While others are playing the society game, why are you traveling? What are you looking for? A dream place? An experience you could not even conceive before it happened to you? A new way of living? New ideas, music, point of views? Or are you looking for someone? Someone from a dream? A loved one? New and different friends? Or do you simply don’t know, but it’s just something you had to do?

I know it sounds bad, but I am one of those people who want to "check off" locations from their travel lists...

I find myself excluding areas I have already been to, every time I think of a new place to go, simply because I've "done that"...

Honestly, though, the world is just too big to go back to a single place twice! (Not that I never go to places that are close to me twice)

But if I'm going to get on a plane for a few hours, I don't want to be somewhere I've already been...

So, I guess it comes down to new experiences, like Heather says

Perspective. The ability to remove myrself from one "world" and place myself into another. To see how other people live in completely different places. To talk to other people who live completely different lives. After that, adventure all the way! The unknown. No plans, no responsibilities. True freedom. Distance from the rat race. The ability to be who I truly am, not just a part of me. New opportunities. New friends. To have one bag of possessions. To reignite the realization of the things I truly need, not the things I have access to everyday.

To simplify life to its purest form.

So you see social interaction as a form of travel? That's interesting, like traveling in someone else's braiiiiiiinsssssss

Wow, I know absolutely nothing about chakras...but it's very interesting...

Travel satisfies my base chakra... what's a base chakra?

A chakra is an energy point within your body, associated with a gland (tyroid for example).
To make it simplier, we have a body, an aura, a mind and a soul. Our aura is a magnetic energy around our body (some people can see this and it can be photographed). From the energy flowing between our chakras (kundalini energy) it creates our aura. Makes sense?

So a thought in our mind will affect our energy level and later our physical bodies. It is well documented that someone who is going to die (physical body) have changes (color, form) in its aura before (a few hours, a few days). Eastern medicine primarily works on the energy level (acupuncture, etc.) vs western medicine (mainly on the body).

Your base chakra is your survival chakra. Meaning that most of your personal blocage are probably stored here, for we have corrupted ourself trying to survive our life. So I guess if travel helps the health of our base chakra, this would mean that travel allows you to face very profound fears and forces you to change who you think you are.

If you have seen the movie: Human Traffic, which is about a bunch of ados in Wales, UK, partying on drugs and electronic music, they say something pretty cool at some point:

Yoda wants to explore inner space. The Emperor wants to control outer space. This is the fundamental difference between the good and the bad side of the Force.

So as life is a fractal and everything within is also outside of ourselves (as above so below), traveling for me is definetively about finding who I am inside. If I am honest with the nature of my intentions, then my outside actions will be more and more in link with who I am inside. And so as you get to know yourself better, you tend to seek for outside experiences that will procure you more truth within. You can always see how someone (a traveler) knows himself by how they act and how they travel.

Enough for now
Love
Erriuc

That's interesting, but I'm so skeptical of this stuff... Who invented this, and how do they know? Has there been any scientific measurement? I don't believe so...

How do you know if your chakra is healthy? And what do you do if it's not?

People could just tell you, "Oh you have an unhealthy chakra, pay me money and I'll fix it, or tell you how to fix it"

It just seems like such an untested theory to me....

Well, I assume healthy would mean the right direction...

Ahh, this is so strange to me... I'm as open-minded as the next guy, I guess it's just one of those things you have to feel/witness for yourself...

Well that's my initial issue with the chakra thing. Taking this "personal journey" costs money, whether it's hiring an expert, or buying books, isn't that right?

Thank you omamibu and 2olive for your kind words
Chakras, kundalini energy, etc etc is as old as the world. I guess it just depends when you believe it started. In the east, India, China, etc., they have known about chakras for thousands of years. Our western mainstream society is relatively knew to all of this... I guess it started in the peace and love years in the 1960s.

Chakras and all of that is how all of this works. You don;t need to know how it works to make it work. Afterall, we all use electricity and have no idea how it works.
So I would recommand you to watch the following documentary: What the bleep do we know. You can find this anywhere. This will give you knowledge on how physics, biology and consciousness work together. It will open the door for a wider understanding of this pretty complex and fascinating world.

Let me know if you enjoyed it

Love
Erriuc

ps, tx for the lyrics omamibu, really cool! The lyrics I love the most right now as a traveler are the following from Tiesto on the song Just Be:

You can travel the world
But you can't run away
From the person you are in your heart
You can be who you want to be
Make us believe in you
Keep all your light in the dark
If you're searchin for truth
You must look in the mirror
And make sense of what you can see
Just be
Just be

They say learning to love yourself
Is the first step
That you take when you want to be real
Flying on planes to exotic locations
Won't teach you
How you really feel
Face up to the fact
That you are who you are
Nothing can change that belief
Just be
Just be

'cause now I know
It's not so far
To where I go
The hardest part
Is inside me
I need
To just be
Just be

Just be
Just be
Just be

I was lost
And I'm still lost
But I feel so much better

'cause now I know
It's not so far
To were I go
The hardest part
Is inside me
I need
To just be
Just be

Hi Erriuc,

Your "Just be..." lyrics got me thinking about why I travel.

I was initially tempted to respond to this question with stuff about having new experiences, meeting new people, challenging my preconceptions, broadening my horizons etc.

But, we can all do that every day, even when we're working in a big city office block there are new experiences to be had, new people with very different values and opinions to meet, new places to go, new ideas to explore...

So, if I'm totally honest, the real reason I travel is to escape - to feel free.

True escapising is for me to stuff a few possessions in a backpack and set off with no itinerary, nothing pre-planned. As long as I don't lose my passport and my credit card, or get really sick, I have nothing else to worry about. Not a care in the world. It doesn't matter where I go, or what I see. The simple fact is that I can "leave real life behind" and feel as if I am really living in the moment.

For me at least, "real life" can get too cluttered with things that just aren't important - We rush around working, earning to buy thing we don't really need, juggling friends, family, our well being, with our lifestyle which sometimes seems to become fueled by habit rather than by personal choice.

Travel takes me away from this, gives me time to refocus on what is important, and resets the balance.

Haha, well...credit cards don't always work out, but yeah I get your drift.

It's true that challenging your boundaries can happen at any time. Nice one, you articulated what we're all thinking, only we don't know we're thinking it.

Hahaha
Hi again...

Why playing game? Why not travelling? I can play the game any time and any where. I love travelling very much because it really very enjoyable and good experience. I went to Siem Reap, Cambodia in 3 months ago; there was a very wonderful and interesting destination. I never forgot.

Why is it so enjoyable to you chai.k? What do you get out of traveling that you can't get at home?