I Survived the Journey!

Going on a journey inside to the real self is no different from traveling abroad on a multi-stop flight. There is a great deal of waiting: in lines, to go through security check-points, through customs, for the restroom, to load and unload, for the flight to take off, land, and the list goes on. For as long as you are traveling, there is waiting. It is your choice what to do while you are waiting. You can be annoyed that the waiting is longer than usual, you can be nervous that waiting in this line could make you late for the next flight, you can be angry that the weather interrupted the schedule you were on, or even that the passengers you must sit between obviously don’t adhere to the same hygienic habits as you. The point is that while on this trip, you must choose how you will handle all the unexpected or expected delays and stages of the international flights. This is not unlike the journey inside.

I began mine the only way I know how: with a pen and paper.

As I began journaling to my own center, I found the most curious sights to stop and explore: relationships with my sisters, with money, with my parents; aversions to certain types of people; resentments not only toward my husband in the earliest days of marriage but toward who I was at those same early days; insecurities surrounding my parenting abilities, my professional abilities and my overall persona. Just like with the flights, I was anxious, annoyed, angry and disgusted at what I found. Unlike the flights, I had no destination to imagine. There were no monuments to be sure and see. And there was no picture in my mind of what it would look and feel like to finally arrive.

When we decide to take a trip, we usually announce with zeal, to anyone who will listen about the wonderful places we will see, the foods we will taste, the overall experiences along with the departure and arrival dates. The journey within isn’t so easy. We don’t disclose to our coworkers that our inner journey will begin on Friday and last perhaps for a decade or that we are picking through things in our psyches with or without the aid of therapists or life coaches, or that we are trying to get to the bottom of why we attract the most heinous of friends. No, the inner journey is the long and lonesome one. The one that we never seem to pack appropriately for and the one that the round-trip tickets will surely get messed up on.

The thing about inner journeys is that sometimes, we don’t pack at all because we didn’t know were going. It was a sudden road trip. Things can startle our otherwise-settled lives and send us on a frenzy of sorts. Sometimes we experience IRS-type changes like divorce, marriage, death, job changes and birth of children that push us out of our comfort zone and into the tumultuous environment of the inner journey with nothing; no guides, no tips, nothing but the soul pushing us, whispering to us, sometimes screaming to us that things we’d accepted and experienced for the better part of our whole life were simply not going to work anymore. That is when we must have the guts to stay out in the cold, although the cozy routines are beckoning us back. We cannot leave the inner world unexplored!

When mine happened, I sought only to iron out some things within my marriage that had been speed bumps and detours on my road to happiness. But what I got was a complete grating of the roads, the rocky pre-paving surface then the smelly-at-first pavement that can stand up to so much through the years (but that always need to be examined and sometimes patched). I learned that I held guilt and shame over who I tried to be early in the marriage; that my actions and decisions at varying points exacerbated issues that should have been small; that I held an outdated mother-board within myself that simply didn’t work well anymore. And what I had to do was to muddle through the mire to decide what needed to be kept and what should be tossed in order for my journey to be lighter and more successful. I realized such things as the outdated tape that ran in my head telling me how things should be done to connote success and the whisper of a voice that had constantly tried to speak over that tape. I noticed that I had tried to achieve and to be things I really had no desire to achieve and be. I also noticed I had a list of improvements that only I could tackle if I wanted to truly be happy.

Yes, that inner journey began with a pen and paper some five or so years ago when I felt the urge to sort some things out. This trip, like many others, was initially fraught with delay after delay and at any moment, it would have been acceptable for me to abandon the idea of such an excursion. I mean, why travel if it’s going to cause pain, right? But all the pain and turmoil and chaos and confusion and work were there for me to see what I had done to contribute to my discomfort. If I hadn’t persevered as I began the journey, I would not have been able to reach this place which lay before me now: the land of possibility, the view of the infinite, and love eternal.

Ironically the journey is never over. It is not a means to an end. The tickets and passports never become souvenirs and there are no photos to boast about, certainly no t-shirts to sport that say, “I survived going into the innermost recesses of my soul and I am better for it!” No, the journey does not cease. But what does is the negative thinking, the self-doubt, the unending questions our inner chatter seems to throw at us. All that is replaced with a confidence that all is good, a certainty that we are all connected and then a determination to act out of love, kindness and compassion because what we do to others, we do to ourselves.

Now that I think about it, perhaps that is why many may never go on that inner journey.