Aside from enjoying a relaxing retreat in a faraway land, traveling abroad has many powerful spiritual benefits. In particular, traveling to another country and experiencing a new culture can have a life-altering impact on your spiritual well-being.
Though, these benefits are not always apparent at first. It may take months or even years to understand the correlation of your spiritual development to your travels. However, it is undeniable that traveling can have a profound effect on our spiritual development.
Traveling can provide new perspectives and help us see things differently. It also allows us to reconnect with the spiritual side of life. In which case, we gain a greater understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
In honor of the release of my new book, Launching Your Expat Career, I am doing a series on expat living and spiritual tourism over the next three weeks. My goal is to highlight one expat country each week to explore the spiritual practices in the region. However, in this post, I examine four of the many spiritual benefits of traveling abroad.
Developing a Sense of Gratitude
When you travel to other countries and see how over three-fourths of the world population lives, you gain a new appreciation for what you have. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the world lives in poverty. In many cases, poverty is extreme, grueling, and unforgiving. While such conditions invoke questions about equity and fairness, they also give you a new perspective on your life.
If you have the fortuitous opportunity to travel to another country, regardless of what your bank account looks like, you are blessed. Even more, you can enjoy a life that many people in the countries you visit will never know. This grim reality gives you a more profound respect for the treasures you possess – no matter how big or small they may be.
In which case, you gain a deeper appreciation for the things you have. And your desire for unnecessary things begins to diminish. Many people become minimalist as they travel the earth and realize that they don’t need more than half of their possessions.
Engaging in Self-Reflection
Traveling abroad allows you to engage in deeper levels and layers of self-reflection. In essence, you automatically develop a greater awareness of life by visiting another country. It is said that a traveler’s heart becomes filled with the extraordinary beauty of foreign lands and a deeper understanding of one’s own.
Travel is a transformative experience. Oftentimes it’s not about the destination but the journey. And it’s not just about the physical place but what you’re discovering in yourself and others. As such, traveling abroad can lead you to faraway lands that allow you to explore the depth of your soul.
Sometimes this self-reflective state comes in the midst of your journey. Other times, you may experience it years after you have long forgotten about a destination. Either way, traveling helps us process our thoughts and take stock of our lives in deeper, more profound ways. It even accelerates this process once we begin to see ourselves as part of the global dynamic.
Disconnecting from the Mundane
Traveling to different parts of the world breaks the monotony. When we disconnect from the familiar, we become open to new experiences and new ways of being. Such experiences show us new possibilities, which can expand our horizons and uplift our outlook. This feeds our spirits with beneficial, vital energy that can help us to become unstuck.
Nothing changes your perspective on living and even enhances your will to live life to the fullest, like traveling abroad. Being in a different culture and having exposure to new people and environments can drastically shift your thinking. Traveling abroad can alleviate stressors that are caused by or lead to boredom, apathy, or depression.
Exploring new cultures helps you understand that you are not relegated to living a certain way. You can change your perspective and, ultimately, your life when you disconnect from a humdrum existence. Instead, you can become filled with vital energy and a greater desire to connect with yourself and others on a deeper level.
Connecting with Universal Essence
Our spirits come in contact with the universal essence when we experience different parts of the earth. Through travel, we come to understand that the planet vibes at a different tempo. We learn to cope with and connect to the beat of a different drum when we are exposed to these dynamics.
A memorable travel experience is not just about getting from point A to point B but is also about the connections that we make along the way. It’s hard to find a more enriching experience than exploring a new destination, meeting new people, and experiencing different cultures. Such experiences give us a broader understanding of the world around us.
Through such interactions, we learn that everywhere, everyone is not the same. People think and behave differently based on their environment and circumstances. When we travel to new lands, we learn the vibe of the planet on different frequencies based on geographical location and other factors. When we tune into these frequencies, we grow and develop in profound ways.
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