Road, Hotels & Resorts Tags: , , , , , , ,
Visiting the Sakkhara Pyramid & Lake Moeris

Following is an excerpt from my travel memoir, “Travels Through Egypt,” which I am currently working on.  Comments are welcome…

Our first day in Egypt, we all got on a bus and went to Lake Moeris, a sacred site to Rosicrucians.  The group, all Rosicrucians except for me and one other spouse, were having a ceremony there, which my husband Greg could participate in, but I could not. (Aside: I later became one on the trip, because of the trip and the things I experienced there, and it was my first spiritual home, for which I will be forever grateful).

Our guide Emil talked on the way about building cities in the desert, giving free homesteads to “youth” and tractors to clear the land, and long-term loans to build.  In ten years, he said, we will reclaim the desert, expanding it to create fertile land, and Egypt will once again feed Europe as they once fed Rome.  Well, it’s ten years later and I don’t think it’s happened yet, or even close, but it’s a nice ideal.

The second day, we visited Sakkara, home of the step pyramid of King Zoser.  Sakkara’s not my favorite site, although it has some interesting columns in one hall, and these days a lot of very friendly local dogs.  The problem for me is that the three Pyramids at Giza are clearly, vastly older, and yet the step pyramid is crumbling, whereas the three on the Giza plateau are obviously of a different caliber.  Though the Egyptians are proud of their homegrown pyramid, I can’t help feeling the inferiority of this burial tomb, which the Pyramids were never intended to be.  The orthodoxy would condemn me for these blasphemous natterings, but I cannot help the feeling I have when I look upon what I consider a relatively inferior site, as if a kid built a sandcastle pyramid and it somehow stuck around for a couple thousand years.

At Sakkara, Emil showed us some minor tombs, beautifully colored examples of men who were workers for the Pharoah — his scribes or his priests — and could afford to be buried in the way of the king, with the stories of their lives carved and painted on the walls.  We have never been inside the step pyramid, as it’s off-limits, but we often now perform ceremonies in what must once have been a large temple.  Now the walls have almost all fallen to rubble.  There is only the ghost of the building – a half wall to shield you from the unceasing desert wind (which always seems to whip me mercillessly here)  and some low stones that make up the rectangular perimeter.  On your way out, we take turns crouching down to peer into the eye holes of a stone box.  Inside, you see the statue of King Zoser (it’s his pyramid, remember?) staring back at you.  It’s kind of the first example of 3-D.

Afterwards, Greg, Lynn and I went wandering off on our own.  We did this so often on this trip we became known as the “bad kids” and later, our smaller trips were subtitled the “Bad Kids Tour” since we were usually off the beaten path.  An Egyptian man came up and offered us horses and camels to ride, and though I protested I couldn’t ride, hiked me up, threw my leg over a horse, and thwacked the horse’s side.  The horse took off, and after a moment I had to concede that as much as my fear would have kept me on the ground… this was the life!  Trotting through the desert sand, no one guiding or steering me, allowing the horse to go where it wanted without worrying about stops or other traffic – it was both exhilarating and freeing.  The horse would lean back, sort of tumbling down a hill of sand, and then lean forward, climbing up the next soft sandy ridge.  All I had to do was lean forward and back when the horse did, and I was an instant expert.  After about half an hour, we brought our horses back, spending a five bucks each for a ride I will always remember.

To get to Sakkhara, you ride into the desert, but the way to and from is surprisingly green and lush, full of farmland that literally hasn’t changed in a millennia. Forests of palm trees and native plants are visible through the large windows of the bus, and open farmland where we can see people picking or tending to crops.  Donkeys with their backs laden with hay wait quietly for more to be piled on, and once in a while, you see a man with no animals, out in his field, yoked to his own plow, dragging his livelihood behind him through row after row.  Not a life I would choose to live, but they seem, if not happy, at least accepting of this land, this fate.

There are no sidewalks, and people walking or riding donkeysline the roadways in the busier sections, the tiny towns and villages; you almost never see an Egyptian on a horse unless it’s a member of the military or they’re joyriding in the desert on the Giza Plateau.  The bus, a modern and comparatively huge vehicle, travels easily across the paved roads, bumpy with gravel and sand, but occasionally must stop for donkeys, cows, or people who traverse too close in its path.  Once the bus stopped at an intersection and could not continue.  After a while, our guide Emil, ever impatient, jumped off the bus to see what was causing the traffic holdup in front of us.  He came back shaking his head.  “Goats!” he grumbled.  And indeed, a herd of goats had gotten mixed up in the traffic and their herder was trying to round them up.  About fifteen minutes later, the goats presumably under control, the traffic resumed its regular pace and the bus was able to move forward.

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Written on December 5th, 2008 , Dispatches from the Road Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Top 10 reasons to take a spiritual tour with Spirit Quest Tours

Spiritual tours and travel are everywhere, it seems.  So how do you know who to travel with? Check out the reasons we believe you should travel with us!

Top 10 reasons to take a spiritual tour with Spirit Quest Tours

1. Make a deeper spiritual connection – whatever your higher power is.

2. Create new habits of meditation, yoga, prayer, journaling, and connection to “all there is”

3. Give yourself the treat of a “trip of a lifetime” – and we really mean that.

4. Get away from your day-to-day distractions so you can focus on the most important thing in your life… YOU

5. Renew your spiritual commitments

6. Visit sites like a pilgrim, not like a tourist – for many people, this can be an incredible difference

7. Get private access to some of the most amazing places in the world

8. Be pampered in a place where you won’t be distracted by daily life

9. See an exotic culture and country, and learn how they worship and live

10. Make life-long friendships with like-minded people

See you on the road, in the air, and often!

http://www.spiritquesttours.com

Written on November 16th, 2008 , Ask the Expert, Travelers' Tips Tags: , , , ,
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