Photo: soaringbird

The reality for many women living in the 21st century is not that different from 50, 100, or hundreds of years ago.

Their main option for survival is to sell their bodies. It doesn’t matter what they look like, their age, their color, their beliefs or practices – they are simply seen as a commodity.

This video at VBS.TV tells the story of the women who live at Casa Xochiquetzal, a safe haven for elderly prostitutes in Mexico City.

I have no doubt you’ll be shocked at the age of most of these women, some of who still work right outside the protected walls of the house:

I’m not here to wonder politically or socially what we can do to change the landscape of women’s rights throughout the world. A topic always worthy of discussion, but not my point today. Instead, I wonder in what ways we all are impacted by the continued oppression and disempowerment of women on a global scale.

Given, I’m a woman, so I take it straight in my heart and gut when I see videos like these, or read about the high rate of violent attacks and rapes happening in Haiti.

But I also wonder about how the butterfly effect comes into play. More than just a movie, the idea behind this phenomenon is that something small happening in one part of a system (in this case, the system of humanity) can effect the whole system in undetermined – possibly/probably negative – ways.

How are each of us that are lucky enough to live a privileged life, in this case basic safety and security being a given, actually impacted by what these women face every single day?

I have no real answer. I believe a lot of pain is created for our collective unconscious, and we might act that pain out in ways we’re not proud of in our daily life. I also think the opposite might be true – we are driven from some deep, unseen force to travel, to get our ass in gear, to help others.

So maybe the reality is both positives and negatives can stem from violence. But imagine how much each of us, men and women, might be healed if somehow, someway, our mothers, sisters, daughters and friends could simply be safe and secure.

What do you think the global impacts are of women’s disempowerment? Share your thoughts below.

It’s been a hell of a ride so far / Photo: Bhaskar Banerji

Exactly one year ago today, I (with the help of founding Editor Ian MacKenzie, of course) posted my first article on BNT as co-editor.

That article, Yoga As Blasphemy? Muslim Clerics Ban Practice, kicked off a writing frenzy for the next 365 days that I could never have previously imagined possible. One that would never have had a chance to be complete without your insightful, supportive, challenging, and even sometimes painful commentary.

Each and every comment you’ve made has not only created a powerful dialogue that inched us forward as a human race, but also has, without a doubt, made me a stronger writer. So I can say nothing more than “thank you”, truly from the bottom of my heart. Since I can’t come to your house and shake your hand (or can I?), here’s a little video to show you my gratitude:

Don’t worry – I’m not leaving, just trying to commemorate the moment, and look ahead to the coming year. For that, I ask for your help. Ian and I are always looking for ways to improve BNT, make each of you feel like a valued member of this community, and to bring you stories that matter.

What areas most intrigue you? What would you like to see less of? More prizes? Less junk? You get the drift. Drop us a line in the comments below.

Photo: linh.ngân

Sometimes it feels like my memory fails me much more than it should.

And yet, more and more research seems to provide evidence to the contrary – that, in fact, all information that has ever passed through our brains is retrievable.

But what if all that information wasn’t actually stored in our brains, and what if that means we’re all even more connected than we thought?

Systems philosopher Ervin Laszlo recently wrote a post at Huffington Post asking the question, If Your Brain Is A Quantum Computer, Can It Connect You To The World? In it, he poses a quantum idea of knowing:

Not only are the neurons of our brain thoroughly entangled with each other–so that they can assemble and then process information with lightning speed–they are also entangled with the world beyond our brain. The logical conclusion is that the bulk of the information picked up and processed by the brain is not stored within the brain; it’s stored in the vast information field that embeds the brain.

Laszlo calls this storage facility of ideas and memories (minus short-term memory) our “cosmically extended natural Internet.” From there, he hypothesizes our brain is kind of like a broadband receiver, scientifically allowing for the possibility of extrasensory (yep, ESP) perception.

We know that travel might just make you smarter, and that visiting foreign places helps to see past the headlines and hype. But what this type of perceiving might mean on a human level is that our brains are trying to constantly link in and harmonize with other people, places, nature, and really, the world at large.

Makes a good argument for those who believe we are all interconnected beyond just our DNA, but does it stack up to the reality of a world heading toward harmony?

What do you think of the idea of brain-as-internet, and do you think it can help bridge differences across cultures? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Aeturnum

Goodbyes have always made me want to bolt out of the moment.

I’m horrible at them, feeling as if I should be feeling more than I am. Or that I should be saying something meaningful. Or at least wishing I didn’t want to hop in my car and speed away.

Of course later, I’m left with the grief of the goodbye, the pain of the ending, the overwhelming desire to get back to that moment and roll around in all of its glorious agony.

The rain falls steadily outside, and I tear up as I write, not knowing if a goodbye I just experienced moments ago is a temporary one, or one that may be more permanent. It is partially the unknown that haunts me, the fear of beauty and goodness disappearing from my life.

Goodbyes are rarely easy for any of us. So it came as no surprise that the BNT piece, 5 Golden Rules For Saying Goodbye On The Road, struck a cord with many of you since connecting with people on our trips is inevitable, and so is bidding them farewell. As author Natalie Grant noted:

The dreaded farewell is the one inevitable remainder at the end of your travel equation. Alas, such is the bittersweet lifestyle of those who are constantly in motion.

The trip of life is really no different – if you are open to incredible new people coming into your life, even when you aren’t physically in motion, you sometimes have to grapple with when and how to let them go. Sometimes I think – no, I know – there is a better way to say goodbye than my approach. Mary Jaksch in her article, Why Mindful Goodbyes Lead to a Life without Regrets, reminded me that intention goes a long way:

Antiquated goodbye formulations, such as ‘fare-well’, or the even older, ‘fare thee well’ reveal that at the heart, goodbyes are blessings. We bless the other person’s going and coming, wishing that they may be well while away…In order to make our goodbyes a blessing, all we have to do is to pay attention to the moment and create an intention of goodwill in our heart.

My mind making a bee-line for the metaphorical open road disregards this blessing, which also diminishes the possibility of closure. So my thoughts return later to that moment, thirsty for the promise of peace I didn’t allow to enter. Jaksch recommends, “When you hug stay close to the one you love for at least one complete in- and out-breath,” which pays “tender regard” to the other person.

Of course different cultures express hellos and goodbyes in their own form, but the key is to feel that heart and breath connection as you share an embrace.

The truth is, none of us ever know when we may be saying our last goodbye to a loved one. Some are obvious, such as parting at a train station to take off in different directions, while others come as a shock when an accident occurs, a surprise move transpires, or an untimely death happens.

My goodbye today included the blessing of a few tears shed in the moment. I guess I’m on my way.

How do you make your goodbyes meaningful? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: takomabibelot

Here’s a scary statistic: hate groups grew by 40% last year in the United States.

A Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report noted that the number of “militias and other extremist organizations that see the federal government as their enemy” jumped up immensely in 2009, with active Patriot groups increasing a whopping 244%.

Yep, you read that right – two-hundred and forty-four percent.

Seems it has been more than a decade since some of these groups have really seen the light of day, but the social climate suddenly became “ripe” for their re-emergence. According to the SPLC, these Patriot groups:

Define themselves as opposed to the “New World Order,” engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines.

Intelligence Report editor Mark Potok adds:

“The people associated with the Patriot movement during its 1990s heyday produced an enormous amount of violence, most dramatically the Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 people dead.”

Increasing Violence

Maybe even more frightening is the surge in “native extremist groups”, ones that actually harass or are violent toward immigrants and foreigners, with the number of these groups growing from 173 groups in 2008 to 309 in 2009.

Besides the fact that physically threatening people from other countries is bad enough, what does this mean for travelers? It seems to me that in the end these hate groups will, understandably, drum up more anti-American sentiment throughout the world, not to mention give more ammo to terrorist organizations abroad.

Fear-mongering in the States usually equals a backlash in other countries, and unfortunately travelers who are open-minded and wish to connect with other cultures end up receiving the brunt of that anger.

Plus, there is the whole notion that we are supposed to be getting closer as a world, understanding each other more, and trying to connect across land and barriers. This type of news just seems to utterly refute that belief. It’s more than a bit disheartening.

At the same time, I guess it’s not necessarily newsworthy to look at the increase in people who are traveling, connecting, and bridging between different cultures, is it?

What do you think the rise in hate groups in the US means for travelers all over the world? Share your thoughts below.

Rev. James Forbes gives his TED talk / Feature photo: TED

It’s pretty hard not to be inspired to change the world, and your life, after watching a few minutes of a TED talk. If you haven’t seen one before, get ready to be moved.

Here are six videos to springboard you into some serious inner travel:

Carl Honore praises slowness

We live in a fast-paced world that gets faster every single day. There was bound to eventually be a movement to counter-balance this approach, and so the Slow Movement was born. Journalist Carl Honore, well-known advocate for the Slow Movement, discusses what it means for our health and happiness to live in a culture where faster is always better:

In other cultures, time is cyclical, it’s seen as moving in great, unhurried circles, it’s always renewing and refreshing itself, where as in the West, time is linear, it’s a finite resource. It’s always draining away, you either use it or lose it…I think what that does to us psychologically is it creates an equation: time is scarce, so what do we do? Well, we speed up, don’t we? We try and do more and more with less and less time, we turn every moment of every day into a race to the finish line, a finish line incidentally that we never reach…

Matthieu Ricard on the habits of happiness

A happy French man? It is possible, as Biochemist turned Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard shows us. Sometimes called the “happiest man in the world,” Ricard says that despite what “French intellectuals say, no one wakes up in the morning thinking ‘may I suffer the whole day?’ which means that somehow, consciously or not, directly or indirectly, in the short or the long-term, whatever we do, whatever we hope, whatever we dream, somehow is related to a deep profound desire for well-being or happiness.” Even with all of the other emotions present, such as jealousy, fear, and anger, we still have the ability to train our minds toward happiness.

For more on the science of happiness, check out Nancy Etcoff’s speech.

Julia Sweeney on Letting Go of God

Sometimes, it takes hearing the wacky creation story of another faith to sit back and question the one of our own belief system. In this talk, Julia Sweeney, best known for her run on Saturday Night Live, talks about a house visit from two Mormon boys, and how their explanation of God – and the supposed evilness of Native-Americans – made her contemplate her Christian faith.

Wade Davis on the worldwide web of belief and ritual

National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis reminds us how we are all connected, are all of an animal nature, and most importantly, that we are “all cut from the same genetic cloth.” In the West, we think of technology as the great achievement of our intellect, while in other parts of the world, genius stems from the unraveling of the myths of life:

All peoples are simply cultural options, different visions of life itself.

Watch the beautiful pictures that Davis has taken of people all over the world, as he explains how different spiritual practices hold the Earth in balance.

David Hoffman on losing everything

What happens when you lose it all, literally? Nine days before giving this speech at TED, filmmaker David Hoffman lost 40 years of his life’s work in a fire that burned down his house and office. Camera lenses from shooting a Bob Dylan film, the only print of his feature film King Murray, and a letter from his father telling him to marry his first wife were gone in an instant. He asks the question:

I looked at it. I just didn’t know what to do. Was I my things?

At one point or another in life, we all must face loss. Hoffman decides he’s going to make something good out of his; how will you approach yours?

Rev. James Forbes: Compassion at the dinner table

Where does compassion begin? How do we cultivate it in everyday life? Rev. James Forbes tells the story of practicing rituals at the dinner table and learning that sharing with others brings love to all. Growing up, it was important that all the children of the family were present at the table, for the metaphor of all-inclusive meant “we have been faithful in caring and sharing, we had the sense that justice and peace would have a chance in the world.” The overall message in Forbes’ piece is one that moves us all in a compassionate way throughout life:

When one is honored, all are honored.

Thanks to Julie Schwietert for pulling this inspirational list together.

Community Connection

TED talks inspire on many different levels, including protection for the environment. Check out 6 Inspiring TED Talks About the Environment over at Matador Change.

Photo: Digiart2001 | jason.kuffer

Breaking out of the regular routine, sipping cocktails on a beach, hiking mountains in far-off lands – most of us tend to equate vacation getaways with happiness.

But according to a recent study in the Applied Research in Quality of Life, it’s the vacation planning that makes us happiest, and not the actual vacation itself.

The happiness boost not only occurs when clicking away on different travel sites or thumbing through Lonely Planets, and plotting your adventure. These researchers from the Netherlands (aren’t people generally happier there anyway?) found that the act of mapping out that time off increased happiness for up to eight weeks – two whole months – ahead of the trip. That’s certainly a lot longer than most vacations I know about.

Guess it makes sense in a way. In reality, vacation or travel tends to be more stressful than we anticipate, what with the little annoyances like lost luggage and improperly booked hotel rooms. Or the bigger ones like dropping your camera off a mountain cliff in Tasmania (check) and forking over $1000 for a last-minute flight to London from Zambia when you thought you were going to Niger for about $100 (check check).

Then as soon as the vacation is over, most of us have to get back to work, which immediately negates any possible happiness we did derive on that Carnival cruise…I mean, eco-friendly work-trip in Honduras.

Relaxing Or Barf-Worthy?

After reading this article in the New York Times, pointed out to us by Milos Trylon, I thought back to some of the trips I’ve taken in my life that were supposed to be “relaxing” – i.e. sitting on a beach, sipping daiquiris, checking out oiled-up men.

Ok, I’ve never really been on a trip like that, but I did participate in the requisite Spring Breaks in the Bahamas and Cancun in college, attended a wedding in Hawaii, even – sigh – jumped on one of those cruises.

I must admit, I’ve never had the kind of fun on these trips that it seemed I was supposed to have. For these types of vacations, which are ones I think the general public tends to fantasize about, it becomes a competition to drink and eat the most for your money. “Oh, alcohol’s included? Just go ahead and bring me four pina coladas now!” “All day buffet on deck 4? Sweet, it’s been over 45 minutes since we last ate, let’s go grab a nibble!” Ugh, that’s not relaxation, that’s food/alcohol-coma-nightmare.

Even if the vacation is less inclined toward booze and more inclined toward say, nature, hiking, and sightseeing, we often pack as much as possible into 7-days roundtrip. This leaves us so exhausted that first Monday back at work, we end up complaining about needing a vacation after our vacation.

The Power of Suggestion

Photo: Scott Ableman

Beyond whether or not vacations end up actually being as fun as we think they will be, it’s interesting to think about the mindset of travel and time-off.

We crave time away so much when feeling over-stressed at work, and researching different packages and options gives our bottomed-out adrenaline a little jolt.

Yet, since it turns out the actual vacation isn’t giving us the happiness we think it will, maybe giving our brains some time off could have the same affect?

Reality is what we see, think, and believe. Our thoughts are what bring us happiness, and the anticipation of something good gets those endorphins going. Can we use this knowledge in order to build in more daily escapes to look forward to, even if that’s just walking through a different neighborhood in our town, or taking ten minutes for the ultimate mind-trip meditation?

This is not to say that I think travel, taking time off, and even island-hopping college vacations aren’t valid. The point of travel is not only to achieve a high return on happiness – it’s also to learn about ourselves, other cultures, and even to be challenged to grow via those pesky annoyances.

And I think there is a distinction between the mindset of those who travel for longer periods of time vs. those who are taking a short vacation, due to the fact that long-term travelers usually know they’re in for some rough patches. That’s almost a part of the purpose.

Still, when we can’t get away, whether that comes from a lack of funds, time, or dealing with life issues, it’s good to be reminded that mindset is the name of the game. We have the power to get away in the here and now.

Which just prompted me to head out the door to a personally-uncharted little town nearby to get the rest of my work done today.

Do you derive more happiness from vacation-planning or the trip itself? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Adrian Miles ©

February 14th wasn’t only the horrid – I mean lovely – Valentine’s Day. Along with marking World Sound Healing Day, the Chinese welcomed their New Year. Check out the inaugural festivities in this Boston.com photo essay, Welcoming the Year of the Tiger.

We’ve discussed the culture shock phenomenon here at BNT in such pieces as The 4 Stages of Culture Shock (And How To Beat Them), but this week, Solo Traveler added some advice to the subject in How to travel alone: 10 tips to survive culture shock.

Wow. If you think circumcision is barbaric, check out 8 Interesting (And Insane) Male Rites of Passages From Around the World.

Here’s a nice little reminder from Vagabonding that no matter where you travel, whether it be a spiritual retreat or Mardi Gras, there’s always the possibility of an “exceptional experience”: There’s always room for the offbeat.

Jeffrey Tayler speaks eloquently of how passion and desire got him traveling – and a published writer. If you think becoming a travel writer is just about networking and ass-kissing, check out Inspiration, Travel Writing and L’Esprit Frondeur.

Our hearts go out to the people of Chile, and all those under a tsunami watch.

Photo: mikefats

With the winter Olympics in full swing in Vancouver (why is everyone so obsessed with curling, by the way?), it seems like a lot of people are feeling inspired to flex their own competitive-muscles.

I had a friend say she wished she was as good at any one thing as the athletes of the winter games are in their respective sports. Really, becoming good at something just takes time and practice.

For you travelers out there who want a chance to be, well, the best traveler – along with getting some sweet prizes at the end – here’s your chance.

It’s time for another round of the successful Competitours competition in Europe, based on the unstoppable show, The Amazing Race (yes, they are on Season 16).

Seventeen pairs of teams embark on a nine-day mystery itinerary with certain challenges to accomplish – yep, that means you don’t know where you’re going or what you’re doing until you’re in the middle of it – that winds its way through large cities, “under-the-radar cool spots,” and some pretty off-the-grid locales. All in all, you’ll hit four European countries.

What To Do?

Photo: pedrosimoes7

Some of the themes include culinary samplings (definitely up my alley) and alpine roller coasters, labyrinths, and indoor skiing (up other people’s alley, like those ones who are into curling).

Each team chooses three to four challenges that they dig the most, and then can only use public transportation to get where they need to go. So leave that cab fare at home, cheaters.

Lucky for some of us (ahem), there are no auditions, and you won’t need a stunt double. The challenges are based more on the team’s savviness and ability to chat up locals more than anything else. Therefore, all ages are welcome.

With a sweet $9,000 worth of prizes, and documentation of the challenges via portable camera for the judges to evaluate and score, you’re bound to leave the trip with some great memories and some bling. Plus, you get together with the other teams at night to share stories about the day’s events over a beer or, you know, four.

For more information, check out the Competitours site.

Disclosure: http://cmp.ly/3

Community Connection

Read Eva Holland’s take on running around Europe without those pesky little cameras in Competitours: The Amazing Race Minus the Cameras. Last summer’s race upped the ante by bringing on Amazing Race Season 9 winner Tyler MacNiven as part of the competition; find out more about it in ‘The Amazing Race’ Winner Takes On Competitours.

Photo: Eddi 07

File this one under ‘not quite sure of the implications.’

A recent study set out to determine the “religiousity” in patients with brain cancer before and after the removal of tumors. Turns out damage to one part of the brain, both from the tumor itself and the removal of it, is likely to make you more, you guessed it, God-lovin’.

Actually it goes beyond God and includes the Universe, or connectedness to others, so this finding isn’t just for Christians. But the “holy hole” is in a very-specific area of the brain – the posterior parietal cortex. That means if a person has a tumor in the frontal cortex, or front-part, of the brain, they’re more than likely feeling a bit less universally-connected.

Normally, the posterior parietal cortex is linked to maintaining one’s “sense of self,” and so it is interesting to find it might also have to do with understanding there is something greater than the self.

The outcome of the 88 brain-cancer patients who took part in the study found that those who had tumors removed from the posterior had even more feelings of self-transcendence than before surgery, while the patients with tumors at the front had no change in spiritual belief after surgery.

What does this mean for those without brain tumors? Well, as blogger Ryan Sager puts it:

What this would appear to show is that feelings of self-transcendence, and thus possibly religiosity, can be changed by alterations to neuroanatomy — in this case, first from a tumor, and then from the inevitable damage incurred by removal of a tumor.

Possible Outcomes

As an old professor of mine who posted this article noted, this could point to particular religious practices such as kundalini yoga – where an energy force “snakes” its way up the body and out the top of the head – might have the ability to shift neurons in the brain. Many other spiritual systems focus on energy coming in and out of this same area of the skull, and therefore practicing them may tangibly make people more religious.

What are the negative implications possible? Well, let’s see. Possibly backing up those people who believe that a higher power is simply a survival mechanism that our brains created? Or the more a brain is healthy and fully-developed (and not missing a part), the less likely a person is to believe in God/the Universe? Even better, as Sager points out, the possibility of a quick surgery to “cure” believers, or non-believers, depending on what those in charge desire at the time?

Of course, some could say that from an evolutionary standpoint, developing a tumor and then having it removed in fact develops the brain further – new cells and information are allowed to flood into that open space of the brain that computes self-awareness. Naturally, the same outcome might be true by developing your spiritual muscles.

What do you think of the implications of this study? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Francesco Rachello

I would classify myself as landing almost directly in the middle between introvert and extrovert. At least, that’s what most of those fun personality tests have told me.

Sometimes I get energy from being around people, while other times I need to refresh with some serious alone time. So I can easily appreciate view points that fall on either side of the equation.

But being an introverted traveler is not something we often discuss. It almost seems like the antithesis of going out to explore the world to say “I’m not much interested in meeting the people that are a part of it.” Which is why I so appreciated a recent article by Sophia Dembling over at World Hum entitled, Confessions of an Introverted Traveler.

I love how Dembling sheepishly admits “I’m always happy enough when interesting people stumble into my path,” she says. “And when the chemistry is right, I enjoy it.” Hear, hear. But going out of your way to meet people? Striking up a conversation with a random person? Not really her thing, and I can relate (unless I’ve had a particularly large amount of caffeine that day).

What’s so wrong with being an introvert, anyway? Well, as Dembling notes:

I have long been shamed out of owning my introversion by the extroverts who dominate American culture. Extroversion has long been considered healthier than introversion, and introverts often try to push against our natural tendencies in order to fit in, to seem “normal” so people will stop scolding us.

Yeah, what’s up with that? Can’t us innies get just as much from hiking the hills of a new city, reading about the history of a Cathedral or slum, or watching locals pass by as we sit on a bench Unter der Linden as those who like to chat up every person that walks by?

Extroversion Benefits

Photo: Ed Yourdon

I was at a concert last night where I noticed a completely obvious “benefit” of being an extrovert. There was a guy who chatted people up left and right, who had obtained a backstage access badge due to his personality “tendencies.”

That’s not the part that got me, though. When we stepped outside for him to smoke a cigarette, he confessed he wanted to smoke “something else”… except security was hovering. Suddenly, another guy came up and lit a joint.

Bam! Undercover security rolls up and grabs both of them to kick them out. The guy with the backstage pass just says, “Hey, man, I’m with the band,” and the security guy lets him go. The other guy, who didn’t say anything – well, you know what happened to him.

In other words, in travel, as in life, it pays to know how to be that “healthier” talkative person. No doubt those extroverts get bigger discounts at hostels, are better equipped to haggle at a market, and may get in with the locals – and more authentic local culture – than introverts.

But maybe, if we let those extroverts get the extras they thrive on (like getting out of sticky situations), and allow those introverts to enjoy their time watching others without making them feel less for “not getting out there,” it could work out for all of us.

As for me, guess it depends on the day. I’ll take a few extras now and again.

Do you think introverted travelers should make more of an effort to connect with people during their travels? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Benoît Derrier

Take off on a six month hike along the Appalachian Trail. Decide to go into the woods and fast for 30 days. Are we all just at a breaking point?

The man in the video clip below from Slow Down and Fast decided to explore the idea of “living within and living without” by drinking only water and spending a month alone in the wilderness. To some, that may seem extreme, but to others, these are the only types of choices we truly have left:

Many of you have probably seen or read Into the Wild or Grizzly Man, so it’s not as if the desire to disconnect from modern living is a new one (mystics have also followed this process for thousands of years).

But it seems sometimes to me that as we are forcibly being pushed to our body’s limits, what with all the iPads and the Google Buzz’s, our systems are unable to fully grasp the technology, politics, and terrorizing news constantly put upon us.

What was down is now up, what was true beyond any doubt is now false. Sometimes it feels pointless to read the news not only because it’s depressing, but also because whatever is fact today will be fiction tomorrow. And finding the truth in talking heads is damn near impossible.

As Jaime Byrd notes on the Slow Down and Fast blog:

Confusion and turmoil in a modern day world has become so challenging at times, that we do whatever we can to disconnect and alter our consciousness in order to make it bearable.

My question is, are more and more of us checking out (or wanting to) of society because we feel powerless to change it? Traveling with an inner or spiritual purpose dates back to the beginning of civilization, but I do sometimes wonder if my own mental masturbation with just saying “f— it all, I’m outta here” has more to do with frustration at the fast pace and insincerity of our current system more than anything else.

Do you think these types of travel experiences are more about developing the spirit or escaping the craziness of everyday life? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: kevindooley

How exactly do you define inspiration?

It’s easy enough to fall into the push and pull of everyday life, just trying to get through the day and hoping for the best.

Or, on another level – which I’m sure many of you can relate to – larger dreams keep you on course, slogging through hours on a computer at work, then maybe back at home on your blog, followed by being “social” via media just to stay in the race.

Inspiration sometimes (often?) gets lost along the way. Thing is, we all need that spark, at different times, at different levels. Sure, there is always a minimum fire burning somewhere inside, otherwise you wouldn’t get out of bed. Still, the larger, smack-you-directly-in-the-face-with-its-awesomeness needs to present itself and be accounted for to ease us out of those slumps.

Is that why so many of us travel? Does inspiration mostly come from getting outside of our little worlds, connecting with people of other cultures (even if it’s that culture just south of yours), throwing ourselves into new territories that beg our synapses to fire just a bit faster? Ah, the rush…it makes the drudgery of everyday life a bit more worthwhile.

Maybe, sometimes, it’s worth taking a look back. I was amused by a piece on Boing Boing about a computer scientist who credits My Little Pony with leading her into the field of science. Although I’ve personally never made a connection between dolls and math, Sherry Turkle apparently spent hours as a child braiding the horse’s pink mane, dividing and subdividing the hair in order to create new styles (or, outcomes).

Was her life’s calling showing itself through playing with the doll, or was playing with the doll developing her skills? The answer doesn’t really matter; what matters is that inspiration can come in the smallest forms, in the most obvious of places. The recesses of our brains holds that first inspiration, even when we feel we are lacking.

Searching For My Own Inspiration

My inspiration – scary, but true

I had to dig around a bit in trying to recall my initial inspiration for writing, which ebbs and flows depending on what is happening in my life, what stories I’ve read (or not read), where my energy falls on a particular day.

Travel memories certainly stimulate my mind – I can easily go back to moments in Africa, where the Earth seemed to expand out in front of me like the never-ending drive through the dusty bush, or walking for hours around London, enjoying my anonymity as I took in the history my home country will never possess and eavesdropped on the accent that I covet.

I could go back even further to the first flight I remember taking to Germany when I was around four-years-old, the flight attendants “adopting” me (probably due to the curly blonde hair and blue eyes I had at the time), one holding me on her lap at the back of the plane and helping me with a puzzle game. I was out of my element, and happily connecting to the world through a new and exciting approach.

But the reality is – and I can’t believe I’m actually going to write this so that it’s recorded for posterity’s sake – it was in fact the TV show, Full House, that first got me writing. Yes, the show that unveiled the Olsen twins, but it was in fact “D.J.” (Candace Cameron) on which I developed this huge friend-crush. I desperately wanted us to be best friends, and my inability to make that a reality inspired me to pour my heart out into a story about our adventures together.

I was so overcome with the desire to write about this fictional friendship at nine years old, that I had no other choice but to create. So sometimes, when I’m stuck with no inspiration, I do my best to visualize my way back to that place and that desire, because I know it still resides inside of me. That’s my own “My Little Pony.”

Now the question is, what’s yours?

Share your own inspirations, whether recent or from your childhood, below!

Community Connection

Over at the Traveler’s Notebook, Editors David Miller and Joshua Johnson are always coming up with inspirational questions and tips to keep you writing. And if you want to be consistently inspired to take your travel writing to the next level, check out MatadorU.

Photo: h.koppdelaney

There is a bit of sadness inside me today. This sadness is not so much for myself, but rather comes from reminders of the pain that is felt by so many the world over, again and again in their life.

It began yesterday during a conversation I was having about addiction. The reality that so many people carry the pain of addiction – whether that means “stronger” addictions like drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, or “lesser” addictions like food, work, the computer, the television – with them for most of their years can leave one feeling deflated at best, hopeless at worst.

Continuing into this morning, I was a bit torn apart by an op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled, The World Capital of Killing. Nicholas Kristof drives home the point that the continued genocide in the Congo may have already surpassed the numbers who died in the Holocaust, and yet the world still sits by and allows the murdering to continue.

The part that triggered tears was Kristof’s recounting of the continuous gang rape of a 14-year-old girl by the Hutu militia, which included sticks that tore apart her insides and left her “dribbling wastes constantly.” At 19, she has been “fixed” internally by Dr. Mukwege at the Panzi Hospital through many operations on two separate occassions, only to be raped, and ripped open, once again upon returning to her village.

Painful Lessons

How can we make any sense of this type of pain? It’s hard to see that there could be any lessons to these types of tragedies. I’m beginning to wonder if “learning a lesson” is the point. Maybe the “answer” lays more in learning what to do with that pain.

Photographer Dave LaBelle gave a presentation at the Pictures with Purpose workshop about his documentation of homeless people in Skid Row, Los Angeles. In it, he discusses how putting a face to the homeless and drug addicts brought some very significant changes to the area:

Chapter 1: Dave LaBelle | Connecting the Eye and the Heart from Francis Gardler on Vimeo.

The point that LaBelle exemplifies is that “now we know them, now we are involved.” This is the outcome with both people and place when we travel, this is what feeds us when we sit down together over a pint at a pub, this is what moves us when we watch a short video or read a piece about the suffering of others.

What can we do with that pain? We can try to hide it, which many of us do (for a while at least, and often unsuccessfully). Or, we can seek to shine a light upon it, to bring it to the surface. As scary as this sounds, it gives us a chance to free it, connect with others who have similar painful experiences, and hopefully transform sorrow into creative energy that can help others.

Continued thanks to all of you who go out into the world and share your story, or bring back with you the stories of others.

Have you used a painful experience to help another person? Share your thoughts below.

Community Connection

As Dave LaBelle shows us, a great way to share people’s stories is through photography. Get your free download of 15 Publications That Pay For Travel Photography, and be on the look-out for Matador’s travel photography course, coming this year.

Photo: alicepopkorn

Fewer than twelve places left in America where silence pervades. Nowhere in Europe.

Those are some pretty intense statistics. Before you say, “I can go out to my backyard and get some silence,” in a recent Newsweek article, audio ecologist Gordon Hempton defines silence as “the complete absence of all audible mechanical vibrations, leaving only the sounds of nature at her most natural.” And we’re talking about having this absence over many square miles here, people.

Hempton believes we are facing the very real possibility of “silence extinction.” And when you start to bring up all those open spaces in the US – like the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the deserts of New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada – remember planes. Or:

…The snowmobiles roaring through Yellowstone, helicopters flying over Hawaii volcanoes, and air tours over the Grand Canyon.

Yeah, not too many places you can get away from our transportation machines. But does it really matter if we are left with no silence?

The Noiseless Experience

Photo: Pardesi*

What’s the point of silence anyway? Often, we don’t even realize what silence means until we have a chance to feel it for a good while. There are some – I’d venture to say more than a few of the younger generation, in particular – who have never truly experienced more than a moment here or there of silence in their entire life.

To be in silence gives the chance simply to re-ground into the self. For me, wired to be a bit high-strung, silence provides “de-stringing” action that brings down those stress hormones, so damaging to our overall health. Very few people can truly unwind while surrounded with noise, even if it’s the everyday noises we’ve gotten used to – the cars zooming on the freeway near our house, the construction we pass everyday on the way to and from work, even the low buzz of street lamps outside our bedroom windows.

The power of silence is even found in areas we believe cannot be healed; as Hempton points out, “recent studies have shown that nature experience can be as effective as medication in the treatment of autism.”

This is the scary thing about losing silent places: our experience of travel will change. One thing I look forward to most about adventuring to a new place is finding a golden space of noiseless action; sure, there is always the rustling of animals, and nature sprouting, but nothing man-made. It just feels different to the body, instantly, to be in this type of space.

Or, as Hempton notes:

To be in a naturally silent place is as essential today as it was to our distant ancestors…we are given the opportunity not only to heal but discover something incredible—the presence of life, interwoven! When I listen to a naturally silent place and hear nature at its most natural, it is no longer merely sound; it is music. And like all music, good or bad, it affects us deeply.

How can we help? Rerouting aircrafts is the major answer that Hempton offers. Individually, we can refuse to participate in tours that fly over sacred, silent areas, such as national parks. Drive to designated areas in these parks, and then hike your way away from the noise. Surrender some of these spaces to the animals and creatures that inhabit the area.

And leave that iPod at home.

Do you think trying to maintain silent places is important? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Jayel Aheram

Last week, one of the greats passed on.

No, I’m not referring to J.D. Salinger, although he was also one. I’m talking about Howard Zinn – historian, writer, and social justice activist. He is the author of the quintessential book that changed my life, the People’s History of the United States. If you haven’t read it, whether you are American or not, it will without a doubt re-frame everything you thought you knew about world history since the Declaration of Independence.

In a 2004 interview passed along from BNT writer Daniel Harbecke, Zinn discusses his beliefs around whether or not the desire to kill is a part of human nature:

Essentially, from his own experience in the Air Force to the vast research on history and anthropology that he focused much of his work on, Zinn could not accept the idea that young men, in particular, have a “desire or thrill” to go to war. Instead of humans possessing a “killing instinct”, he believes that leaders use complex tactics to get a population behind war.

Zinn questions, why would we need a draft if we have the spontaneous urge to kill? Propaganda through media outlets, whether that means the intricate placement and timing of code alerts and Bin Laden references, or men being sent by horse to towns throughout the land to espouse the government’s message, goes far to shift the perspective of a group of people (read: instills fear).

For those who don’t jump on that bandwagon, there is coercion punishable by jail time, otherwise known as the draft.

It seems to me we often like to blame atrocities on human nature. But as Zinn notes, the environment in which one finds him or herself has a lot to do with an urge towards aggression or murder, just as much as it has to do with the urge to be peaceful and loving. For example, Native-American and African tribes are often thought of as extremely aggressive OR peaceful, while in truth, their outward expression has had much to do with whether or not another “tribe” ruled over them – in other words, their environment.

While we can’t always choose our environment (perhaps this is part of what pulls us to travel), we do have a choice in how we act and react to our circumstances. Hopefully, our continued evolution allows us to better understand this fact. So instead of blaming “human nature” for war and killing – therefore blaming the people of a land – we can see more clearly the agenda of our leaders.

Rest in peace, Howard. We will miss you.

Do you think the urge to kill is inherent in humans? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: chany14

Sometimes, you guys just say it better than we do.

Ok, I would go so far as to say you “often” say it better than us, because your voice is completely authentic when writing on your Matador blog. Your experiences aren’t edited for content, length, or need to get a certain point across. You are just speaking your truth.

In the spirit (ha ha) of celebrating this authenticity, we’ve (specifically, the extraordinary Eileen Smith and Julie Schwietert) been searching through the community blogs for the most poignant writing and expression. Trust us, there is a lot of great content there, so the job isn’t easy. And this will not be the only time we put together a collection.

But for now, check out these five fantastic pieces that exemplify the search for the sacred and profound:

1. Looking for the Sacred, Finding the Profane, David Defranza

Sometimes, we believe we are searching for something intangible and beyond words, and instead we find that which is normal or everyday. Interestingly enough, as David Defranza points out, memories of “the smell of snow and of people, dirty blankets and hot tea” of Mount Kailash in the Himalayas is where true beauty is found.

2. What it means: Jerusalem in 100 words, Alyssa C. Martino

How are we awakened (or reawakened) by place? And does it always happen in the moment, or does it sometimes take years before we fully feel the impact? Alyssa C. Martino ponders the meaning of her trip to the Wailing Wall:

Me, I can’t even recall what I wrote on that note in the crevice; I wish I could reclaim that prayer, make it count, make it matter, rewrite it like this history of stubbornness.

Photo: keithusc

3. I Just Need to Get Out, C-Sunshine

Many of us at Matador carry the “dream” to take off and leave it all behind, minus a backpack, a good utility knife, and enough pesos to make it to unchartered territory.

C-Sunshine writes of her sorrow over her mother’s death when she was only 15, and how the only time she has felt alive since is when she is traveling.

She desperately seeks to leave her world that includes a great job, wonderful roommates and loving boyfriend, in order to take on the wildness of freedom:

I wake up everyday go to work, school, and make love to my boyfriend, but I can’t wait to go home and fall asleep making a wish that I won’t have to wake up and do it again the next day…I dream of leaving, every moment.

4. An Incredibly Deep Translation Error, Jgbrandt

What is the power found in a simple language mistake? It might make you think about who you are in relationship with others. During a writing exercise in a class he taught abroad, Jgbrandt’s student wrote, “My friend and I were fighting this week because we don’t understand ourselves.” True, he probably meant to write “don’t understand each other”, but the lesson of his mistake is that we fight based more on our own misunderstood feelings than what others do.

As Jgbrandt notes, “that’s the nice thing about travel. It helps you understand yourself, and your world around you, a bit more truthfully.”

5. Life at Vimutti Buddhist Monastery, Turner Wright

Behold the meditative power of the run. Beyond caretaking duties at a Buddhist monastery in New Zealand, Turner Wright connects spiritualism to exercise, weeding to living in the present, and understanding how Monks can live and practice the Middle Way. Here’s a moving thought that also serves as a nice little reminder:

Mindfulness can be achieved by focusing on anything in the present: the sound of your breath moving in and out of the lungs, the chirping of birds in the distance, even the subtle development of painful tension in those reliable legs.

What are some of your favorite spiritual pieces from the Community? Share them below!

Community Connection

Interested in adding your own voice? Then go set up a blog in the Matador Community! If you are hoping to develop your skills further or make travel writing your profession, look no further than the cutting edge curriculum at MatadorU.

Photo: Jazz Defo

I’ll often join a group on Facebook, without much thought, when a friend requests me to do so. I wanna share the love, and don’t necessarily take the time to delve deeper into the meanings of of groups like, “Hot Chocolate” “F-ck Gluten, I’ll Punch Gluten In the Face” and “Those Who Enjoy + Partake In the Distribution and Acquisition of High Fives” (yes, all groups I am a part of).

But it is certainly interesting to check out some of the groups on Orkut, India’s Facebook equivalent, as did a recent Global Post article. That’s because it is a place where “young, urban” Indians can meet people in their caste, as part of groups such as Brahmins of India, The Great Marathas and i love intercaste marriage.

Oh, right, the caste system. Something we sometimes forget (or maybe assume has changed in the youthful, urbanized centers of the country?) about India, what will all of the yoga this and spiritual that, and even with the well-publicized slums that we consider somewhat comparable to our homeless in the West.

Seems the caste system, according to social media expert Gaurav Mishra, has failed to shift much at all:

Surprisingly with urbanization, with education, with more people traveling and getting exposed to other cultures, these divisions have not really gone away. Caste even now — even in urban, educated India — is still an extremely big issue.

Caste Vs. Class

It really should come as no surprise that the caste system ended up playing a role in social media. From the more simple voting in polls about the shyness factor of Brahmin (one of the highest castes) girls to the more complex socio-political ramifications of discrimination, programs similar to affirmative actions, and empowerment or disempowerment within tribes, social sites are simply a microcosm of culture the same way they are in the West.

Hearing about this setup made me ponder our own social networking ways. Then I remembered an article I read about the caste…ahem, class divisions popping up between MySpace and Facebook users, beginning in 2007. As Facebook initially was an “invite only” platform for college students developed by a couple of Harvard minds, it quickly became the “cool clique” to get into.

Even though it opened to high school kids in 2005, their beginnings, and the negative media coverage that MySpace was beginning to get about being “sketchy”, made the divisions between Facebook and MySpace clear: one was for college students, the other was for musicians and those who didn’t quite make the cut. And to some extent, although Facebook has grown by leaps and bounds since then, the socio-economic breakdowns have remained the same.

So, I can’t help but wonder – are our social networking habits really that different from India’s? They may not be quite as well-defined, but there certainly seems to be a similar flavor.

What do you think of India’s caste system showing up in their social media, and the class system showing up in ours? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Beth Rankin

Without going into what I think about the increased TSA enhanced screening techniques implemented after the attempted December 25th attack, I found this editorial comment to the Town Talk fascinating.

The writer, Jerry Doyle, is referring to guest commentary written by Mary Manjikian, former U.S. Foreign Service officer and visiting lecturer at Regent University, to the newspaper. In it, she notes that new airport screening techniques such as body scans and pat-downs, with targeted use to visitors from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Yemen and other countries of interest:

…subjects Middle Eastern women to sexual harassment and to a hostile environment upon their arrival in America.

Given, we’ve got some real winners over in the TSA, including the guy who was recently fired for a prank on a 22-year-old college student, after producing a bag of white powder from her computer case and demanding to know where she got it from.

Plus, the effectiveness of the TSA certainly has left something to be desired over the past nine years. As writer Becky Akers noted in a 2006 piece on Alternet, Rep. Christopher Cox, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in May 2005, explained why the TSA spent $4.5 billion on manufacturing equipment:

He also inadvertently admitted that the agency is merely window-dressing for the Feds: “After 9/11, we had to show how committed we were by spending hugely greater amounts of money than ever before, as rapidly as possible.”

But do these new techniques, supposedly put in place to make us safer, really feel that threatening to Muslim women?

Personal Freedoms Vs. Security

Photo: Bohman

Alright, getting back to Doyle and his response to Manjikian. He argues that Manjikian is “suspiciously quiet” about the “gross human rights violations against women and religious minorities in these countries.”

He continues that the Koran “in many ways dehumanizes and subjugates Middle Eastern women,” notes that in Pakistan, an average of two women a day die from “honor killings,” while in Tunisia and Algeria, Muslim women cannot marry legally outside the faith while men can, and that in many Muslim countries, marital rape is not recognized at all.

Here is his final point:

Ms. Manjikian’s sulfurous anger over [enhanced screening techniques]…strikes no emotional chord with me…the United States is in the midst of a war on terrorism and as our society moves forward in countering the terrorists’ aggressive acts to kill Americans, it will be a struggle for all Americans, but especially for Middle Eastern Americans (including Ms. Manjikian), to reconcile contemporary life with the ancestral truths of Islam.

Wow. On the one hand, this brings up the same debate that occurred after 9/11 about whether or not we (often meaning those of Middle-Eastern descent, of course) must give up our personal freedoms for the good of freedom overall, or if that approach simply defeats the purpose.

But I think this is the first time I’ve seen the argument made within the context of women, in this case of Middle Eastern descent, needing to give up what they consider their rights around their body, based on the fact that we consider what they have to go through at home as being worse.

I’m not trying to say that Doyle does not make good points about what a lot (though not all, let’s remind ourselves) Middle Eastern women face. But would we stand for white American women being “processed” in a fashion that we considered sexual harassment in another country, even though that country did not have the same beliefs? Better yet, would we stand for white men facing such trials?

I’m extremely curious to hear your thoughts on the subject. Please share them below.

Community Connection

Be sure to check out Tom Gates’ harrowing experience with security at Heathrow Airport in Locked Down At London Heathrow.

Photo: PBS

It’s hard not to see how the world is growing closer. With the outpouring (though not necessarily the execution) of love and support for Haiti, it seems as if the pain and suffering we see others experiencing is truly hitting us in the heart.

But the connection doesn’t necessarily need to be all about pain – it can also be about joy, movement, music. And maybe a little bit of drama, politics, and revolution just for fun. Which is exactly why I’m looking forward to a new travel series on PBS based on stories behind world music (and countries) you may not otherwise hear about.

It’s called Soundtracks: Music Without Borders, and it premieres this Monday, January 25th at 10pm on your local PBS station. Here’s a little clip to draw you in:

If you can’t wait, aren’t in the States, or prefer to watch shows online, they’ve already got the pilot episode on their website. Along with telling the story of Fela’s Afrobeat, seen in the clip above, the reporters find out what’s behind a pop-inspired Putin propaganda song, and my favorite – why the hell an internationally-known Kazakh violinist would ask Borat’s (Sasha Baron Cohen) brother to write a symphony for the country.

If you dig the episode, let PBS know on their comments page. This is what they have to say:

If enough of you agree that SOUND TRACKS is the kind of series you’d like to have on PBS, you can look forward — starting next year — to a world of exciting music, surprising destinations and unforgettable stories.

Some of those possible places include the “bayous of Louisiana to the backstreets of Havana, from the nightclubs of Paris to desert music festivals in Mali.” Plus, they promise to interview Bollywood singers, and you know you’re dying to ask if they are being serious when they sing and dance like that.

Community Connection

Need some help to find the best world music available? Then bookmark Paul Sullivan’s fantastic resource, #MusicMonday: 50 Music Sites That Matter.

Photo: Bracketing Life

There is something about a brief glimpse of understanding the self that feels like a window into humanity. Rarely does it last. But hopefully, it comes around again, albeit in small pieces and unexpected moments.

To me, seeing an astrologer (a good one, at least), is a bit like getting a glimpse. They will explain to you some fundamental aspects about yourself, how the stars take part in making it so, and that at different periods of your life, you will be forced to stare deeply in the mirror in order to propel forward.

Sure, one can say “I already know myself well, and understand I will face some hard times in life,” but it is often helpful having someone else clarify, at least in part, why you do what you do. A lot of “ah ha”s can come from that.

Yeah, if you haven’t guessed by now, I love my naturopaths, massage therapists, and psychics. Fine, call me a new-age hippie – I can take it. But even if you can’t get on board with any of those alternative approaches, astrology tends to be a bit more of an accepted genre – who doesn’t read their horoscope at least every once in a while?

Well, it’s time to forget that horoscope, since it’s never right (it’s almost impossible to tell the whole world of oh say, Capricorns, what’s going to happen that day; so much is dependent on a person’s time and place of birth) and open your mind to something that can help you figure out a good time to push your career forward, when love might approach, and maybe most importantly, the best time to travel.

Here are five things to keep in mind when you decide to get an astrology reading:

Photo: Oslo In The Summertime

1. Get a recommendation.

Yep, same goes for astrologers as psychics. Really, get a recommendation for any professional you are paying good money, from a lawyer to a bikini-line waxer (very important).

Would you drop off your beloved dog after randomly coming upon some house with a broken-down sign outside that says, “We luv pets”? No. Don’t just pop in an astrology establishment because you are on vacation and think it might be fun to ask what’s happening in the stars. Unless, of course, you don’t really care about the answer.

2. Do your homework.

Learn a bit about astrology before you make an appointment. For example, the astrologer will need to know your exact time of birth, and usually specifically what questions you would like answered. Not only is your sun sign (the one most people know) important in defining your personality, but so are your moon and ascendant signs.

Astrology will become a lot more clear to you if you learn about your chart in this way. You can hit Astrology.com to get a free natal chart. Although you only receive part of it for free, you’ll get the essence.

Also, understand that there are different types of astrology, including evolutionary astrologers and Chinese astrology, among many others. Get clear on which one you are most on-board with before you make an appointment.

3. Think about the bigger picture.

I know I can sometimes get caught up in what is going on in the moment, and desperately want to know if that hot guy is interested or if that proposal will get accepted. What a waste of time to see an astrologer and ask these piddly-little questions.

Before the most recent trip (via phone) I took to an amazing astrologer, I deliberately decided to mark it as a practice of mapping out 2010. This is the second year in a row that I’ve used my birthday, which neatly falls at the end of the year, as a stimulus to both plan for the coming year, and see what makes the most sense to focus my energy on. Usually, what has already been in my thoughts ends up showing up in my chart, but rarely in the way I thought they would.

Learning that May might be the best month for you to try and make some extra cash because the stars are aligned is helpful information. Also knowing when it is best to sit back, relax, and rework (like during the dreaded Mercury in retrograde, which occurs four times a year for three weeks at a time – THAT’S why it feels like it’s always happening) can save you a whole lotta aggravation.

4. Be emotionally prepared.

Seeing an astrologer can be a bit like going to a psychologist. Hopefully, through recommendations and homework, you’ve happened upon a very loving astrologer (as far as I can tell, there are a lot out there). But, they are also here to tell it like it is, and not sugar-coat the work that needs to be done.

They should skillfully take you through the process of understanding yourself a bit deeper, but as with any self-inquiry, some of it certainly can sting if you aren’t already aware.

Photo: Image Editor

5. Have fun.

Although astrology, like meditation or travel, gives you a chance to go deeper, it also gives you a chance to get out of yourself a bit at the same time. I often laugh uncontrollably when I’m “called out” by an astrologer (it is scary how dead-on they can be).

For example, in my last reading, the astrologer noted my Scorpio (dark, brooding) in Venus (sign of love) would have me always attracted to that which I shouldn’t be attracted to, so I’d better start working on accepting it instead of fighting it. Thinking about my propensity toward men who are for some reason or another out of reach, I couldn’t help but respond with a “touché”.

Let knowledge give you a chance to make fun of yourself. We all gotta take things a little less seriously, right?

What do you think about astrology? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Tony the Misfit

Buddhism certainly has caught fire in the West over the last couple of decades. As we face ever greater threats to our humanity, Buddhism has become, in some ways, the “go-to” religion for those searching outside the Christian values set forth in western society.

Mark Vernon, in the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section, recently wrote about his week spent at a Buddhist meditation retreat in the UK. He outlined the process – very similar to ones I’ve experienced here in the US – of silence, sitting, walking, and eating meditations, and also work meditation. Teachers are on hand to begin and end sessions, act as helpful guides, and to intervene if a student is having issues.

Vernon espouses the importance of meditation – central to Buddhism, as most people know – for gaining insight into the idea that life is suffering, and the way to be delivered from that suffering is to accept this “noble truth” and release attachment. He grasps the importance of deepening insight in order to heal ourselves, but then he wonders about the bigger picture of possibly becoming self-absorbed:

Meditation-as-therapy flirts with narcissism when it is devoted to observing yourself, for that can lead to self-absorption and self-obsession. It’s a danger inherent in any community devoted to a particular task, though perhaps more so in one that lacks a reference point beyond the individuals taking part.

Is that what insight religions like Buddhism do? Make us more self-centered?

Is Christianity More Enlightened?

On the other hand, Vernon notes, Christianity – in theory – is about something outside of ourselves, namely God. Christians are in “service to something greater” than themselves – at minimum going and donating to the church, and at maximum living a life in service to God and others. He continues:

But I did wonder whether a God-centred spiritual practice might offer a better way to get over yourself, and in turn offer a more satisfying “therapy”.

I can see a bit of the logic from an “on paper” point-of-view, but what immediately struck me when I read about being in service to God, is that many people do this in order to get to heaven. I’m not talking about nuns or priests, or even extremely devout Christians.

But I am talking about a normal human being who follows certain rules of the religion for the purpose of, and fears around, their own salvation, and not simply because of their love of God in and of itself.

Self-Inquiry Vs. Narcissism

Besides this possibility, I also see this perspective as not seeing the whole picture. As many people who take the time to explore themselves and the “whys” of what they do often say, each of us must understand, love, and feel compassion for what is inside before we can ever truly be of service to others.

And this exploration leads to a balance or contentment that sends out a ripple effect on the world, namely through lacking the anger that so many people carry in our extremely stressed out world.

I’m not trying to say that Christianity, or any other religion, cannot lead to the same insights. In fact, meditation has become (and really, always has been) a large part of several Christian sects. But to me, Buddhism teaches an “all-one” belief system that inherently requires being of service to others, but understanding that you must continue to be in service to the self at the same time.

There is no doubt in my mind that as with all things, extreme narcissism is an option – initially. But if a person really puts time into the process, they won’t end up that way. And in a world where we need each other more and more every single day, giving yourself love is an absolute necessity.

I want to leave you with a video created in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which was yesterday here in the states. I think these quotes describe a beautiful balance between love of self and love of others, and really, how they are no different:

Do you think spending too much time looking inside makes a person self-centered? Share your thoughts below.

Community Connection

Need more great reminders of the power of MLK’s legacy? Then check out Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. Plus, stay updated with the latest stories and movements in Haiti at Matador Change.

Photo: David Boyle

Looks like the next wave of treatment for alcoholism is here. Pretty darn soon, one can use a drug to deal with their drinking problem.

Well, it seems this treatment has been around for some time, but is only now beginning to get some heat behind it. According to an article in New Scientist magazine, Markus Heilig of the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) stated:

The dogma has been that you can’t treat a chemical addiction with another chemical…It’s well-meaning but naive, and in the end very destructive.

Clinical trials are happening, big pharma is very interested in getting treatment meds on the market (shocking, I know), and Heilig and his colleagues are hoping for alcoholism’s “Prozac moment” (i.e. the depression therapy “revolution” caused by the release of Prozac).

We’ve already debated at BNT whether alcohol is necessary to connect on the road, which prompted varied responses (some find it completely unnecessary, while others feel it is quite helpful in breaking down barriers and getting to know the locals).

Of course there is a big difference between having a couple of pints and being an alcoholic. But what might this type of pill mean for those travelers who need it, or even more importantly, don’t realize they need it?

Drinking, Drugs, and Travel

Sure, the loudmouth backpacker making slightly insulting comments at the other end of the bar can be funny…for the first hour. But what happens when you start seeing this guy drunk all the time during your week in Dehli – including daytime? Guy’s got an issue.

Worse yet, what if you are traveling with someone who has to have a drink to enjoy herself, even during a hiking breather in Munich or to check out the Uffizi in Florence? Sure, having a glass of wine during lunch is like feeling the European flava, but c’mon now, we have to be sober for some part of the trip, right?

I do wonder sometimes how much alcohol ends up changing the travel experience. I know it can be a good thing, giving you lasting memories of “that crazy night we had in Madrid.” But there is an unfortunate amount of over-doing it that occurs, as with any drug, and it might be impacting us more negatively than we realize at the time.

The Answer?

Yet…I know this may seem out of character (har har), but I’m not so psyched at the idea of using a pill to treat alcoholism. Yes, I understand that medication could help save people that otherwise wouldn’t be able to recover.

On the other hand, as even the New Scientist article notes, some experts believe the benefits of SSRIs like Prozac have been greatly over-exaggerated, and in fact, have even been shown to cause suicidal thoughts.

I can’t help but wonder what the side effects of these alcohol drugs might be, and if they will give people the chance to look deeply inside to figure out where the problem stems from in the first place.

Still, that guy in Dehli seriously needs some help.

What do you think about the use of drugs to cure alcoholism? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: guydonges

When I set foot in a new place, consciously or unconsciously, I’m assessing the people around me. This is true whether I’ve driven three hours north to Lake Tahoe or have just landed in South Africa.

Putting people into boxes, for good or for bad, is our mind’s way of easily identifying what might threaten us, and at the same time, where we best belong. It’s actually an evolutionary survival mechanism, one it is good to recognize so we can counteract it when necessary.

But how exactly do we determine another person’s values? And what do we do when they seemingly don’t correspond with our own?

Religion often guides our values and beliefs. Either we are brought up with a certain religion, and therefore were instilled with a particular set of rights and wrongs. Or, we go against what we have been taught, believing the opposite – or somewhere in the middle – is truth, and so we subscribe to a different religion, or no religion whatsoever.

Unfortunately, condemnation often quickly sets in once we’ve subscribed to a certain belief system. And we all have one, even those hipsters that don’t think they do.

Judging From Afar

In the media these days, there is a lot to judge from high up on the mountaintop (really, isn’t that the main thing the media does?). I just learned via the Values Gals that Brit Hume gave Tiger Woods some advice: Buddhism won’t give him “the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.”

Sweet. Guess Tiger is a Buddhist (and apparently a Christian wouldn’t do such things). Not sure if this is a new, post-sexilicious-scandal-breakdown, or if he’s been a devoted one for years. Wait, I guess this quote comes from a 2008 Reuters interview with the man himself:

In the Buddhist religion you have to work for it yourself, internally, in order to achieve anything in life and set up the next life. It is all about what you do and you get out of it what you put into it.

Amy of Values Gals adds:

Okay, I’m not a Buddhist but that makes a lot of sense to me. I believe that it is what is inside of us that guides us in our choices, helps us become better people and allows us to reach our goals and realize our dreams.

I’ve began to wonder lately if our values are not only guided by our backgrounds and experiences, what we normally deem as “inside of us”, but also by something bigger than, and outside of, us. Something that may force a change in those values depending on the situation in which we find ourselves.

Accepting Fate

Photo:*Aemaeth*

Though I am no Tiger Woods (fingers crossed), during a recent astrology reading, I was pressed to accept that I must learn how to hold a fate that includes both taking care of people and sometimes hurting them.

Turns out it is in my nature to be drawn to the dark underbelly of the human persona (like I didn’t know that already).

Hearing this did not exactly sit well. I believe similar to most people out there, I like to think of myself as a good person who tries to be aware of the course of my actions and how they may effect others. But why exactly should I try and fight myself when it is my fate to learn how to accept this humanness? Maybe real values are based on wholeheartedly looking at our sometimes ugly/sometimes insensitive/sometimes cruel side and handing it some love?

It also made me realize even more (or once again?), that if we haven’t walked in the shoes of another person, how can we know their lesson in this life? I understand this can be a slippery slope – a good example is the possible manslaughter defense of a man who shot and killed an abortion doctor in order to save “countless” unborn babies – but, on the whole, I’m not sure condemning others for something that is a necessary part of their path is the best way to create a more harmonious existence.

Of course, a lot of this depends on if you believe in fate or not. Still, for the purposes of stepping foot smack in the middle of a new culture with extremely different values than your own, it might be worth remembering that not every “bad” action or value defines a person. Rather, it simply makes them human.

Do you believe there are certain necessary values? Share your thoughts below.

This is your brain on travel/Photo: Frank Bonilla Abstracts.tv

Alright, now we’ve got some science to back up the point of travel.

Seems travel not only feels like an adventure, it actually acts as an adventure for our brain. Turns out seeing new places and experiencing new things actually makes us smarter.

Jonah Lehrer, author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, wrote a piece for The San Francisco Panorama about what I’ve decided to dub “travel brain”. In it, he details why we continue to take those trips, even with all of the annoyances, tediousness, and aggravations that come with just about every expedition we take. He explains travel’s usefulness to our brains:

The reason such travels are mentally useful involves a quirk of cognition, in which problems that feel “close” – and the closeness can be physical, temporal, or even emotional – get contemplated in a more concrete manner. As a result, when we think about things that are nearby, our thoughts are constricted, bound by a more limited set of associations. While this habit can be helpful – it allows us to focus on the facts at hand – it also inhibits our imagination.

From there, by way of different studies Lehrer gathered, he postulates that getting away from the problem gives us a chance to envision larger outcomes and possibilities. Distance is key.

If One Could Only Imagine

Most of us can probably agree that the imagination which comes with travel – of new worlds, of other cultures, maybe even the reason you read Matador – is what makes us sign up for that next trip before we’ve even fully recovered from the last. Now we know the imagination actually experienced on trips can help us out in “regular life,” too.

The reason I love this “new” finding is because I’ve so often felt (or been told) that I’m running away from my problems when I decide to travel after hitting some sort of mental or physical wall. But landing in a new place has always given me clarity on some issue I couldn’t seem to find my way out of when caught up in daily life.

So in essence, it seems that traveling to new lands and reveling in different cultures may actually help you crack that problem riddle back home:

When we escape from the place we spend most of our time, … we start thinking about obscure possibilities … that never would have occurred to us if we’d stayed back on the farm…Experiencing another culture endows us with a valuable open-mindedness.

And the creativity of dealing with the unknown – which train do I take? How much money does this convert to? – is like taking our brain to the gym (and who knows, may help in warding off diseases such as dementia). That’s certainly worth adding to the perks of travel.

Do you think travel increases your problem-solving skills? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: JasonDGreat

The fine art of bargaining has been around probably since the dawn of time. But I gotta admit, I still hate it.

Jeremy Kressmann over at Gadling recently posted a piece on negotiating anything from a souvenir to hotel to cocktails (I’m assuming) in Southeast Asia. In South by Southeast: Ugly bargaining, he notes five ways to make hustling less of a hustle, and essentially work it out in the best possible manner for both sides.

This, I can appreciate. Still, even as a relatively poor, struggling writer/artist/traveler, I continue to have qualms with the whole haggling thing. Kressman’s rule number 4, “Keep Perspective”, sums up my thoughts on the subject relatively well:

Sure, you might be saving a few bucks, but the gap between your income and the average merchant in Southeast Asia is huge. A week’s wages for you could be more than they earn in an entire year.

In other words, I often wonder if it is ethical to bargain – even though it is a part of the culture you are visiting – when the playing fields are so vastly different? I completely understand that starting prices in markets throughout the world are exorbitant, and have an added “tourist tax”. I also get that to buy everything at that asking price could easily eliminate a person’s travel budget and possibly the ability to continue the trip.

Still, how much did your flight cost to get you there? And how much did you spend on that new iPod to have plenty of music to listen to on your trip? What about that brand new backpack? Ok, you get my point.

The Bigger Picture

We’ve tackled the subject of budget travel and its implications before at BNT, most notably in the piece, When Does Budget Travel Become Exploitation? Author Ernesto Machado notes:

Life is the biggest trip of all, and that’s why I’m a budget traveler at all times, not just while on the road. Being frugal at home means I can avoid being cheap while traveling.

But, if you are going to bargain (and I get that most of us will, including myself), Matador has its own version of how to haggle your way across Southeast Asia. Turner Wright observes what it might mean not to haggle: “Letting merchants believe they can get away with such deals will only drive up prices and could cause even more inflation.”

And Sarah Lane certainly makes a good point in her piece Top 10 Things I Miss About Traveling (But Hated At The Time): “Haggling can be a very rewarding experience. In California, a soy latte is $3.50 and I can either pay up or take a hike. Everything is way too expensive, and nobody cares.”

Maybe we should start a haggle revolution in the West?

Do you think bargaining is ethical? Share your thoughts below.

Chuck Thompson is without a doubt, a funny guy. I recall sitting in the Northstar Resort at Lake Tahoe, reading his first book, Smile When You’re Lying, because one, I don’t ski, and two, I had horrible, horrible cramps.

His anecdotes about the insane world of “it better be positive!” travel writing made me laugh out loud in the middle of feeling as if I were birthing a child and about 50 kids running around screaming as if they were being abducted (it was lunch time). Impressive, indeed.

I was therefore naturally excited to get a copy of his latest, To Hellholes and Back: Bribes, Lies, and the Art of Extreme Tourism. On the whole, I wasn’t disappointed.

Thompson’s certainly got a knack for intertwining details of his adventures with his thoughts on the situation he finds himself in – or one that somehow at least in part relates to it – in a way that keeps his writing snappy. Complete flow, no; mind continually perked up, yes.

This time around, he decides to tackle places in the world best known for their atrocities, pushy salesman, and mangled killings. And I’m not just talking about Disney World, the last and most feared destination on his expedition. The Congo, India, and Mexico City also made the list, a tour de force à la Eat, Pray, Love, only with snarky commentary and well, not a hint of spirituality.

In Hellholes, Thompson derides India for kicking a person into “‘get the fuck away from me’ survival-mode tourist asshole you’ve always promised yourself you’d never become,” and raises a glass to Mexico City for being the exception-to-his-rule that “there’s no such thing as a good drinking town.” You get the drift.

I’ve been to Zambia (which somehow gets an even worse momentary spotlight than the Congo) and therefore engaged with some of the corruption Thompson painfully recounts during his month in the DRC (thank God my experience wasn’t that bad). This sums up my only real concern with the book – I wish to warn those who are particularly sensitive to certain views of the world (i.e. developing world good, developed world BAD) to stay away from his work.

As Pam Mandel noted in her review of Smile, he treats realities such as sex tourism, and in Hellholes, perceived notions such as earth-connected Africans – in the “protected” Luki Biosphere Reserve of the DRC, Thompson and his haphazard group of guides, haltingly dubbed Team Congo, “hear the rhythmic sounds of chopping wood and encounter dozens of locals walking in the opposite direction with bundles of wood on their backs” – with great irony and no holds barred.

By the way, if you really think villages are so great, spend a year in an African one and see how you like starving, washing in a river the guys upstream dump their shit in, and having your neighbors up your ass seven days a week.

You are bound to get pissed off at some of the things he says. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Living to the Extreme

But if you want a dose of reality about both culture and place to go with your travel glossies (of course, the market has changed dramatically since Lying; there is now much more “real” travel writing available on the web and in certain travel magazines, from Matador to Wend), Thompson is here to break it down for you.

This concept of “extreme tourism,” where we put ourselves in danger for the adventure, the rush, or simply to get to brag that we survived, is an interesting one. Thompson understands this well – he gets that these particular “hellholes” are defined that way by the media mostly because they are so different from what we know, from our Western ways. He writes:

…Anything that gets the traveler out of his or her comfort zone, or forces them to challenge their belief system, fits a fluid creation.

Or, as is the case with Mexico City, the hype is based on fiction or the past, with rumors that citizens will react alarmingly upon being approached on the street because they are afraid you will kidnap/murder them being scoffed at by locals when such a predicament is put forward. Our media certainly likes its black-and-white, we-decided-this-is-drug-induced-hell-years-ago-and-we’re-sticking-to-it tactics.

It’s a Small World After All

So what exactly is the point of this book? Well, of course it is to show these places aren’t as bad as they are made out to be – it would have come as a shock if Thompson said, “Yep, they are actually shittier than I thought they would be. I can’t believe I made it out alive.” But beyond blasting the fallacy of “extreme tourism,” the theme of a connected human nature shines a dim yet constant light.

Only problem is these are parts of human nature that Westerners aren’t always comfortable looking at within ourselves. Here’s my favorite summary from the book, a quote from a Peace Corps volunteer Thompson interviewed:

Africa is a human nature stripped to the raw bones; life at its most basic. You find a lot of human traits out in the open there that we prefer to hide – sex, violence, love, hate, sickness, strength, greed, compassion, sadness, humor. It’s all right there, and this is what makes it both attractive and repellant to Westerners.

The same can be said for the pushy salesman of India, the kill-or-be-killed soccer fanatics of Mexico City, or the escapist mentality of Disney World. These are all examples of human nature at its most raw. Best be ready for them if you plan on stepping out of our moderately repressed Western world, but no need to think you are going to be gunned down (or Micky Moused) in the process.

Oh, and Thompson’s tangental as hell. But so am I, so I kind of dig it.

What do you think about the idea of “extreme tourism”? Share your thoughts below.

Feature photo: antwerpenR

Photo: Duncan Rawlinson

And just when you thought we were out of the red alert…or orange alert? Yellow, maybe? I never could keep up. Either way, right as we were beginning to feel a bit safe again, along comes another attempted terrorist attack.

A fantastic way to begin the next decade with a holdover from the last – fear. Fear of that which can’t be seen, fear of those we don’t know, fear of that over which we have no control. But at what cost does this fear come? You and I both know it can be a substantial one.

New York Times columnist Liesl Schillinger opened 2010 penning an article that asked exactly what this cost looks like. Schillinger sums it up like this:

We understand other countries and other peoples best by seeing them; to see them, we must travel; to travel, in any concision of time, we must fly. Last week, one man with a grievance and exploding underpants boarded a plane for Detroit. This week, the nation’s attention and travel plans in the new year are held captive, as the battered American airline industry reels.

For some, this incident stingingly takes them right back to those emotions felt eight years ago, and many other times since then. Maybe it’s worth taking a look at some realities here.

Without a doubt, 9/11 instilled tremendous fear in those of us living in the West, as we had never experienced this type of attack on our soil. People around the world, from the Middle East to parts of South America, have had to deal with the threat of attack or a government being overthrown as a part of daily life, but North Americans had never encountered this home-turf reality. It changed how we looked at the world.

But as Schillinger relates, “nobody can tally the number of flights not taken, adventures not dared, countries not visited, because of the public’s anxieties about air travel.” So the real question is, not only how much adventure have we given up, but how much of truly living life?

The Cost of Fear

Mike Jones relives the possibility of his own death if he had been partying just a year later in Kuta Beach, Bali, when suicide and car bombs struck nightclubs in 2002. Even with this felt sense of mortality, he notes in his piece, Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good Travelers:

Studies done by the National Safety Council show that one is far more likely to perish by drowning in the bath or accidentally suffocating in bed than as a result of travel. And while such statistics are in no way consolation for those who lost friends and family in the Bali bombings, or the Mumbai attacks, they do emphasize the heart of the matter: that risk isn’t restricted solely to the adventurous.

Ian MacKenzie, on the other hand, contemplated our sometimes (often?) over-reactive nature to that which more-than-likely will never effect us vs. that which we are encountering in a slow-but-sure death sentence (i.e. being killed by a terrorist vs. global-warming inevitably compromising the entire human race) in, What You Think Probably Won’t Kill You:

How many people stop themselves from heading out into “unknown” lands for fear of real or imagined threats? For my mom, it was the possibility of a natural disaster. For others, it may be fear of robbery, fear of being shot, fear of being the victim of a terrorist bomb…it’s the unknown that we fear, rather than the reality.

Yet fear of travel is not limited to worrying about a terrorist attacking a plane – some of our fears are of such a nature that it takes deep soul-searching to move past them.

Beyond Terrorism

Photo: h.koppdelaney

After the pilots who were busy “updating their calendars” overshot Minneapolis by 150 miles last year, more than a few people who already had dread around flying threw their hands up in the air.

I recently had a conversation with a guy who refuses to ever go on a plane again, because even though statistically speaking, we are much more likely to do in a car crash than a plane, in his words, “How many car accidents have you been in? And you are still here, talking to me. Plane crash? I would never have known you.” Touche.

Ian MacKenzie looked at this common anxiety-provoking phenomenon in Are You Afraid Of Flying?, pondering the available options if you don’t want to stop traveling (and most of us don’t, right?). Megan Hill recently delved beyond the dread of flying to the distress of finding yourself physically hurt in a different country, and how that experience might impact future travel, in Fear and Loathing: How Risk of Injury Can Inhibit Travel Plans.

So how do we move ahead while all of the very real dangers out there only continue to grow? In many ways, our fears around travel are the same as any fear in life – there is always the possibility of failure, defeat, or harm. But if we don’t take that leap, we aren’t really living, are we? We can only hope that if something bad does happen, we will not only survive, but eventually thrive from the challenge put before us.

Have fears around terrorism or other factors hindered your travel experiences? Share your thoughts below.

Community Connection

Be sure to read Tom Gates’ poignant recounting of his experience in New York City that fateful day in 8:46 am, 9/11 Manhattan.

Shocked at what’s in store / Photo: CarbonNYC

Here we go, just a few days left in this God-forsaken decade. Well, it hasn’t been all bad, but we certainly are in for some changes in the next decade, no doubt (or, so we hope).

The same is true when it comes to travel – there are new fads and traditions already on the horizon. So why not take a little gander at what’s in store?

Thanks, Mark Morford, for your inspiration, as always.

Sexting

Oh, things certainly have changed since my day. To think, I spent five months in Italy in 1999 without sending a single text, much less participating in any kind of sexting (apparently a media term, not what the kids are calling it). I’m not sure the same could be said about the cigarette-chomping, cell-phone jabbering teenage Italians that surrounded me on the trains, if texting existed then.

Nonetheless, if America’s youth tells us anything about the world (and you know it does), probably at least a third of the kids you will encounter in most parts of the world, save certain areas in Asia and the Middle East, are texting a nude photo or video to a “loved” one right as we speak. Watch out in 2010, it’s just going to get hairier.

But before you text that hottie you met in Spain, give it a ponder:

Gay Spiritual Travel

Gay spiritual travel is here to stay, people. Get used to it. But please don’t use this site to book a vacation (introduction to boating?).

Astral Travel

Astral travel, the exiting of the physical body, will be all the rage starting in 2010. Seriously. Actually, it already is – these two words show up at least 4 times a day in my Google alerts. And no, my Google alerts do not include the keywords “astral travel.” At the very least, it certainly is a cheaper and easier way to get to India.

Religion Vs. Science, With a New Twist

Religion vs. science, science vs. religion. Eh. We’ve debated it quite a few different ways here at BNT over the years, so I think 2010 deserves a new way of looking at the subject matter.

Wait! Religion Dispatches is already ahead of the end-of-the-worst-decade-ever curve. Looks like we’ve been viewing things all kinds of wrong for a while now, when all we had to do was look to the WWF (and I’m not talking about the World Wildlife Federation).

Check out Dan Mathewson and Byron R. McCane, who “reveal how the equally toothless performances of New Atheists like Richard Dawkins and creationists like Ken Ham share more with the garish world of Hulk Hogan and the Iron Sheik than with serious scholarship.” Priceless.

Rasslin’ with Religion & Science from Religion Dispatches on Vimeo.

Now you can feel comfortable debating religion and science with anyone anywhere in the world, from Israel to Kentucky. Maybe.

Being Removed From Flights

When even Ivana Trump is getting kicked off flights, whose next? Babies? Best watch what you do as you board those flights starting in 2010.

What other fantastic travel truths do you see ahead? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Eddi 07(OFF)

During a recent three-way conversation with a “spiritually-open” man, whose faith was based at least in part on Christianity, the other man joked, “Yeah, you’re only allowed to kill people when they don’t agree with you, huh”? The spiritual man replied, “Nope, that’s Muslims.”

With that comment, and this time of the year, it seems appropriate to look the peaceful and open ways of different religions and spiritual belief systems. Especially considering we often only hear about the bad, or sad, stories about religion. Islam, which consistently takes a beating by our media, may have roots that surprise you. Check out Muslim Dialogue:

According to a tradition of the Prophet, ‘Peace is Islam’ (Al-Bukhari). This means that peace is one of the prerequisites of Islam. Similarly, a Hadith states: A Muslim is one from whose tongue and hands people are safe. One of the attributes of God described in the Quran is ‘As-Salam’, which means peace and security.’

This is a nice reminder that no religion is the problem – it’s human beings who twist a message and create havoc from it, whether Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Taoist, or anything else.

Think only one faith can exist within a close-knit community? It is possible for a family to have multiple religious beliefs and not want to convert (or kill) each other, as a recent piece in the Rapid City Journal shows.

Talk about multicultural, this family has a Unitarian Mom, a Tibetan Buddhist Dad, a son who is “reading his way through the Bible,” and two other sons, one who is agnostic and the other who is an atheist. Mom Mahala Bach, who is on the Black Hills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship’s board, has this to say about the openness of religion in her family:

I believe in a creator, but I don’t put a name to it. I don’t call it God or Goddess or Yahweh or Jehovah or Creator…for us, expressing spirituality is about relieving suffering right here in our own community.

Shadow of Light

Slowly, quietly, and positively wickedly, love is beginning to overshadow all else, including religious and spiritual differences. The LOVEolution thinks there’s a spiritual conspiracy going on:

On the surface of the world right now there is war and violence and things seem dark. But calmly and quietly, at the same time, something else is happening underground. An inner revolution is taking place and certain individuals are being called to a higher light. It is a silent revolution. From the inside out. From the ground up. This is a Global operation.

No matter the religion or spiritual affiliation you subscribe to (and hey, this goes for travel too), this global operation seems to be touching many of us. Why is that? The threat of 2012 looming? Economic losses? It is interesting that so many people seem to be changing, affected by a deep desire of wanting something more real, less defined – a revival of the spirit, if you will.

I like Spring Break Time’s thoughts on the subject:

Within the core of our being, there is a wild mustang, a free spirit wanting to desperately break free from the mental fences we’ve built around ourselves; it’s in a way, the safety net that our mind has created for us to shelter us from harmful situations. However, that wild mustang, free spirit is your authentic self; and whether you choose to follow it or not, your authentic self wants to be released from your mental and emotional grips…and it will work fervently towards that end whether you want it to or not.

As we look ahead to 2010 and the necessity of tackling some of the largest problems the human race has ever faced, authentically living out our soul’s purpose is a necessary part of the equation – no matter what religious beliefs each of us have.

Do you have some positive religious experiences that defies how the media normally portrays a certain religion? Share your stories below.

Photo: spcoon

This is my last post for the week as I begin the holiday ritual of traveling to see family and friends. It is a ritual that takes on a bit more importance with each passing year.

I’ll admit, Christmas has always been an exciting time for me. More than a few of my friends say that’s because it’s also my birthday. Ok, ok – I’m not going to deny that’s part of the reason. But the type of excitement around my birthday has changed dramatically since I was a child, or even since my early 20s. It now comes from appreciating the year I’ve just lived through, and anticipating (and declaring) what I hope for in the coming one.

Last night, a recurring dream – one I haven’t seen in a while – showed up. It always begins with me as an undergrad at UNC Chapel Hill, usually right before senior year. I’m debating where to live – on campus or off – even though I have already been living in an apartment.

It has had its odd variations depending on where I find myself at the time, such as if I live on campus there in North Carolina, how will I make it to dance practice in San Francisco? Living off campus meant tiny rooms, while living on, being a senior, I had the most massive and expansive rooms to choose from.

Still, I could never decide. The one thing that is always noted, though, is that I had already graduated from there and gotten my Masters. Yet for some reason, I’m back.

There was a palpable difference in the outcome this time, though. Last night, for the first time, I chose what I wanted – the big, beautiful (shared) room on campus. And I was extraordinarily happy about it.

My take-away: I’ve been debating whether to change something in my life that I’ve been hesitant to take on because of struggles I previously encountered. But the purpose of change arriving now is to get it right this time, to take my time with it, without the same type of struggle. This dream showed me I’ve finally taken that first little, yet expansive, baby step.

The Rise and the Fall

Photo: Beverly & Pack

Sometimes – often – we look above the surface for proof of change. We want big, ferocious, in-your-face, Obama-winning change. All else takes too long and therefore doesn’t feel real.

I can’t help but give a little knowing look when people start to complain about how “little” Obama has done since taking office (Jacob Weisberg shows a different perspective in his piece on Slate.com).

This knowing look does not come from the fact that I believe he has done little, but rather that the day he was elected – although historic on many levels – I thought, “oh no.”

Americans (in this case, at least the ones who backed him) did what we do best – quickly elevate a “savior” to heights impossible to attain, and then when he doesn’t immediately deliver the goods, we tear the savior down just as swiftly and call him tragically flawed.

The reality is, change comes at a slow, but steady pace. We must first determine the larger vision, what we want in the end. But we can’t get hung up on that; instead, we must contemplate the ingredients necessary to make the changes happen, and then implement them in a steady fashion.

The fruits of our labors won’t show up right away – as my 23-year-old self had hoped after finding out I had some sort of vague, undefined sickness – but rather over time, with small shifts and changes, tweaks and re-tweaks.

I guess maybe the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other Capricorn goat of my almost 31-year-old self is finally beginning to emerge.

Burden of Proof

Photo: The New Yorker

The New Yorker recently ran a story about a safe zone in Pittsburgh, one that has risen from the ashes of “deindustrialization and urban decay”. There on the North Side of the city, the owner of a successful telemarketing firm, Ralph Henry Reese, bought a house in 1980.

Since then he, along with his wife Diane Samuels, purchased four more on the same street, and in the last decade, decided to turn these houses into refuges for persecuted writers from around the world.

Previously a blight on the city, this block of homes now provides rent-free shelter for two years to writers whose lives are threatened, mostly by their own governments. As a part of the international organization Cities of Asylum project, Reese and Samuels also provide extra expenses and medical care.

Sometimes we revel in these small stories of change; sometimes, we barely notice them. But as we sit in a season tailor-made for reflection (if we want it), the story of a house shifting from something seemingly useless and ugly to a true sanctuary with immense beauty clearly demonstrates the power of change. There is death of the old and rebirth of the new, but without the old, and in many ways, revisiting it, we have no new. The key is to give it the time, and energy, it needs to bloom.

I hope all of your desired changes build slowly and fruitfully through 2010, and that you give them the time, space, and air that they need to flourish in the long run. Me, I think I’m going to dream a little more.

What are some of the changes you’d like to see in 2010, personally or globally? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: -babo

Following the whole Copenhagen meeting was quite depressing (though not at all surprising).

Touted as the consensus-building answer to our Earth’s woes (uh, us), it merely exemplified that almost every country will put their ability to make money above the future of the planet. Now here we are, left with a watered down version of the Kyoto Protocol.

But I’m not here to lament the fact that, as a human race, we can’t seem to get our you-know-what together. Ok, maybe just a little bit. Mostly, though, I’m here to contemplate what the Earth does for us travelers, and what, in turn, we must do for it.

Weird thought? Yes. Still, it is quite obvious that beyond simple survival questions, without lands both near and far, we would have nowhere to travel. We would lack inspiration to write, to discuss and break through borders in our minds and hearts, and find it harder to believe in the connections possible even when different languages are spoken.

Though not about a traveler’s dilemma around climate change, John Wihbey at the Huffington Post wrote a moving piece, After Copenhagen Chaos, A Bit of Emerson for the Soul, about the breakdown at “Hopenhagen” (or Nopenhagen?), and what we do now. He notes:

Environmental thinking…has always had a practical and a philosophical side. At this difficult moment – one that feels almost funereal for many, the very winter of climate discontent – there is still some consolation in recalling the philosophy that got the discussion going.

I agree. If we can’t understand what got the discussion going in the first place, then how can we reassess and move forward?

The Next Great Hope

Photo: Christine Garvin

A traveler makes their way to new and different places not only to experience other cultures, but to literally see new lands. I think about my most recent drive across the US along I-40, which takes you from the flat farmland of Southern California to the mountainous region filled with leaf-covered trees of Western North Carolina (and eventually, the warm beaches along the Atlantic ocean).

Dry desert with seemingly hand-crafted rocks jutting out from the Earth greet you in Arizona and New Mexico; the “Old West” brush and prairies appear in Northern Texas and Oklahoma; the sunset flirts in the rear view mirror, casting golden highlights in Alabama and Tennessee. This beauty, among reflections of it all over the world, is at the heart of the environmental movement and is the purpose for the discussion.

Wihbey also states:

When you look out on wind-blasted peaks that sweep down into valleys of frosted trees – when you are “out there” among the eloquence of the elements – thought of this “romantic” type comes in purer form. So does deeper reflection. What is nature? Why is it valuable? What is our relation to it? Where are we going together?

My questions are: What are we doing? Why can’t we seem to change? It’s as if we are stuck in some way, even though change is such a normal human process. Maybe it’s because we think we will go “backwards” in order to save these precious views for our children and grandchildren, that to have enough clean water available to drink and to keep coastal cities above ocean level means the end of commerce, and comfort, as we know it. And this scares us.

What to do, then? Similar to a recent post at BNT about how science needs to bring sexy back, Wihbey includes a perspective from environmentalist Stewart Brand. Brand laments that we need a whole new paradigm beyond romantics and scientists to take on the environmental battle – we need environmental “engineers”: essentially, problem-solvers that will push us over the tipping point.

Perhaps this is a possible answer to the argument between George Monbiot and Paul Kingsnorth about the seemingly inevitable-coming apocalypse. From what I can see, some sort of new thinking is crucial. Otherwise, the beauty – and our travels – will simply be distant memories.

What do you think must happen now that Copenhagen didn’t fulfill its promises? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: jonfeinstein

Ah, yes, it’s that time of the year, where we begin to look back over 2009, with all of its oddities and mishaps. Oh yeah, and good things, too.

I was inspired to write about some of those good (and bad) things at my website in a piece called 2009 Pondering Ritual: The Ups, the Downs, the Secret Travel Spots, based on Superhero Journal’s completion ritual for the year.

But these end of the year roundups are really more than just about us, right? They are also about all the crazy people out there (sans Michael Jackson and Tiger Woods, I’m keeping my fingers crossed).

Which made me happy to come across the Top Ten Weird and Wacky Travel Stories of 2009 over at the Vacation Gals site. Whew, I’m not the only one that tends toward the crazy – apparently, there are a whole lot of you out there that are following Danny Devito’s “troll feet” around the world. Ahem.

Even more importantly (in my mind anyway), what are some of the weird and wacky spiritual stories we’ve come across this year? We’ve covered more than our fair share here at BNT, but I thought I’d take this opportunity to highlight some of the wackiest ones.

Here they are, in no particular order:

Wrong Mind. Who in their right mind would decide to walk across China? And better yet, document the growth of his beard in the process? Survey says: this guy.

Virginity for sale? Apparently, we are still living in whatever dark ages this was appropriate for survival purposes (as well as was pretending to be a man). Only now, it happens to pay for school, and then the German government goes and takes half your earnings in taxes. How dare they.

Um, what? / Photo: Jeremy 白杰瑞

Signs, signs, everywhere signs. Yep, it seems that every time an atheist’s gun rings, a Christian gets his wings (via being shot and going straight to heaven). The moral of the story is believe in God. Thanks, Answers in Genesis.

By the same token, don’t forget the ever-increasing shock value inserted into PSAs.

Man, this place is crazy! A post over at Planet D prompted me to relive my most surreal travel experience, which involved snow followed by palm trees and 100 degree heat, all in the middle of the desert and within a 16-hour period. Good times. What’s yours?

Holy drunkenness. Looks like you can be a spiritual being while still getting your drink-on (thank God!). Oh, according to an article by Ted Rose of the Shambhala Mountain Center, you have to be mindful about it. I get it. Worth contemplating if the same is true for mushrooms.

Taking Over the World. Maybe this one should fall under the “scary” more than “wacky” category, but nonetheless, it fits the description of kinda insane. Baxter Jackson recounts how he almost became a religious hitman by way of obtaining a Masters in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. The Christian Coalition would be proud.

Say What? Alright, this isn’t a BNT one, and the only spiritual part is its melodious goodness, but this video has become one of my favorites mind-benders since I watched it…er, five minutes ago. Thing is, you have to be a native English speaker to fully enjoy it. Wait, I take that back – non-native speakers will probably cheer louder for its dead-on impersonation of what an English speaker sounds like when you don’t know the language.

What are some of your favorite wacky spiritual stories from the year? Share your stories below!

Photo: Wonderlane

Mom always said it’s important to hang out with the right people.

Well, not my mom, of course – she’s a bit anti-social. But you know, moms in general. And I have no doubt that mine at least hoped that the people I decided to hang out with would not be hoodlums and dark-side types.

As I find myself reading a few blogs lately about surrounding yourself with the “right people,” I can’t help but wonder exactly what that means. I understand these authors are saying that the people in your life should support you, be positive lights of energy, and help in guiding or lifting you to the next level. But what exactly is the protocol here?

D. Paul Reilly tackles this subject in his recent article at the Nassau Guardian, Surround Yourself With the Best. He states:

…For someone to continue to have a happy, successful, and indeed contented life, I honestly believe, that a person needs to have friends who are literally on the same ‘Wavelength’ so to speak, as he or she is; a person who is for the most part positive, enthusiastic, and upbeat for most of the time.

Alright, I can dig it. Upbeat is good, and feeling this way propels us forward.

Havi Brooks over at The Fluent Self takes the idea a bit further. She notes in her post, Re-explaining the Right People thing, that surrounding yourself with the right people is key, but that this doesn’t mean there are “wrong” people, or that some of us are the “chosen” ones. Everyone’s got their right people, which makes everyone a right person for someone else.

We just have to figure out who our right people are:

It’s not about exclusion. It’s about discernment…When I surround myself with stuff/people/concepts that are loving and supportive, it makes it easier for me to be the kind of person who can have love and support in her life.

More sentiments I can stand behind. Yet, what I can’t help but wonder is how often our preconceived notions block out people that could be fantastic allies or even a simple growth instigator? (Like that term? I may trademark it).

What if Wrong is Right?

Photo: Wonderlane

I can honestly say one of the reasons I’m so drawn to travel is that I find myself more open to people that might be considered “wrong” for me than I would at home. Given, they may actually be the “right people,” just not obvious to the naked eye.

But if we are closed off to those who we “intuitively” sense (which is sometimes mixed up with reactions based on previous experiences in our lives) are not good for us, how will we ever know they are actually right?

I admit, I struggle with this issue. Some of my closest friendships developed from the other person seeking me out, sometimes over and over again. People I initially didn’t feel a connection with or a particular interest in getting to know better, or even those who seemed “against” me, are now definitely some of my biggest allies.

Susan J. Elliott, author of Getting Past Your Breakup, tackles the issue of situational unfairness in her post Life Is Not Fair. She comes out the other side with this nugget:

We can’t expect fairness and we can’t expect positive outcomes to all of our dilemmas. The most we can do with what we are given (whether it’s good, bad or indifferent) is to do our work and be the best person we can be surrounded by the best people we can surround ourselves with…love is an action and love makes everything else easier.

Love is an action, and feeling as much love as possible feeds us. But can love for those who may seem to be our enemy, or even lack a supportive nature, feed us too? I’m not saying everyone in our lives should be unsupportive bastards. I’m just wondering if there is wiggle room around deciding who is “right” to have in our lives, especially around the less obvious ones.

Is life more about being open to all people, and trusting the “right” people will find their way to the top, or about constantly assessing through intuition and other means who is helpful to keep in, or cut from, your life? I would really love some feedback on this, because I’m actually (for once) at a loss.

What do you think about having the “right” people in your life? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: aturkus

Travel opens us up to other ideas, cultures, and ways of living life – this is something we all know, and more than likely is a part of the “why” we travel.

But lately I’ve been contemplating what it actually means to be open. “Open-minded” is the phrase most often associated with being receptive to that which we don’t necessarily believe or relate to, or even to that which makes us uncomfortable. But I want to reclaim a word used less often: openhearted.

Interestingly (at least to me), Merriam-Webster defines openhearted first as “candidly straightforward”, and second as “responsive to emotional appeal”. Candidly straightforward is not what I’m going for here – seems a very Western approach to a heartfelt function, doesn’t it? Instead, I think being openhearted is literally about opening your heart to that which is given – or plopped – in front of you.

I think the reason I’ve recently thought so much about being openhearted is because mine tends to get stuck in halfway closed mode. Call it life beating you over the head, or just a deeply-ingrained personality quirk, but I keep myself safeguarded. It’s seemingly easier to survive with a little protection cup over your heart.

I’ve written in the past about how you can heal a broken heart through travel. But what I’ve realized, as I begin to look back over 2009, is that I love to travel because this is the time my heart finds itself fully open to life and the world around me.

It’s almost a survival mechanism in reverse – in order to “make it” in an unfamiliar place, the walls have to come tumbling down. Sure, basic precautions around safety are a must, but the reality is, you must often rely on people you don’t know that well to make it through.

Opening To Survive

Photo: liquene

Preconceived notions (or delusions) fly out the window when it’s dark and you’ve just stepped off the plane in Dar Es Salaam without a clue of where to go. Or when the winding streets of Venice keep leading you back to the same place – nowhere near your hostel. You’re forced to ask for help.

Maybe those notions leave fastest of all when you stay up all night talking to someone you meet just hours before, revealing tidbits of both beauty and ugliness you’ve never told anyone.

Travel (of a particular kind) not only forces us out of our comfort zone, it pries open the lid under which our true self – one inextricably linked to all those with whom we share this Earth – has a chance for outward expression.

I snuck in a couple of months of travel around the US this year, and as I sit here settled for a bit, I recognize the luck in feeling that sacredness. It can be a bit hard to recreate “at home”, with all of the directions life likes to pull us, but I’m working on it.

Taking chances when the door is slightly ajar, meditating on a feeling of spaciousness in your chest, simply stopping to chat with the neighbor you’ve never spoken with before – life really is just about possibility.

Leave it to a Poet

As I was writing this, a friend posted the poem The Journey by Mary Oliver that expresses the sentiment more eloquently than I ever could:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

What are ways that travel has helped you open your heart? Share your thoughts below.

Community Connection

Read a very open and heartfelt letter against institutionalized racism from Matador’s Managing Editor, Julie Schwietert, to the judge who refused to marry an interracial couple in Louisiana earlier this year. And as a reminder to stay open and not pre-judge people – especially when it comes to travel writing – check out David Miller’s 8 Ways of Seeing People that Can Sabotage Your Writing.

Photo: Perfecto Insecto

Alright, there are plenty of ways that traveling can make us feel like a badass. And as nice as they are, Pack and Explore recently listed five totally badass travel experiences to help you along in case you don’t know where to start.

I don’t think I’ll be heading to Cambodia to fire off some rounds anytime soon, but I started thinking about all of the truly badass travel experiences I’ve read here on Matador. Just about every story, movement, or contemplative idea makes me want to get out there and explore, once again, that which I think I know, and that which I know I don’t know.

As we head into the weekend, a perfect time to reignite the “time to take on the world” attitude, it seems like a good idea to recap some of Matadorians’ (or Badassadorians?) ways to be a kick-ass-and-take-names kind of traveler, or just a kick-ass living-lifer.

Here are some of my favorites:

Going Off the Deep End

Wanna show Sunday, and an 80ft granite cliff, who’s boss? Check out Ben Polansky’s foray into diving off a rock just a hop, skip and a jump from San Francisco.

Shake What Your Momma Gave Ya

With non-stop reminders from Mom – not to mention Pee Wee’s Big Adventure – of why we shouldn’t hitchhike, it may not seem like the smartest thing to do. Mike Szymanski busts open the myths around the oldest means of transportation in his blog, Hitchhiking Down-Under.

My favorite part is his description of the people you’ll meet while hitching:

Hippies, truck drivers, old, young, travelers, locals, women, men, grandmothers, women with children, Europeans, Americans, Asians, single women, those in love, those with hearts broken, friendly, lonely, quiet, talkative, and everything else in between.

And that’s what makes it so damn cool.

Work It, Girl

Drinking alone usually gives off an air of being a badass. Drinking alone as a female in a foreign place is a whole other ballgame of badassness. Check out Eva Holland’s guide to the gutsy gal drinking sans amis.

Single and Looking

Searching for love in the rockingest of places? Look no further than Sascha Matuszak’s Love Tour: World’s Best Cities for Singles. Though I’m not sure I agree with his assessment of the Bay Area making the list, considering all the singles there I know and love, I certainly appreciated his advice about Oakland: “Find a thug to love ya for a night.” Truly a badass thing to do.

I Will Survive

Falling into the category of badassery also includes accepting defeat, middle ground, or that fight to continue on. Sarah Menkedick recently wrote a poetic treatise to fourth place, noting:

You are human beings plunked kindly down in front of their inherent irrelevance, fourth place, you are the universe gently mocking us and our sweating fervent seriousness and at the same time, telling us, you can’t stop, can you, nice try, and good job and keepitup, the universe letting us taste that bittersweet honey that’s half-meaning and half-meaninglessness.

And so to all you badass travelers, I say don’t stop, keepitup.

What is your most badass travel experience? Share your experiences below.

Here’s a little video making its way around the internet that proves once again, we are a much more sexually inhibited society than our predecessors:

If you are having trouble viewing the video, it can be found at Reuters.

The museum’s director notes that on rooftops of houses and public paintings at the time – 700 BC to 400 AD – these types of sexual scenes were displayed for all to see, including “children, adolescents, men, women, everybody.”

Reuter’s reporter Paul Chapman adds that these ancient cultures viewed “nature, ideas, and actions all in balance.” Or is that just what we’d like to believe?

Christianity Made Sex Evil?

Over at the Huffington Post, most commenters agree that this video is “not news” if you know anything about ancient Greek and Roman cultures, or have stepped foot in Europe. They’ve got these naughty artifacts hanging around everywhere.

But some interesting thoughts were brought up around the rise of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, whose belief systems are arguably the reason for turning the clock back on accepting open sexual behavior. As futate01 notes:

Sexuality became evil when Semitic religions spread around the world. Before Judaism, Christianity, and Islam most world cultures had healthy attitudes about sex. It was viewed as a method of the creation of life and a gift from God to be honored and appreciated.

Insidious takes it further, saying, “Prudish is too nice of a word to describe the “demonization” of female sexuality from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” HystericHistoria adds, “Not only female sexuality, but all sexuality. Yes, generally men in Western culture…have been…all­owed more freedom than women since the inception of the Judo-Christian religions began, but even then it is nowhere near as ‘free’ as what the ancients experienced. Homosexuality, for instance.”

Insidious’ final take:

I agree with you…but it’s not just Western culture…­in our global world, controlling female sexuality has been tantamount in oppressing all female behavior: From wearing the Burqa or highheels to Female Genital Mutilation to pornography as the new “erotica”. I think that the war against male homosexuality is an extension of the control over anything not “male” and is a form of misogyny. Just like there is no gray area for women’s sexuality, there can be no gray area for male sexuality.­..this is the case that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam purport.

Not the Whole Story

Photo: John Griffiths

Although these artifacts are obviously graphic, some commenters argue that they were simply on the “fringe” of society, and that the women depicted were prostitutes, much like our “billion-dollar porn industry.”

In other words, we can’t use these symbols to classify cultures that pre-date Christianity, Judaism, or Islam as completely open sexual societies (who didn’t oppress people) in the same way that strip clubs and bathhouses fail to prove that “deviant” sexual behavior is accepted in ours.

If people thousands of years from now can only get their hands on some copies of Hustler and a vibrating contraption, will they assume our society had extremely open views about sex?

Javida adds, “Normally, most faiths encourage the sharing of sexuality between married people. That is, not acting promiscuously or adulterously. But keeping sex inside marriage does not detract from it’s expression” (ahem, that is if you are allowed to be married, or not forced to be married, of course).

No matter what side you fall on, gotta love a guy with a very proper British accent saying, “the Greeks were always game and the Romans were permanently raunchy.”

Do you think current Western religions demonized sex, or are we just rewriting history? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: vramak

Have you experienced “expectation hangover®” (yes, it is trademarked) yet?

Well, if you are in your mid-20s, actually have a job (or don’t have one), which you attempt to balance with a social/family life, you are probably suffering from it. At least according to writer Christine Hassler.

Much like the vomit that you were trying your best to hold down the morning after a couple of neon-colored drinks followed by a six-pack of the Beast, the EH is basically a “group of undesirable feelings that arise when a desired result isn’t met.”

In other words, it’s the job you kinda hate, the relationship that isn’t living up to the dream, the trips you aren’t taking. As a life coach, Hassler prompts people to do everything from suck it up, lower your expectations, or start looking elsewhere.

Well, it looks like meditation might be providing the “elsewhere.”

According to a recent Boston Globe article, the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA is pulling in the 20s-crowd like they were serving free microbrews and tapas. Week long silent meditation retreats are apparently all the rage as a way to step away from the cell phones, the iPods, and the status updates, among other things (like, you know – work):

At a time when homework or job pressures and the likes of Facebook and Twitter compete for attention throughout the day, meditation groups say an increasing number of young adults are signing up for retreats and classes, seeking a temporary escape, a haven to reconnect with their thoughts.

Wait, that means no iPhone? Even on vibrate?

Technology as Soul-Suckage

The interesting thing is, I don’t believe we think often enough about the implications of all the “fun” and seemingly “connective” technology in our life – how the faster this technology gets, the more it takes us outside of ourselves. Social media becomes work, something we do into the wee-hours of the night, and our sleep – and soul – suffers in the process.

In the Globe article, one of the retreat leaders, Rebecca Bradshaw, notes:

Young people are much more stressed out than people 20, 30 years ago…we have a fast-paced and alienating culture.

Sure, it’s kind of mind-boggling to read the news online, write about it on your blog, tweet it, link it on Facebook, check Twitter and Facebook, where you come across other articles and other blogs which are undyingly stimulating, and then start the whole process over again. Oh, and get that report to your boss by 1pm (side gig, of course).

I have no doubt that our ever increasing fast-paced world is why so many of us are drawn to outer travel. It promotes reconnection, both with others and ourselves.

But how is this reconnection being affected by having a laptop with us wherever we go, and updating our statuses anywhere from our wedding “I do” to tweeting from the ends of the Earth? And what about our inner travel? It needs backup too, and on a daily basis, because most of us aren’t able to constantly move from place to place.

So, hmmm, possibly the expectation hangover (yes, yes, TM) can be cured less from a “suck it up” perspective and more from a “disconnect from that which disconnects you” perspective. On that note, I’m shutting down the computer to sit for a while, and will attempt to “let go” of any humorous status updates running through my brain.

Do you think that social media impacts your overall well-being? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Creativity103

Things don’t look good for those who get caught bringing drugs into the Gaza Strip.

With nearly a third of the 300 prisoners in the main jail in Gaza detained due to drug offenses, a 10-year sentence is apparently not enough of a “deterrent for this lucrative trade,” at least according to Hamas and this article on Haaretz.com.

While Mexico legalized small amounts of pot and other narcotics in the “War on Drugs”, Hamas has decided to impose hard labor and the possibility of the death penalty on those caught smuggling drugs in through tunnel trade. It seems the tunnel trade in and of itself is officially sanctioned by Hamas as a way of defying Israel’s blockade, but it is much harder to control the flow of goods than through a normal customs process.

Recently seized contraband include washing machines full of hash and the Opiate pain-killer Tramadol. Ecstasy is another popular drug with the young, and ends up being sold in high schools.

It seems drug smuggling has surged in the past few months, or “increased alarmingly” to quote the article. Why could this be? Anything to do with the daily warfare and struggle for survival that both the Israelis and Palestinians must face? Hmmm.

Survival Instinct

When you take away people’s ability to live a safe and secure life, they are going to do their best to get to a safe and secure place (or forget where they are altogether). Even the article notes:

Tramadol has been a big seller…among those of the population of 1.5 million who have found solace in drugs from after Israel’s three-week military onslaught last January, launched to stop Hamas firing rockets into Israel.

Though they are also sure to add: “The motivations of some drug-users are also banal: to banish boredom, improve concentration or for sexual enjoyment.” Ok, yes, that’s a given in any culture.

But along with the fact that the need to mentally escape is inevitable, there is also the tiny issue of excruciatingly high rates of unemployment and poverty rates in the Gaza (this article puts them at 50%). Where there is poverty, drugs will be sold, if only for monetary purposes. Really, it’s survival on both the economic and psychological fronts.

So, they’re gonna stop smugglers with the possibility of the death penalty. Good idea. Aren’t most people there facing that on a daily basis anyway?

Do you think taking a harsher approach to drug smuggling will work? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: DavidCiriaco

Questions, debates, and arguments tend to flow non-stop from our media about such loving and easy topics as the war in Afghanistan, global warming, and Tiger Wood’s affair(s).

I’ve felt particularly pulled from end of the spectrum to the other over the past couple of days. One of Matador’s writers, Nick Rowlands, passed along an interesting, albeit extraordinarily we’re-going-straight-down-the-tubage, debate between George Monbiot, author of several investigative travel books and a weekly column for the Guardian, and Paul Kingsnorth, director of the Dark Mountain Project.

In the letter exchange, well worth reading by the way, Kingsnorth takes the “shits already hit the fan, let’s get on with this apocalypse now and start over” approach. He discusses a set of graphs that marks the steady rise of a wide range of occurrences since 1750, including the rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and rate of species extinction, and how they suddenly “veer steeply upwards” since – you guessed it – 1950:

Yet very few of us are prepared to look honestly at the message this reality is screaming at us: that the civilisation we are a part of is hitting the buffers at full speed, and it is too late to stop it. Instead, most of us – and I include in this generalisation much of the mainstream environmental movement – are still wedded to a vision of the future as an upgraded version of the present.

Monbiot, while identifying with the fact that we are in a precarious situation, believes that we have to go on fighting the good fight. If we don’t, instead of the emergence of an utopian society, we (well, those of us left, anyway) would be in an even uglier place than at the moment:

I’m sure we can agree that the immediate consequences of collapse would be hideous: the breakdown of the systems that keep most of us alive; mass starvation; war…the survivors of this collapse will be subject to the will of people seeking to monopolise remaining resources. This will is likely to be imposed through violence. Political accountability will be a distant memory. The chances of conserving any resource in these circumstances are approximately zero.

Monbiot ends one of his letters with this: “Perhaps we are both in denial: I because I think the fight is still worth having; you because you think it isn’t.”

Whew, intense. I certainly felt compelled by the certainty of both men that no matter which way we turn, things aren’t going to be pretty.

Or Could They Be?

Photo: Maira Kalman / New York Times

And then, lo and behold, a friend sent along this piece by Maira Kalman at the New York Times blog. Beautifully illustrated through pictures and actual written words (ok, maybe it’s a writing font), Maira looks to how our land, eating habits, and movement have changed greatly – and negatively – since our “founding fathers” stepped foot in the US.

Yet there is this undercurrent that – dare I say it, is beginning to overflow – of people not only understanding our need to return to the Earth, but who are actually doing it.

Kalman states:

It is not about dropping out (though that sounds tempting now and then). It is about bringing elemental things to the present time with commerce and optimism.

In “not dropping out,” she doesn’t forget to ask the questions. On the picture of a cow, she wonders, “Land of cows that we eat. Should we? Shouldn’t we?” And in showing children in Berkeley, CA growing, preparing, and eating organic meals together at school, she poses, “Many children often do not sit with their own families. And some drink soda for breakfast. So what do we do about that?”

Even if we are working in our own lives to make changes, I think that forgetting, or dismissing, the reality of what is happening outside of the confines of our own world is a huge part of the problem. Positivity is a beautiful thing, as long as it doesn’t negate the realities of others.

Yes, we create our own reality, to a certain extent. Yet each of our realities runs up against everyone else’s. That means chemicals being dumped, wars being fought, and food being frankened effects you. But don’t forget to check yourself on negating the positive realities of things happening around you, too.

So then what is the answer – watch and even hope for the apocalypse? Fight it tool and nail? Look at the bright side? Maybe, just maybe, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

What do you believe is the answer to our survival conundrum? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: wwarby

Sometimes, I think about the romantic notions that arose in my Masters program, on my part just as much as others.

A good chunk of what we did was take a look at traditional ways of healing. Chinese Medicine, Ayurveda, and Native-American healing are all extremely valid, deeply historical systems that are often dismissed in our Western allopathic mindset.

Even though, of course, each has been around hundreds to thousands of years, and seen millions of more patients than medical doctors.

Sometimes, learning about disregarded, lesser-known or underutilized traditions can lead us to the conclusion that all is right with the world in the “natural order,” while our current approach is kind of, you know, evil.

Sure, there is a lot wrong with the way we live life in the West. That’s a given. So it is easy enough to fall into the trap of longing to live in a place where the 8-6 job does not exist, people are still rooted to the Earth because they actually work with it, and family connections leave little room for depression or other American institutions. Ah, wouldn’t life be grand?

The Wrong Parts

Photo: Sand Paper

Then, way over on the flip-side, there’s the shock that arises when seeing a traditional culture up close and personal. Andy Jarosz at 501 Places just tackled this topic in his piece, When is ‘local culture’ just wrong? Now you are facing a particular tradition that you not only don’t understand, but inherently believe is immoral.

The first thing that popped into my mind as I began reading the piece was female genital mutilation, and my own struggle around believing we shouldn’t step into other cultures and tell them what is what (through war or other means) and at the same time, believing no woman should ever have to face this barbaric, misogynistic act.

One of the stories Andy related was about a blind girl he met in Uganda while working at an eye camp. He notes:

Her corneas were totally opaque. At first she said didn’t know what had caused this, but on further examination and in conjunction with a local nurse, we found out that she had been to see a local shaman about a matter unrelated to her eyes, and he had given her a liquid to wash her face with, and specifically to put in her eyes. The main ingredient was horse urine, and this potion had proceeded to render this young girl blind.

He was obviously extremely angry about what he witnessed, and rightly so. But the nurse he was working with explained it was a “slow, frustrating and often dangerous” process of educating people away from their faith in witch doctors.

And what exactly might be offered in return? A system that also damages a lot of people with pharmaceutical drugs and unnecessary surgeries? Even with the positives of Western medicine, these traditional societies would never have continuous access be made available to them.

Not So Pretty

Reality is a lot less pretty and succinct – all cultures and places have their ups and downs, their “rights” and their “wrongs.” Trouble is, some of the things many on the outside see as wrong, such as wearing a burka or even seeing a shaman, are not only deeply embedded in cultures, but also have valid points that we would never truly be able to comprehend from our own cultural mindset.

Sometimes, what we see as gruesome may actually be distinctly connected to the Earth in a way that our Western hands-off approach to all things icky just can’t wrap our heads around. And as Andy noted in his piece, there are certainly things indigenous cultures would be flabbergasted by if they came to the West – people being forced to live on the streets as open, empty buildings sit nearby, or the forgotten elderly generation that is so prized in their own culture.

The real question is, how does removing both romantic ideals and disapproval get us closer to a just world for all?

What do you think about romanticizing or condemning other culture’s beliefs? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Rich Man

So you survived, and possibly even thrived, Thanksgiving with your family or friends.

Nobody got hit in the face with a ham/turkey/tofurkey/turduken, got raging drunk and spoke of Uncle Harold’s penchant for wearing women’s pantyhose, or swallowed a bottle-cap and was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery in the middle of the night. Well done.

But alas, it is day two of the Thanksgiving holiday, and everyone is beginning to wear on your nerves.

Or, if you got out of dodge already, there’s that whole other holiday coming up in less than a month that will pit you against airports, traffic, and your crazy Aunt Glady (yeah, that’s a shout out to my favorite holiday movie, Home for the Holidays).

Luckily for us, there is a whole slew of new ways to keep our calm during the holidays. Well, not really new – more like repackaged. Nonetheless, the following suggestions can certainly help you to arrive on the other side of this madness-we-call-celebration relatively psychologically unscathed.

Yoga, Zen, and Hangovers

Yoga has certainly made it to the masses, when even Fox News reports on an airport parking shuttle service that teaches the ancient calming ritual on its rides to the airport. Yes, a parking shuttle service. No, you can’t do standing poses. At least I’m assuming not.

Spiritual Zen gives some tips on how to avoid family drama during the holidays, including pre-planning about how to deal with uncomfortable situations, doing your best to put on that understanding cap and leave your need-to-be-understood-ego at the door, and my favorite – straight up avoiding them.

Nothing makes me hate my family, or anyone else really, more than a nice, crippling hangover. Yes, the holidays are about overindulging, but too much of that attitude certainly comes back to bite you in the derriere.

So right now, or every Friday, Saturday, or Sunday pathetically useless afternoon from here until New Years, it’s worth contemplating a mini-cleanse. Dr. Mao gives some easy tips, such as walking, drinking herbal teas, and my everyday favorite, good for both digestion and rehydration: sipping on some Apple Cider Vinegar (it really is tasty).

Last but certainly not least, there is something that can help with the travel annoyances, the family drama, and the almost-alcohol poisoning…wait for it…ah yes, meditation. Luckily, we’ve already compiled 20 Basic, Fun, Sexy Resources For Beginning Meditators, so you don’t even have to try and do a Google search in your dazed and confused state.

Happy Holidays!

What are some other tips for surviving the holidays? Share your thoughts below!

Community Connection

What happens if you have to travel after a few too many the night before? Check out Turner Wright’s 5 Survival Tips if You Have to Travel Hungover.

Photo: -Delphine - / Feature photo: Let Ideas Compete

Pondering your next travel destination usually incites visions of bustling new cities, taking in as much gorgeous country landscape as possible, and becoming wrapped up in a culture other than your own.

But as writer Jill K. Robinson recently discussed over at Vagabonding, there is an often-overlooked aspect to traveling that really is necessary to staying sane: quiet time.

At some point in the day, especially after a few days of uninterrupted madcap adventures, it’s time to settle down and process. For Robinson, she notes:

Those quiet hours come in the morning, before the workday begins and visitors flood popular areas of town. Roaming the empty streets, I stumble upon people sweeping, watering flowers or just sitting with a hot beverage and watching the day unfold.

I too prefer mornings before the world wakes up, wherever in the world I am at the moment. Sometimes it feels as if even nature is quiet and resting, and the air hangs heavy with sleep. You can almost taste the food, conversation, and movement from the day before, and feel the hazy rise of the day to come.

You don’t have anywhere to be, and you get to really feel your surroundings in your bones.

Time to Rejuvenate

But what does quiet time give us beyond a more felt sense of place? It rejuvenates the body and the soul – no matter how young and able you are, we all need time off, including from fun. I know, it’s shocking, but this idea is similar to what I said the other day about happiness: in order to truly know what happiness is, we must feel sadness. To truly feel alive, we must have rest.

And finding some quiet time alone, even when we are traveling as a part of a group, can teach you a lot about yourself, things you might miss while caught up in the fanfare of moving to the tune of others. As Cameron Karsten wrote in 10 Things To Learn About Yourself When Traveling Alone:

To travel alone is to find the answers you’ve been seeking and discover the questions to all your unfounded thoughts. It is your world. It is your adventure.

Even if that’s only 30 minutes alone in the morning or late in the evening, it can make all the difference in the world – and all the difference in your travel experience.

What do you do for quiet time during your travels? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Hammer51012

Sure, a lot of you know that on Thursday, most Americans will be celebrating the somewhat historically-sketchy holiday of Thanksgiving.

Although I don’t necessarily agree with the basis of the holiday, it is one of my favorites.

I appreciate the fact that it is the one time of the year we set aside to give thanks for all the little things in our lives (don’t forget, the Canadians have their own Thanksgiving, represented very lovingly in this video with Ellen Page and Justin Long). Gratitude is best served daily, but even once a year can help to see life in a different light.

But, as I was reading yesterday, Thanksgiving is only one of many spiritually-influenced holidays happening throughout the world in this jam-packed week of celebrations.

Tomorrow, Sikh’s commemorate the martyrdom of their ninth Guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur. He refused to denounce Sikhism and accept Islam when faced with death by the hands of Delhi’s Emperor Aurangzeb in the late 17th century. In memory of his resistance, Sikhs visit the Sis Ganj Gurudwara located in Old Delhi, the place where he was beheaded.

On Wednesday, Bahá’ís honor the Covenant of Baha’u'llah. This covenant outlines how to organize communities of believers. Specifically, according to the Bahá’í Faith website, the Covenant is both “a renewal of the promise of divine guidance and a system that ensures its continuance…[it] can be understood to be synonymous with the line of succession after Bahá’u’lláh.” Also celebrated on this day is the life of the founder’s son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.

Making the Trek

Photo: omar_chatriwala

Millions of Muslims are heading to Mecca to complete Hajj (though thousands of both young and old Muslims were told to stay home due to threats around, you guessed it – swine flu).

Then on Thursday at sundown, they will celebrate the “Festival of Sacrifice,” when Abraham (Ibrahim) was told by God to sacrifice his son. He agreed to, and a voice from heaven said he could sacrifice a ram instead (I’m not sure how my alma mater would feel about that).

Saturday is a time of reflection and prayer for those of the Jains faith. According to Stephanie Fenton’s article:

Jains will meditate on the thoughts of monks, teachers, religious leaders, Arihants (enlightened masters) and Siddhas (liberated souls).

Maybe Friday would be a good day for Americans of all faiths to meditate, instead of partaking in the slightly sadomasochistic ritual of Black Friday. But what do I know?

Finally, Sunday marks the beginning of advent for Christians. Besides being allowed to eat a piece of chocolate at 7am since it comes from an advent calendar (best childhood memories ever), this process follows the four weeks leading up to the birth of me…er, I mean, Christ.

Yeah, it ain’t that great – combo presents my entire life. Oh, sorry, you were more interested in it soon being Jesus’ birthday?

Did I miss any religious or spiritual celebrations this week? Add them, or any thoughts you have, below.

Community Connection

Need a place to get a Thanksgiving dinner outside the US? Then check out 7 Restaurants Outside of The USA Serving Thanksgiving Dinner. Or if you just want to experience the feel of a traditional Turkey Day in America, read Notes of Thanksgiving in New Jersey.

Photo: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

We’re ripping out a page from the popular Notes from the Road series over at the Traveler’s Notebook and asking you to take a moment to sketch out something that probably crosses your mind now and again: A Personal Manifesto.

When I happened upon Gwen Bell’s, author of the Unconventional Guide to the Social Web, process the other day, I immediately became excited at the notion of going through my own.

Check out her guide on the myriad of ways to go about developing your own manifesto.

Here are a few highlights of possible road-map choices:

Vision Map

Yep, this means breaking out the magazines, scissors, and glue. Good magazines, with positive images, by the way. Cut out pictures of what you want in your life, whether that includes traveling the world or owning a yoga studio. Don’t forget to write yourself a little note about your beauty.

Put it all together in a systematic or wonderfully haphazard fashion on a big piece of cardboard, and hang it up on your wall. I also like Bell’s suggestion of scanning the map in order to have a travel-version.

Life List

Life list, bucket list, whatever you want to call it – just write down a 100 things you want to do before kicking well, you know, the bucket. I like the look of Maggie Mason’s (the inspiration for Bell’s list), and the idea of having mine sitting pretty on my computer and crossing through the ones I’ve completed. Oooh, I want to stop writing this post and go do it right now.

Digitized Goals

Bell provides a link to an online questionnaire, which can be helpful for those of us that need prompts. Or cut-offs. Plus, who are we kidding – haven’t most of us forgotten how to write in cursive anyway?

Microactions

To continue the tradition I began of stealing ideas from the Traveler’s Notebook, take a look at their new series, Micro Notes, in order to get primed for this one. I know I can sometimes be wordy in both writing and speech (have you noticed?), and often, the best way to get things done is to define them with brevity. Index cards, short lists, to the point=making things happen.

Finally, here’s one I’m adding to Bell’s list:

Visioning/Meditation On Your Goals

A former dance teacher of mine will freely tell you that without a doubt, “visioning” her future every single day has led to her dreams becoming a reality. After passing the bar exam, Vicki decided to chuck the lawyer-life and pursue her true passion, dance. Now, she along with her business and life partners throw one of the most consistently sold-out club nights in San Francisco, Non Stop Bhangra, and her dance troupe, Dholrhythms, performs up and down the Western Coast of US and Canada.

Vicki has had a daily routine of reciting and meditating on her dreams, and says that everything that has come to fruition began as a thought in this process. In other words, don’t forget the power of intention.

Since fall always feels like a good time for introspection, I’ll be working on my manifesto this weekend, and then will post some of my results and musings at my blog, Living Holistically. I’m hoping to see some of yours, even just bits and pieces, too.

Add parts of your manifesto to your personal blog, and then come back here and paste the link in the comments section below!

Community Connection

While developing your manifesto, don’t forget about the beauty of transparency in your writing, whether for yourself or others. David Miller takes a look at the importance of Material Transparency in creating a personal brand.

Photo: Randy Wick

Swept up in the notion that life is meant to be happily lived, many of us often struggle with what it means to be happy on any given day. Am I feeling good at this moment? Was I feeling better yesterday? Why can’t I get to that balanced state of bliss?

Ah, yes, the “balanced state of bliss.” What in the world could that possibly imply? Some sort of a delusion, at least on my part. After a better part of my childhood and 20s fraught with depressive tendencies, I feel a daily pull of that which remains, on some levels, an enigma. Which gives me full appreciation for something I recently read on the Happiness Project blog:

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned (through a decade of practice with Zen Buddhism) is that melancholy is perfectly normal – it’s neither happy nor unhappy – and it’s all right to walk slowly through it.

Sometimes, I feel with all the positive affirmations, law of attractions, and 2012s being thrown around, we are forced, in a way, to feel “happy” all of the time. Even when we don’t. It’s as if sadness, anger, and discomfort have become four letter words that we beat to a bloody pulp as if they were a rabid raccoon attacking our child.

Here at Matador, we’ve searched far and wide for the ingredients to happiness, best summed up in Carlo Alcos’ piece, 5 Key Ingredients in the Search for Happiness. He found that introspection, freedom, compassion, generosity, and contentment were all necessary aspects for happiness.

But can’t these just as easily be ingredients of melancholy? And is that necessarily a bad thing?

To be human is to feel all the emotions available on the spectrum. I sometimes want to cry out that to accept where you are right at this moment is to be free. The problem comes in when those emotions, whether happiness or sadness, take over. Then we are no longer who we are – we have instead become the emotion.

The Absolute End of Happiness

Photo: | spoon |

Within the context of feeling happiness is necessary all of the time comes the idea that death is looming to take life, happiness, and – as Ian MacKenzie recently explored with filmmaker Patrick Shen – meaning away.

We all only have a set amount of time here, and we best power-pack it full of smiles, giggles, and moments of perfection.

A recent post over at the New York Times contemplates these beliefs around life (and death). Author Todd May explores our fear of death, as it “extinguishes” the light of our future, which we are programmed as humans to be constantly striving for.

But May argues for the validity and awareness of death in truly living life:

It is equally true that a life without limits would lose the beauty of its moments…this is the paradox death imposes upon us: it grants us the possibility of a meaningful life even as it takes it away.

He continues, “we cannot live forever, to be sure, but neither would we want to,” and I believe the same is true for happiness. Would I want to be happy forever? No, because then I could not truly understand what it means to be happy.

And though I believe fully in shooting for a middle-ground, and understand how important this is for the sake of mental health, I also revel in the ups and downs that the universe hands me (or I hand myself?) as a way to feel fully alive.

We can’t get rid of death (well, according to most, though Jason Silva disagrees), and by the same token, we can’t get rid of melancholy. The question is, why do we continue to fight so hard against both?

Do you think sadness or melancholy should be avoided at all costs? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: digitalbob8

Drugs certainly hold the possibility of being mind-expanders, at least for some people.

And many travelers have had the opportunity to partake in an illegal drug or two while visiting spiritually-enhancing areas, which also hold the potential of many years in an extremely scary foreign prison if caught.

But this guy goes above and beyond what few have done, or would ever contemplate doing. The British man, ‘Mr. A’ is reported to have taken 40,000 ecstasy pills over a nine-year period. The previously heaviest lifetime intake was 2,000.

Whoa.

Can’t imagine that was good for the brain, body, or spirit. According to doctors from London University, it wasn’t. The man stopped taking pills seven years ago, but still suffers from:

…severe physical and mental health side-effects, including extreme memory problems, paranoia, hallucinations and depression. He also suffers from painful muscle rigidity around his neck and jaw which often prevents him from opening his mouth.

And it seems like many of the symptoms are permanent. His short-term memory loss, including “the time, the day, what was in his supermarket trolley,” makes living life on a day-to-day basis a frighteningly hard task.

The Dark Side

Photo: azrainman

I think that most who have taken ecstasy, ranging from just once to more times than they would like to count, can still agree that 40,000 is a bit over the limit and would naturally cause trauma to the brain. But I’m a bit more interested in the why of choosing to ingest that massive amount.

Some people might just call this man crazy, off, mentally-deranged. Yet, something in me wonders if this is just an extreme example of what is happening for people all over the world.

A lack of connection – be it to community, self, or the spirit – pushes us, consciously or unconsciously, to search for that connection. For some, this can be a very positive experience, and as Jennifer Blair writes, can lead us to our soul place:

A soul place is an island, a building, a city, or a natural vista that speaks to you in a language unheard. It opens up a space within that you didn’t realize was closed.

For others, the drive may be toward darkness. From a traveler’s perspective, dark tourism, or “the practice of visiting sites related to death and suffering,” can put you face to face with the underbelly of humanity: genocide, natural disasters, terrorism, slavery, the effects of drugs on a community. These are the ugly parts of history that on certain levels, we all share.

And there are many things out there that can make us spiral further into the darkness, including drugs, alcohol, work, sex, TV – the list goes on. None of these things are bad in and of themselves, but it is when we come to depend on them to catch a glimpse of connection that we disconnect from that which we are searching for.

The key, according to many who are spiritually-inclined, is that we must fully and deeply look at our shadow, lest it take over. By shining a light on the darkness that is within each of us, it is no longer dark.

So I wonder, for this man and his 40,000 ecstasy pills (who has since dropped out of his doctor’s care), what shadow was he running from?

What do you think is behind this man’s ecstasy binge? Share your thoughts below.

As you go to or home from work today, possibly dealing with rain or very cold temperatures, trying to protect yourself from the swine flu or thoughts of the looming end of the world, think about what a little laughter can do.

The video starts off a bit slow, but give it a minute:

I love how the annoyed faces can’t help but start to smile. Hopefully it’ll do the same for you. Happy Friday!

What are some other ways to get people smiling? Share your thoughts below!

Feature photo: adobemac

Community Connection

Need some more laughter to take you into the weekend? You can’t help but bust a gut when you read Tom Gates’ piece, The Five Worst Pizzas In the World. And maybe it’s time to be reminded of why Southwest Airlines is Still Cool After All These Years. For more great travel videos, check out the brand spankin’ new MatadorTV.

Photo: Ralph Buckley

Unless you’ve had your head under a rock, you’ve probably heard the world is supposed to end in 2012 (my apologies to those with rocks atop their heads).

Yep, according to many of the great minds throughout history, Nostradamus, the Mayans, the History Channel, it’s all gonna come tumbling down 12/22/2012. Damn, just three days before I turn 34. Oh, wait, maybe that’s a good thing.

Well, everyone from NASA to National Geographic to this guy is out to debunk this “myth.” All it takes is a much-hyped movie coming out on Friday for everyone and their mom to have their say.

So Discovery News got in on the action with the Top 10 Reasons Why the World Won’t End in 2012. The author, Ray Villard, rationalized some of the most common theories, including:

• The Earth’s magnetic field will reverse: “Don’t hold your breath. The last field reversal happened nearly 800,000 years ago. Fred Flintstone and our other ancestor cavemen survived.”
• The Earth’s rotation axis will tip: “An object the size of Mars would have to hit Earth to transfer enough momentum to knock us out of kilter. But Mars-sized protoplanets were kicked into interstellar space over 4 billion years ago. The solar system doesn’t make ‘planets-gone-wild’ anymore.”
• The Sun will align with the galactic equator on the winter solstice: “So what? These are simply coordinates in the sky. It has no physical reality any more than the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue at Times Square influences the geology of Manhattan Island.”

Ok, points taken, though arrogantly made. But what kills me is the smuggie, smug, smugness of statements like these:

Apparently the Mayans knew something about the heavens we don’t…our multi-billion dollar telescopes, space probes, and 6,000 professional astronomers somehow just can’t keep up with the mystic knowledge of an ancient superstitious culture.

Once again, we know so much more than those who came before us, right? Right.

Breaking it Down

Let me start off by saying that I don’t believe the world will end in 2012 with any sort of a bang. But I think there are some worthy arguments worth putting forward.

First of all, we don’t know for sure that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012; we might be the only ones assuming because their calendar ends, it means the end of us. But, they did predict certain things with accuracy, such as eclipses.

Second, who said these predictions didn’t include the possibility of human-induced disasters? Yes, global warming is real (ahem), and might go further than any North-South Pole flip-flop. Don’t forget the economic meltdown. Plus, some believe WWIII is on it’s way, with 9/11 as the kick-off and Nostradamus’ accurate prediction of events.

Third, and most important to me, is that many believe 2012 won’t be the end of the world, but the end of the world as we know it. Which essentially means we will undergo a radical shift in consciousness, one which we have been building up to the last few years. What this means exactly is up for debate, but mostly includes the idea that humans will start being nice to humans. Imagine that.

Let’s just hope the consciousness shift comes before the nuclear button is pushed (or another 2012 movie makes it to the screen).

What do you think about the predictions – and their debunkers – around 2012? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: gadl

It’s a tough day for travelers who like to explore outside of “acceptable” countries, as Iran charged the three American backpackers detained in July with espionage. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with them.

So I was glad to come across something a bit positive happening in the world.

Project Explorer, who provides free cultural education programming for kids and teens, is posing the question, “What does it mean to be a global citizen?” They are asking that people make and upload a video answering this question with their own thoughts or experiences.

So far, the likes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Russell Simmons, and Ziggy Marley have posted their answers. Also, many other lesser known – but just as important activists – such as Scott Harrison of charity: water and John and Charles of…well, Chelsea, add their two cents on “possibility and action” and the importance “being nice.”

Find more videos like this on ProjectExplorer.org’s Good Global Citizen

Now comes your turn. We’re challenging BNT readers to make a video and add their own take on what it means to be a global citizen.

Where To Go For Answers

Need some inspiration? Beginning with desire in the form of a journal entry or a video can ultimately lead us to answers. As Valerie Ng explained in her article, Why I Disobeyed My Family and Traveled the World:

I documented my grand plans for international travel in a Spanish essay in high school…[after traveling abroad] it became increasingly apparent that the world was a fascinating place, and I wanted to acquaint myself with the myriad of cultures inhabiting the earth.

Or, look no further than Daniel Harbecke’s piece, How Travel Will Save The World. In it, he explains, “The belief that humanity is encompassed within a single community is called cosmopolitanism…[it] has come to mean “worldly” or “sophisticated,” but in the original sense meant a universal love for all people that rejects borders.”

And, if you have kids in tow, or plan having them in the future and hope to make them a global citizen, check out Karen Banes’ piece, The Educational Value of Long Term Travel with Kids. In it, she notes:

Kids on the road learn naturally. They learn about physical and human geography, world history, religion (although not just the dominant one in their country of birth), wildlife, nature, environmental issues, campcraft, cooking, art and science. They also learn manners, tolerance, and respect for other cultures. They learn to make friends, and say goodbye.

After you make the video and upload it to Project Explorer site, be sure to post the link in the comments section below.

Photo: smokeonit

For me, going abroad – admittedly with a bit of trepidation and fear – my junior year of college was something I decided to do in part because several good friends had already done the same thing. And they loved it.

Tons of wine, endless pasta, bread, and cheese, and gorgeous surroundings in Florence? This did not sound like a problem.

But, as Nomadic Matt recently noted, I find myself in the minority. He questions why Americans still aren’t traveling overseas, a subject he first tackled in a post last year.

Yes, 21% of Americans have their passports now as compared to 15% a few years ago (obviously, still a pathetically low number). But travel off of the North American, and higher areas of the South American, continents has actually decreased. According to Matt, more people have passports because you need them to get to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, where travel has increased.

Less About Money, More About Ignorance

Photo: Capture Queen ™

His reasoning? It’s not so much that people don’t have the money to travel, even in these hard economic times, but it has more to do with cultural ignorance, as in “not knowing about other cultures” and not “Americans are ignorant buffoons.”

Other factors include fear, priorities around work, and lack of awareness – especially politically.

Despite the rise of China, Brazil, and India, our politicians tell us everything in America is the best (yet #38 in healthcare). Countries will always do what we want. America is the leader. We are the city upon a hill. An when you are the best, why go to “godforsaken” countries where they hate you for being American and might rob you?

Last year, Julie Schwietert asked if Americans are afraid of travel after the not-so-excited reaction to Obama’s Middle East and Europe trip in July 2008. She noted, “It’s a trip that should make America proud (particularly given the geographic and diplomatic gaps in the current president’s consciousness), but Americans’ response to Obama’s trip has been curiously tepid.”

And we all know how media loves to stir up our fears of the “other.” As Sarah Menkedick wrote in response to the media shitstorm blaming the three Americans held in Iran, “There are two themes here. One is that travel (outside of the U.S and perhaps Western Europe) is dangerous, reckless, and stupid. The other is that only starry-eyed, pot-smoking hippie backpackers are dumb enough to try it, and they get what they deserve.”

The Flip Side

On the other side of the argument, you have a few people noting that “Americans are still traveling abroad,” despite the economic downturn. Not sure if this Forbes Traveler piece makes a good argument, though; yes, travel only slipped less than 1% from 2007 to 2008, but the 2009 numbers up until May showed a 7.7% decrease compared to the same time last year.

Or, as Katy Steinmetz stated in a piece she wrote last year, Behind the myth that few Americans have passports, not only is the accepted statistic wrong (the number is really more around 30%), but that economics and poverty really are at play. On top of the high cost of passports, taking care of your family, buying food, and paying for that healthcare plan, people are left with few dollars to go anywhere, even with a good deal on Orbitz.

Do you think Americans don’t travel abroad because of ignorance and politics, or does it have more to do with money? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Lauren Close

Always ones to stir up controversy about our long-held beliefs, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner have a new book out, SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance.

Along with arguing that the world is actually experiencing a cooling trend, which has been hotly contended all over the net, there is also a less debated chapter on prostitution.

In it, Levitt and Dubner compare two women – “call girls” if you will – who brought in two very different brackets of money. One, “LaSheena,” worked on the streets on the South Side of Chicago and made about $350 a week; the other, “Allie” worked in her apartment in a “chic” Chicago neighborhood and made the same amount per hour. Why the difference?

Well, according to an excerpt from the book:

[Allie] is the kind of person who sees something good in everyone — and this, she believes, has contributed to her entrepreneurial success. She genuinely likes the men who come to her, and the men therefore like Allie even beyond the fact that she will have sex with them.

LaSheena, on the other hand, doesn’t like “turning tricks.” Her reasoning? “Cause I don’t really like men. I guess it bothers me mentally.”

You don’t have to read far into this excerpt to see that Levitt and Dubner make Allie’s life out to be some sort of Cinderella/Pretty Woman/Business Week character (she “she represents the ideal wife: beautiful, attentive, smart, laughing at your jokes and satisfying your lust“), while LaSheena barely necessitates a mention, except to open up the piece for comparison value.

Blaming the Victim

But something deeper is at work here, as Sady Doyle notes in her rebuttal piece, Prostitution, for fun and profit.

Photo: Capitan Giona

For one, “the fact that Allie is probably white, and that LaSheena is probably not, is never once addressed,” along with the reality that we learn about the inner workings of Allie, while no real history of LaSheena’s life is outlined.

Did LaSheena have no other choice but to be a prostitute? Was she beaten by some of the men she had sex with? Doesn’t really seem to matter to the authors.

The overwhelming feeling that comes off the page is that LaSheena’s poverty is LaSheena’s fault.

Doyle adds:

Hey, here’s an interesting thought: Maybe LaSheena doesn’t like men because she’s trapped in a cycle of poverty, and one of the only ways for her to stay alive is to have sex with men, whether or not she really wants to. Maybe that’s enough to make LaSheena dislike men.

Interestingly enough, although Allie “enjoyed her work,” she got out of it because she was tired of hiding it from her family and friends, and, most importantly, she understood “her commodity was perishable.” I think that statement just took women back 200 years.

Probably my absolute favorite part of this whole damn story is the moral that Levitt and Dubner end with:

So the real puzzle isn’t why someone like Allie becomes a prostitute, but rather why more women don’t choose this career. You have to like sex enough, and be willing to make some sacrifices, like not having a husband (unless he is very understanding, or very greedy).

Thanks, Levitt and Dubner, for your amazing insights on prostitution and what it means to be a woman.

What do you think of Levitt and Dubner’s take on prostitution? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: takomabibelot

So what if Michael Jackson has made over $72 million since his death? Turns out even if you’re a saint, sometimes it pays more to be dead than alive (along with the possibility of even being called a saint).

AOL’s Daily Finance decided to take a look into the top-earning saints of all time.

Not surprisingly, Jesus’ mom ranks number one. The Virgin Mary’s got all those medals, statues, and candles going for her. Plus, think about all the many pilgrimages to places that are often far from home, including “Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje, and Guadalupe.”

But, lest we forget, the movie industry does enjoy its saints just as much as the next good Catholic, so when it comes to film, Joan of Arc rocks the big screen money. She’s been the subject of over 16 movies, plus, lest we forget, that TV show with Amber Tamblyn.

Also in the mix are St. Christopher, best known for safe travel (who apparently is also invoked by “bachelors, teamsters, epileptics, gardeners, porters, sailors, and toothache sufferers”), and someone you may have heard of even if you’re not Christian: St. Nick. A bit of sketchiness surrounds the history of the fat, jolly man, though; was he truly based on St. Nicholas of Myrna, Norse God Odin, or the Slavic “dark” and “light” Gods of Czernobog and Byelobog?

Either way, ‘ole St. Nick is making a killing. Or, at least all of the people selling toys in his name are.

The Mother of all Teresas

Which made me wonder about more recent saints, ones who have lived in our lifetime. First person that pops to mind (well, mine at least) is Mother Teresa. I wondered if she actually made any money in her life, and assumed she has made a lot more since her death.

Photo: runran

So I was a bit taken aback at this piece by Michael Parenti. In it, he claims that Mother Teresa received:

…Vast sums from wealthy and sometimes tainted sources, including a million dollars from convicted savings & loan swindler Charles Keating, on whose behalf she sent a personal plea for clemency to the presiding judge…she also accepted substantial sums given by the brutal Duvalier dictatorship that regularly stole from the Haitian public treasury.

Parenti continues, saying her hospitals were often nothing more than “human warehouses,” while she personally enjoyed state-of-the-art treatment when sick. He also contends that she fudged numbers of how many poor her services fed, and that during floods and cholera epidemics, her outfit was often nowhere to be found.

Possibly most damning were diaries found several years after her death and fast-track canonization (there is usually a five-year waiting period before investigations into sainthood can begin). Published as Il Segreto di Madre Teresa (Mother Teresa’s Secret), Teresa said:

In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.

I’m not sure that this quote in any way suggests or proves she was a money-grubber; instead, it seems that she was human, and had doubts, just like the rest of us. Yet, it still makes you wonder if being an ultimate giver in the time of Hollywood riches and people desperate for a “perfect” savior is a bit impossible. Look, we’ve even turned all those dead saints into huge profits.

Or maybe, it was never possible to be a “true” saint in the first place.

What do you think of our beliefs about sainthood and holiness when it comes to money? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: King Chimp

The original plan for today was to find and write about something funny making it’s way around the internet, it being Friday and all.

Or maybe something about Halloween, its origins as All Hallows Eve, the day before the beautiful celebration of the Day of the Dead.

But instead, I feel a bit overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with being a woman, living today, in the world in which we live.

That might come as a surprise, what with me being a white gal living in America, and though far from rich, just as far from destitute.

Yet, I can’t turn off what happens to my sisters throughout the world, both abroad and right down the street. From death threats to a doctor who performs reconstructive surgery on women ripped to shreds through female genital mutilation, to the gang rape of a 15-year-old high school student by up to ten 16-25 year-olds in the town next to where I used to live, we are not safe.

We are mothers, we are sisters, we are friends. We give the gift of life to those who wish to keep us down or take our lives.

I can’t help but recount the number of women I’ve known that have been sexually abused, assaulted, or raped repeatedly. There are many more that have than not. I also can’t help but struggle with my own “maybe” and all the implications it has had for my life. Who would I be now if it, whatever “it” was, hadn’t happened?

The Power of a Single Moment

Think, for just a moment, what effect we have on each other in our passing interactions every single day. Bridges are built or destroyed by single words or sentences, intentions are paramount to success or failure, and whether we choose to scream out in anger or somehow engage in dialogue can impact us for hours, days, weeks and months to come.

Photo: Ingorrr

Now think about the long term impact of an unwanted, and as is often the case for young girls, a misunderstood advance. The repercussions are a life of mistrust of themselves just as much as others, and acting out in ways in can take a long time to process or come to terms with.

Further down the line, you have women that will never, ever, EVER experience sexual pleasure in their lives – and in a way, what it means to be a woman – because all that is left “down there” is scar tissue.

What about the ever present “rape as war tactic” that is valued by military (and apparently, peacekeepers) the world over, despite the recent UN resolution classifying it as a weapon of war? What exactly does that resolution do to change anything?

And maybe, worst of all (is this even an area for comparisons?), are those girls and women, living in “free” Western countries, who are sexual slaves. Look no further than the Houston Maria Bonita Cantina or the Asian massage parlors in San Francisco to contemplate the complete ravage of life this $8 billion international industry promotes. I’d honestly rather be dead than in their place.

The End of Oppression?

As I write, I wonder if this world will ever exist without the oppression of women. Even that word, oppression, hardly scratches the surface of what these tactics do to women; they rob part of our soul. There has got to be a word that when said, strikes at the heart of men who commit acts against women – something that implores them to feel what tremendous pain and anguish their actions cause.

At the very least, I’m amazed again and again at the resilience I see in the many beautiful women that surround me near and far. There is a small part of me that understands that even if they rob a bit of your soul, it’s regenerative, like a starfish. We have the power to heal ourselves.

But what can also help it to regenerate are the men who understand it’s not about protecting the women you love – it’s about changing the mindset of the men who don’t love women.

Please share your thoughts on this subject below.

Photo: Daily Mail Online

Last month, a Christian couple in Liverpool was charged with “criminal offense” after a religious dispute with two of their Islamic guests.

The couple, owners of the Bounty House Hotel, and the Muslim guests were apparently having breakfast when a discussion about religion ensued. Although details are scarce, it seems the couple:

…Suggested that Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was a warlord and that traditional Muslim dress for women was a form of bondage.

Ok, certainly offensive, but worth going to jail over?

Seems a little law in the UK called the Public Order Act allows police to arrest people based on offensive comments. The law was enacted, lawyers say, in order to deal with violence and disorder on the streets, not to arrest people having an argument.

Yet police say they were charged due to use of ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words’ that were ‘religiously aggravated’.

Things getting a bit out of control here? It’s hard to know exactly what happened, and the hotel owners obviously have some questionable beliefs about Islam. But going to jail over them? Man, half of America would be in jail if we could get arrested for stupidity.

Freedom of religion, freedom of speech and protection from bodily harm seemed to be getting all jumbled up here. Plus, commentary by the Daily Mail brought up another good point:

It is striking that the Crown Prosecution Service has thought fit to bring this case, when no action was taken to prevent the appalling persecution of Fiona Pilkington, whose disabled daughter was savagely bullied, who called for police help in vain at least 30 times, and who eventually killed herself in despair.

Hmm, makes you wonder what is really going on here.

What do you think about people being arrested for religious offense? Share your thoughts below.

Feature photo: yoshiffles

Eckhart Tolle

Though it shouldn’t come as a surprise, turns out Eckhart Tolle is a threat to all that is good and moral.

Well, at least according to leaders of just about every organized religion out there.

The Canadian magazine Macleans recently ran a feature on the man who some consider “one of the greatest spiritual leaders of our age.”

Other considerations range from heretic, to a mixer of “Hinduism, Buddhism, and New-Age Pop,” to “anti-Christ” (in a beige sweater vest, as the author notes).

What’s his sin? Well, it seems to be one thing essentially, no matter which religious leader you ask. He removes the hierarchical view of God being “above” us, and states instead that God is within each of us. We are all of, and share, the same source, so there is no need to go outside oneself to find connection or peace.

Or, as Mr. Walker, Texas Ranger himself, Chuck Norris had to say:

To me, [Tolle's success] is more evidence of the paradigm shift in our culture from its moral absolute and Judeo-Christian basis to a relativistic world view in which anything goes and everything is tolerated.

Anything goes? Has he read Tolle?

The Purpose of the Now

I’m not sure this commenter on the Macleans‘ piece has either: “Spiritual masturbation. All the good feelings without any intellectual discipline, interpersonal communion, or a perspective informed by tradition or mentorship.”

Tolle’s overall message is to always live in the present moment. To attempt living in the now, it takes extreme discipline. As Ian MacKenzie wrote in his piece, The Traveler’s Guide To Enlightenment, “‘Now’ is what you’re doing at this moment. It is you sitting in your chair, hand on the mouse, pupils reading the words on this screen.”

Are you fully in your body right at this moment, or is your mind somewhere else – thinking about checking Facebook, that annoying thing your friend said earlier today, or contemplating what sex with Eckhart Tolle might be like based on his picture above? (No need to lie, now).

In other words, it’s every day, every second, both within yourself and in connection with others, of not thinking about the past, and not contemplating the future. It means always connecting to the spirit inside of you and all around you.

I hardly consider Tolle perfect, and he certainly is making a chunk of change off of his books, videos and new ET-TV (yes, that’s Eckhart Tolle, not Entertainment Tonight, TV). But as far as I can tell, he has never claimed perfection, or being better than the rest of us; he is simply spreading a message about our own ability to achieve inner peace (a message which can be accessed at the public library for free).

God or Prophet? No. Simple, loving message? Feels more like it.

What do you think of Eckhart Tolle’s message and tactics? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: mfajardo

I know that there are quite a few of us out there that try to stay local when traveling. And by “stay local,” I don’t mean literally staying smack in the middle of town (though that may be part of the agenda).

Rather, I’m saying that many of us like to experience the place we are visiting by eating the local foods, shopping at the local stores, and frequenting local coffee shops and bars.

Enter “Localwashing” – coming soon to a town near you.

Yep, corporations have taken notice of the “shop local” movements happening in countries throughout the world. In a recent post at Utne.com, author Stacy Mitchell notes that HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, has a new tagline: “the world’s local bank.” Ah.

It gets better, though. Probably a few of you have heard about Starbucks closing shops in Seattle in order to reopen them under the local-sounding name, “15th Avenue Coffee and Tea” (sorry, Starbucks, cat’s out of the bag). And the good ole’ southern US grocery chain, Winn-Dixie, just launched a new ad campaign that states: “Local flavor since 1956.”

Here’s my absolute favorite:

The International Council of Shopping Centers, a consortium of mall owners and developers, has poured millions of dollars into television ads urging people to “Shop Local”—at their nearest mall.

Alright, with the growth of ad campaigns that implore us to “shop local” including both the independent local grocery store and the Wal-Mart that carries some local, organic produce, some may wonder what the true difference is for the town in which they are located.

Well, shop at a chain store, and only $13 out of every $100 stays locally, even when they have some local produce, crafts, or clothes. Shop at a local store (which may still have corporate products on their shelves) and $45 out of $100 goes back into the community.

The Traveler’s Conundrum

Photo: Jason Langlois

In the past, we’ve looked at secrets for eating like a local when traveling to a new destination, and the importance of local self-reliance in the “creation of a local economy for food and other essential goods…relying upon traditional knowledge of medicinal plants, herbs, barks, roots, and ferments in health care.”

But what does Localwashing mean to travelers? Sure, this ‘revolution’ is starting out in American cities and suburbs, but as we all know, corporations reach their grubby little hands all over the world. So watch out for those Maharaja Macs at a local Mumbai eatery – you might just have walked into the golden arches cleverly disguised trap.

What do you think about the “Localwashing” movement? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: nattu

Everyone’s favorite traveling mover and shaker, Nomadic Matt, recently wrote about a question that many – no, most – long-term travelers eventually have to face: ‘What in the bejesus are you running away from?’

Matt states:

…For those who make being a nomad a way of life or people who just linger a bit too long before they make that final stretch home, we are accused of running away…People assume that we are simply running away from our problems- running away from “the real world.”

There is certainly an attitude in much of the world that travel is for fun and should be enjoyed as a break, but sooner than later, you need to ‘get back to work.’ If for some reason you decide that you want travel to be your work, then, well, you’re a) not taking responsibility for something, b) a trust fund baby, c) lazy and incompetent, or d) all three rolled into one.

This is certainly a topic we’ve explored from many different angles here at BNT. As Josh Kearns waxes poetic in The Tao Of Vagabond Travel, Western culture in particular insinuates the importance of “getting somewhere in life” (i.e. becoming a professional of some sort that makes a decent wage), and that unfortunately, very few people believe that experiencing life and its beauty is worthy enough in and of itself.

Travel Envy

Fact is, long term travel is not easy, nor is it something that many people can withstand. As Matt adds:

People may want to travel, tell you they envy what you do, wish they could do the same thing but really, they don’t. They are simply fascinated by a lifestyle so outside the norm.

Or, as Cameron Karsten points out in his piece, 10 Things To Learn About Yourself When Traveling Alone, to travel sometimes means taking on greater responsibility, something that not everyone is ready to do: “To take one’s life within one’s hands and have the freedom and maturity to mold it into shapes, forms and experiences of one’s desires is to embrace (responsibility)…(which) provides us with the power to change.”

Don’t forget, travel can sometimes be more healing than staying at home, as I pondered in Healing a Broken Heart Through Travel.

But, there is an important distinction between two types of travelers, as F. Daniel Harbecke notes is his piece, Response: Would You Be A Perpetual Traveler Or World Citizen? The perpetual traveler “discards the sense of home…for a more profound sense of privacy or non-affiliation,” while the world citizen “sees the entire planet as home, and one’s citizenship as only a historic formality.”

Neither one is better than the other, but both help in defining the ‘why’ of the long-term traveler – some people are not made to stay in one place. Something deep within calls them to roam the Earth, and no manner of guilt, skepticism or attempted coercion will persuade this person otherwise.

And why should they?

What are other reasons that long-term travel does not necessarily mean running away? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: the euskadi 11’s photostream

The moment we stepped off the bus, my panic set in. No, I take that back – the moment I looked out the window as the bus pulled to a stop in Tunduma, the panic set in.

We should have arrived in Lusaka, Zambia about four hours prior. Instead, we left Dar, Tanzania two hours late, and were stopped by the police every 70K along the way. That means we made it to the border crossing way, way after closing.

So now, two white, American girls (we were 23 at the time, so I’m not quite sure I can say “women”) and a bus full of Tanzanians and Zambians had to find our way to an accommodation for the night. Guess who the crowd of locals outside the bus went after?

This memory, among others, makes me identify with what author Lynne Sharon Schwartz is apparently referring to in her book, Not Now, Voyager (I have yet to read it): travel torture. We often talk about the wonders of travel, our amazing and beautiful experiences, how it changes us and makes us better people – all of which is true.

But, there are also the flight delays and cancellations, (hopefully) getting through customs, having all of your money stolen, or being ditched in the middle of the Zambian bush with only the hope that some sort of transport would come your way say, in the next two weeks (yeah, second night of the aforementioned bus ride).

And often, our memory projects those challenges onto the big screen, warping them into something that was painful yes, but beautiful and exciting too.

An article in the Boston Globe has Schwartz quoting the French philosopher Albert Camus: “There is no pleasure in traveling, and I look upon it more as an occasion for spiritual testing.” A spiritual growth test for each of us individually, no doubt.

But are we testing ourselves and the places we visit in a more negative fashion?

Consuming Other Cultures

Schwartz continues:

Preferring to stay put is practically disreputable in a cultural climate that prizes mobility, haste, multitasking and optimum consumption of sights, sounds, and experiences. An economy rooted in the culture of greed must place a premium on consuming rather than producing anything, even experience. . . . To keep the whole machinery running and growing, we need to consume other cultures at the great mall of travel, and we grow bloated on them.

Ah, yes, not the side of spiritual travel at which most of us would like to take a look. We ponder the environmental affects of air travel, the good and the bad of tourism economies throughout the world, but rarely the personal implications of our addiction to new experiences.

The way in the West is certainly to go out and consume rather than sit, ponder, and produce.

My drive to see the world and experience other cultures took me to Zambia all those years ago, but was it also the desire to escape from myself? Maybe there was a deeper lesson for me in the middle-of-nowhere bus drop than I realized.

Do you agree with Schwartz’s negative interpretation of travel? Share your thoughts below.

Small firecrackers play a role in Diwali / Photo: sowri

On Saturday, India celebrates Diwali, their traditional New Year’s, after several days of festivities. It is also known as the ‘Festival of Lights’, because homes are lit with candles, string lights, and clay pots with oil and wicks, which signify the good over evil within an individual.

I was lucky enough to be a part of a big ole’ Diwali celebration three years ago, when Non-Stop Bhangra celebrated their anniversary and this Indian holiday the same night. We danced onto the stage carrying tea lights as an example of the tradition, but I’m sure people were upset we didn’t have any sweets to throw into the audience.

Here’s a clip of that night (minus the bhangra music, unfortunately):

Here are a couple of things worth mentioning that happened to celebrate Diwali this week:

• Seems Dhanteras, which comes right before Diwali, is considered an auspicious time. So Jaspal Singh, along with about 25,000 other people in India, waited until this day in order to buy new cars, since it is the day “considered best to buy metal goods.” I’m guessing those auto dealers are happy.

• Even President Obama got his Hindi-celebration-on, being the first sitting President to observe the holiday by having a pah-ty in the East Wing of the White House. Wonder if he waved his hands in the air, waved ‘em around like he just didn’t care?

• Ok, this wasn’t this week, but who could forget Michael explaining Diwali to us via song on Season 3 of The Office? If you need a little reminder, check out the video.

Light a candle or two on Saturday, the official end of the holiday, to join in the fun.

Happy Diwali!

Community Connection

Check out Shreya Sanghani’s guide to 10 Indian Customs To Know Before Visiting India, and Eva Holland’s review of the popular niche travel book, Wanderlust and Lipstick for Women Traveling to India.

Many thanks goes out to Matador member Linda Golden for alerting us that ‘The Colbert Report’ referenced a BNT article on last night’s episode.

The piece, Overweight Charged For Second Seat On Airplanes: Is “Fatism” To Blame?, was shown as part of Colbert’s introduction of Professor Amy Farrell. Farrell is the author of the forthcoming book, Fat Shame.

Colbert talked about the current US healthcare bill, which has an amendment that mandates lower premiums for people who lose weight. Along with the baby who was denied health insurance for being too large and Ralph Lauren’s dismissal of an “overweight” model, Colbert showed the BNT article and asked,

Oh, they [the overweight] can’t use the same seat as everyone else? You know who that reminds me of? Rosa Parks. [Looks left off stage] Oh, she’s thin? Then why couldn’t she sit up front?

Here’s the clip (article is shown at 1:31):

Canadian visitors can watch the clip here.

Unfortunately, Colbert grabbed the trademark for “weightism.” Damn you, Colbert! Then I’m trademarking “fatism.” Oh, that’s already taken, too.

Any time you see BNT in the news, please share it with us. We really appreciate it!

Photo: ItzaFineDay

A recent post by Abdul Sattar, entitled A Defense of Muslim Activism, got me thinking.

Sattar’s post does not follow along the lines implied by the title. In my mind, he was going to give reasons of how Muslims can and should be activists in this post 9/11 world without being categorized as terrorists.

While noting that some believe, “Islamic activism today is just the tattered remnant of political movements long since gone awry,” his focus instead falls on the idea that some believe to be an activist is inherently anti-spiritual.

In terms of Islam, Sattar notes:

One can easily glean from the Qur’an, Sunnah, and the legacy of our scholars that our primary purpose on this Earth is to worship Allah and die in a state knowing that our salvation is supported by sincere intentions and efforts…we should live as if we are “wayfarers or travelers on the way.”

Take out Allah, insert God, Buddha (with a different sort of afterlife), or Mohammed, and you have the basic premise of most of the world’s religions – worship an entity and live meekly in this life to gain riches after. No room for activism there.

And yet, most wars throughout history have been based on religion (at least outwardly), right? Some might consider war as an activist activity; it is the extreme version of standing up for one’s rights. So the ‘extreme’ activist – who will fight, mutilate, or kill – can certainly be seen as anti-spiritual.

But what about the activists who, because of their religious beliefs, ‘fight’ for the rights of the oppressed, mishandled, and misjudged?

While the ultimate goal in Islam is to worship Allah on the way to the afterlife, Sattar argues for activism, noting, “the Muslim traveler is obligated to strive to prevent injustice when he sees it.”

The real question is, where is the line of activism in the name of religion or spirit, and who draws it?

Do you think that many activists go too far? Share your thoughts below.

Feature photo: ItzaFineDay

Photo: Smoobs

I must admit, when I heard about the two deaths and 22 hospitalized at a sweat lodge near Sedona, Arizona this past weekend, I readjusted my long-held desire to be a part of one.

But reading further into the specifics of what happened made me, well, not so surprised that it happened.

First, as Joseph Bruchac, an expert on Native American traditions and author of The Native American Sweat Lodge: History and Legends noted in the New York Times article about the accident, the number of people taking part in the ceremony at Angel Valley – 55 to 65 – far surpassed the 8 to 12 at a typical sweat lodge.

Bruchac said, “It means that all these people are fighting for the same oxygen.”

Also, a great deal of preparation goes into traditional sweat lodges, and they are usually made of “willow branches and covered in canvas or animal skins, and are not meant to be air-tight.” Authorities at the Angel Valley lodge noted this sweat lodge was covered in plastic and blankets.

A typical ceremony usually lasts an hour, and this one had clocked in at two hours before the organizers called 911.

Understanding the Process

This sweat lodge was led by self-help guru James Arthur Ray. His bio notes he:

…has studied and been exposed to a wide diversity of teachings and teachers – from his collegiate learning and the schools of the corporate world, to the ancient cultures of Peru, Egypt and the Amazon.

Photo: Jeff Kubina

If you take a look at his picture, it’s pretty clear that Ray is not Native American. I have no doubt that he has learned quite a bit about different cultures in his travels, as we all do.

But I have to question, is it right for a white man to lead a Native American ceremony?

After I read the book Coyote Medicine, I understood the complexities of building and running a proper sweat lodge, and how a shaman passes this information on to a shaman-in-training.

As Julie notes in the comments section on RightJuris.com:

Native Americans and ONLY Native Americans understand the entire process of a sweat lodge ceremony. This is their spirituality and their culture, NOT something we can easily adopt nor can we even begin to understand without extensive training BY a Native American traditionalist, and I mean EXTENSIVE.

Finally, the cost of the retreat is a bit suspect: $9,695 per person. On his site, Ray says participants will “experience a new technologically-enhanced form of meditation that creates new neurological pathways.”

While I do believe the last part is possible, a true Native-American ceremony would not cost that much. And unfortunately, deaths and injuries resulting from Ray’s negligence will make many condemn sweat lodges in general, and this will certainly hinder people from developing any “new neurological pathways.”

What do you think about a person who is not Native-American performing a traditional sweat lodge ceremony? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Source

The picture above is a popular photo that made its way around the internet this week. It was titled, Against All Prejudices.

Cute and happy photo, for sure. But what does the title imply, exactly? That those with mohawks are usually racist? That small children are usually homophobic?

Enjoying the photo for their winning smiles, excitement, and human connection is one thing. But giving it a title that seems to say, “Look, we can all get along if the punk and the black kid can!” is another.

The stereotypical generalizations based on appearance here are endless, and most of the people on the “fringe” and kids I’ve known in my life tend to fall on the low-end of bigotry. Give me a photo of Joe Wilson excitedly handing the Nobel Peace Prize over to Obama with that title instead.

But, as usual, there is a sparked debate about the picture over at Reddit. One person notes:

I believe he was making the point that this flies in the face of OTHER people’s prejudices, not necessarily the characters in the picture.

Maybe that is the point. Or maybe both views can be true.

What do you think about the photo’s title? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: swimparallel

Drinking alcohol tends to be a large part of many traveler’s itineraries.

Ok, maybe not ‘itineraries,’ per se, but checking out a local pub or expat bar usually plays into the travel experience.

Sometimes, drinking is taken entirely too far, and ruins a trip or friendships. Other times, it simply creates too many missed hikes or day trips because of those gosh-darn hangovers that make you want to hurl at the thought of rolling out of that uncomfortable hostel bed.

So here we go with a new study that lets us know if you don’t drink alcohol, you’re more than likely to be depressed. Even more so than a heavy drinker, apparently. Alrighty, then.

And it’s not just depression, no no. It’s also anxiety disorders.

When they try and break down the “why,” it seems that most people who completely abstain from alcohol either have some extreme illness like chronic fatigue, or are former alcoholics, both of which are more prone toward “melancholy.”

Added to that is “the most powerful explanation”:

…It seems to be that abstainers have fewer close friends than drinkers, even though they tend to participate more often in organized social activities. Abstainers seem to have a harder time making strong friendship bonds, perhaps because they don’t have alcohol to lubricate their social interactions.

Yes, alcohol is a lubricant. When traveling, this can be especially helpful in sliding your way into a new situation where you don’t know anyone (especially when traveling alone). But really, abstainers have a harder time making strong friendship bonds? We clearly can’t be trusted to connect without a little tequila (or vodka, or red wine…).

I wonder if this is more an issue of self-acceptance and self-determination more than anything else. Not to say I don’t ever partake in a little drinky-drinky myself…

Do you think alcohol is a necessary social lubricant while traveling? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: jurvetson

Here’s a new way to sell India: it’s like boot camp.

Instead of your regular calming, relaxing (or at least eye-opening) yogic/meditative/slum experience in the country of Buddha, the Taj Mahal, and Bollywood, apparently the latest way to get Westerners into the country is to make it seem as if they have signed up at Gold’s Gym.

Just the purgation/core strengthening route instead of a step class.

In a recent article on the Jakarta Post site entitled, Nature’s Boot Camp, the author notes:

The average day begins at 5:30 a.m. to the sound of bhajan…once up, patients participate in yogic kriyas – a process that induces controlled vomiting or purgation of the nasal, stomach and intestinal pipes…those prone to migraines are encouraged to insert a thin piece of rubbery wire through the nose and out the mouth. Asthma patients often swallow a thin muslin-like cloth down the esophagus to remove blockages. Others drink repeatedly a mixture of hot water, salt and cardamom.

Sounds like a lovely time.

Yes, liquid-based diets are to follow, along with whirlpool baths and your everyday enema or colonic. But make sure to enjoy the “pretty setting with benches to view the sunset over a pristine lake and lots of greenery infused with rare species of migratory birds.”

Ok, given, I actually know people that have gone to India for such cleanses, Panchakarma’s and the like. I’ve been through similar cleanses myself, and believe in their curative effects for the sick.

But really? This is how they are trying to sell India now? How many desperate-to-be-skinny/ “pure” wanna-be famous people are salivating over their assistant’s computer right now?

I will make sure to not spend $1500 for an Executive Single Room or $8,000 for a Deluxe Hut a day to either a. see India, or b. do something that would cost me less than $100 for an entire cleanse at home. No thank you.

What do you think about packaging places in India as “nature’s boot camp”? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: mugley

Time for some controversial religious and political talk from the left:

Frank Schaeffer is a reformed fundamentalist Christian who still considers himself a Christian today. But when it comes to a poll stating that 35% of people in New Jersey believe that Obama may be the Antichrist (the numbers look a bit lower here), he notes “that within our culture, we have a subculture which is literally a 5th column of insanity…can Christianity be rescued from Christians?”

He also believes that as a former life-long Republican, the party must not continue to “cater to the village idiot” (in his words, fundamentalist Christians).

I get where Schaeffer’s anger, his inflammatory speech, and his reactions are coming from. I can’t watch news on TV for fear of a Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly popping into view and just pissing me off from the first moment they open their mouth. After seeming to bridge some of our differences in the US with Obama’s sweep in the elections, it now feels as if America has become more fractionalized, and fundamentalist on several fronts, than ever before.

At least if you look at corporate media and polling.

Reality Or Reactionary?

Nosing around the internet, I came across such sites as catholicanarchy.org, written by a doctoral student in theology, Michael J. Iafrate. He covers issues from a religious perspective that are close to my own heart, like the unconscionable reality that corporations get away with everything because they are considered a “person” in the eyes of the law.

And what about the activist church/organization Los Angeles Catholic Worker? To them:

If we too desire to become citizens of His Kingdom, then we must live our lives in proximity to and in solidarity with those who are at the margins of our society…[we] regularly offers prophetic witness in opposition to war-making and injustice.

I can certainly get on board with that perspective. Plus, there’s the Christians for Peace in El Salvador, a faith-based organization that bridges the poor communities in El Salvador with ones in the US, and “is politically non-partisan, committed to nonviolence and supportive of the faith journeys of one another.”

Photo: gnuckx cc0

There is no doubt in my mind that there are Fundamentalist Christians who believe Obama is the Antichrist, that all women should stay in the kitchen, and that people like me are going straight to hell really, really soon.

There always have been fringes of every belief and religion, and there always will be.

Yet, is the loud, Fundamentalist Christian sector really becoming the majority, or is that what mainstream media would like us to believe? Is this viewpoint necessary to keep the news sector churning, and to keep us in fear, whether on the left or the right?

It is worth taking a look at the people who surround you, the continued growth of Christian organizations who are social-justice, food-justice, and eco-justice oriented, and getting news from mainstream media in little sound bites instead of heaping spoonfuls before you come to a conclusion.

And, by the way, I’m not a Christian, Fundamentalist or otherwise, if you have yet to guess.

Do you think that Fundamentalist Christians are really taking over the religion, or is it a media ploy? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: NeoGaboX

Yoga teacher Hilary Carter began to notice how often she would look at the clock and notice it was 11:11. Or 2:22. Or 3:33.

Since she was already the type to be interested in such “coincidences,” she decided to start following the numbers, à la The Celestine Prophecy, to see where they would lead her.

After beginning to compile “past lives, premonitions, and number signs,” she found herself purchasing an ancient convent in Spain in order to renovate it. As Hot Indie News noted, after her purchase:

First, her financial backer died, then her first builder ended up in prison and the second builder became paralyzed in a tragic accident – and all this only scratches the surface.

Carter’s book, The 11.11 Code: Secrets of the Convent, goes deeper into the adventures that entailed, but also invites each of us to contemplate our own destiny, and the signs available to direct the process.

Facing One’s Destiny

I remember a time in my life where the idea of such signs, connections, and karma didn’t touch the surface of my brain. I’m sure some beliefs around destiny were hidden somewhere deep inside of me, but they were nowhere near my intellectual comprehension.

Photo: whatmegsaid

And yet now, I live by signs and connections (well, most of the time anyway). Doing so certainly makes life more interesting, more full, and makes me feel, well, more connected.

I think when I’m traveling, I see it most – and can imagine that many of you would agree. That’s part of why it can be so hard to come “home” sometimes, to get back into a daily routine that seems to lack spark, intrigue, or any sense of a life force.

New places provide a sensory overload that is stimulating and satisfying, and people that often think completely opposite from you (or exactly like you, which is even more amazing).

But what if you brought that feeling and view point back home into your daily life? That’s certainly part of what we try and keep alive here at Matador, and debate on how exactly to fulfill this quest.

Often, you have to radically alter your conceptions and perceptions of “home” and whether money or career will dictate your life. Yet this process is powerful in and of itself, and really, isn’t life about shifting, changing, and getting better?

Sometimes, all it takes is to “let go” in whatever way you personally need to. As my friend Amar says, “I take life where it takes me.” Now, that’s a motto to live by.

Do you live by following signs in your life, or do you think it’s a bunch of new-age bunk? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: LA Times

The photo to the right certainly represents a open-minded, poly-religious, world traveler’s dream wedding (or worst logistical nightmare?).

Yep, that’s an East Coast Rabbi, Catholic priest from California, and a European Shinto priest who gathered in Greece to unite a Sephardic Jew groom and a bride with both Shinto and Catholic roots. Pretty darn unique.

Both wanted to please their traditional parents, but also the traditions alive within themselves.

Made me think about all of you out there that have connected with and honored people of different races, creeds, and socioeconomic statuses, and yet remained proud of your own. And just how beautiful that is.

Whether we are debating the nature of love between a white man and Asian woman, or the spiritual implications of a polyamorous relationship, it seems we still can agree that sometimes, love just conquers all.

And maybe it is simply love that we need to bridge different religions. As the groom noted, “Religion should unite people, not separate them. And after all, aren’t all religions one?”

Do you have a story of a religiously-complicated relationship that broke through the barriers, either your own or someone else’s? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: annnna.

We previously talked at BNT about what it might mean when white people take on heritages other than their own.

But I found dialogue on Reddit that delves into an area where we just scratched the surface. Someone posed the question, “What is white culture?”

The purpose and responses of that post happens to be about Glenn Beck’s comment that Obama has “hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Some of the readers believe Beck’s statement essentially implies that white culture is American, Christian and conservative. Other people say that there is no such thing as white culture, that culture in fact comes from:

Where you live, how you were raised, and the collective traditions, beliefs, and prejudices of the people around you.

What is Culture?

While making fun of white people can be well, funny, it got me thinking, is the term “white culture” even valid in the world? I’m taking this question beyond the borders of the US and even other white-majority countries.

Does being born white in Africa mean that a person is culturally linked to someone in Canada? Probably not, unless their family came from there.

But what if you paired the UK and the US, who share a language (minus accents), cultural heritage, and at least on a world stage, have remained political allies? Does the rest of the world think there exists, to some extent, a culture of shared whiteness between the two?

I can think of a lot of people from both the UK and the US who would not concur, though I can see how people in other parts of the world very much connect the two.

But I’m not sure if at this point in history, we can say that culture is at all based on race. While for some cultures, such as the Aboriginal people and South Asians, a large percentage of the people are still not of mixed races, on the whole, our world has intermeshed in a big way.

And place is also key – where you settle often ends up being the “culture” you take on.

This is not to say that culturally-based racism isn’t alive and thriving, or that keeping cultural history alive is not important; far from it. It is only to say that I’m not sure definitive lines can be placed according to race any longer.

And I’m not sure that we should ever listen to anything Glenn Beck has to say. But really, that’s another point entirely.

Do you think there is such a thing as “white” culture? Share your thoughts below.

Community Connection

Check out Matador Night’s Editor Kate Sedgewick’s piece White Privilege – Can You See it? to test your view of whiteness throughout the world. Don’t forget to read Buster’s illuminating piece (and the comments that came with it) about racism in Russia: Should People of Color Go To Russia?

Photo: kudumomo

This headline might make some of you worry:

Pro-Life Activism Adapting And Thriving.

What made me choke on my tea was the first line of the article: “The number one cause of death in the United States is abortion.” And here I thought it was heart disease.

Ok, I’ll give them that the purported number of abortions a year is higher than people who die of heart attacks (whether everyone would concur that abortion is a cause of death is another matter). I can’t say I agree with their statement that “radically pro-abortion politicians now control the executive and legislative branches of the [US] federal government.”

Last time I checked, the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Partial-Birth Abortion Plan in 2008 that President Bush had signed into law in 2003. But while the Bulletin article begins with a decidedly political tone, this “adapting and thriving” of pro-life activists has less to do with politics and standing outside of abortion clinics, screaming at doctors, and more to do with nonviolence.

It seems the group 40 Days for Life is bringing the issue back to what they consider, at its root, a spiritual question. And using spiritual, non-violent action is how they are getting their message across.

Using “prayerful, non-confrontational witness,” the group asks people to pray and fast for an end to abortion where they live, to keep vigil outside a local abortion clinic, and to get the message out to a wider community for 40-days, which many Christians can relate back to Jesus’ time in the desert.

Pro-Choice Vs. Open Conversations

As probably most of you who have read other articles I have written might imagine, I am pro-choice. But I have to say, with the exception of the fact that this group employs the tactic of going door-to-door, I’m actually impressed with their approach.

I’m certainly more willing to listen to what they have to say as compared to when they shout, craft derogatory signs, or use violence to promote a supposed nonviolent purpose.

Using prayer and vigils are actual nonviolent approaches, and allows everyone to take part in the conversation, unlike the comparable religious billboards that imply atheists are murderers and t-shirts that say Muslims are devil-like. And isn’t that what we’ve been hoping for?

Maybe this approach even means there is the possibility of people listening on both sides of the debate.

Or maybe I’m completely deluded.

What do you think about 40 Days for Life’s approach to spreading their message? Share your thoughts below.

Ninth grade partying / Photo: Ashley Sebrell

I spent this past weekend surrounded by old high school friends. One was getting married (the one sitting in the chair in the photo to the right), and his wedding brought quite a few of our old “group” together.

There is something special about seeing people that knew you way back when. Probably the more time that passes, and the older a person gets, the more special it seems.

You tend to look back on the good times more than the challenging ones. At the rehearsal dinner, I began to think about those days of field parties in the country, fast food lunches, and…bouts of drastic depression. Ok, some of the bad stuff crept back in.

I’ve changed in innumerable ways since then (Frosty’s are no longer a part of my vocabulary, and bawling for hours on end is thankfully an occurrence of the past), yet, unlike the usual dwelling followed by patting myself on the back for how much I’ve “evolved,” this thought process stopped abruptly. I realized I no longer needed to think about how much I’ve changed.

Why was this the case? For the last 10 years, I’ve been trying to prove (to myself more than anyone else) how far I’ve come, how much more worthy I am. So what really is so different?

My spirit.

The Importance of Belief

I now believe that connecting to our spirit is the key to really and truly falling in love with ourselves.

It’s often hard to see that many of us look outside of ourselves for that blessing of self worth. We’re pretty much taught from day one that what counts is what other people think and feel about us, so who is really to blame here? Plus, for the most part, we can’t even see that this is our approach.

A long conversation with one friend about his own struggle with finding himself, and his worries over what we remembered and thought about his antics in high school, forced that click of recognition.

l now feel in my bones something that has been said to me time and time again over those last 10 years: to have others look at you with appreciation, you must first appreciate yourself. And the way to attain that appreciation for the self and connect to spirit is to gain some understanding of all those other people out there roaming the earth.

Traveling Spirit

Three months after I graduated from college, I left North Carolina for California. I didn’t know why or what I was going to do; I just knew I had to get out of there.

A much more refined (and less blurry) group / Photo: Jim Ernst

I can now understand what I thought was a drive in me to explore the “unknown” was simply a gentle, intuitive knowing of a process to find my spirit.

The same is not necessarily true for everyone, though I think the generation I find myself a part of seems to have this drive – or gentle knowing – in droves (just take a quick look around Matador).

We often discuss both inner and outer travel here at BNT. This can mean different things to different people, and really can be found in any direction you look. But how exactly did outer travel help me connect to my spirit?

For me, trekking to new places has been about normalizing myself, in a way. As my friend John put it last weekend, I was “always searching for something.” What was cloaked in self-esteem issues was actually my spirit’s ‘gentle approach’ to essentially making me move my ass.

I was propelled to find out how to feel normal, and even possibly – gasp! – truly appreciated. At the same time, I learned to not worry so much about what others thought (or what I think they thought) about me.

Sharing the Desire for Contentment

Whether glancing around at the expats doting the Globe cafe in Prague, or being the only white woman dancing to old school Michael Jackson at a club in Lusaka, Zambia, I began sensing a pattern of purpose.

The more I travel, the more people I meet, the more I feel at my stomach’s base that we are all just trying to eek out some happiness, contentment, and peace in this life.

I admit, it is still sometimes hard to feel connected in a strong political climate where I don’t agree with what the majority (or vocal minority) want. But if you get to the root, even the “enemy” is just searching for a little happiness, contentment and peace in their life, working toward it in the way they know best.

All the places and people I have seen and met, a mere dent in the globe as compared to many of you reading this, led me to return to that place in which I never felt “normal”: home. Only this time, I found myself in full appreciation of those people, my teenage years, and any abnormality I ever felt.

And that, my friends, comes from the power of spirit.

How have you felt returning home after a long journey? Share your thoughts below.

Feature photo: tipiro

Photo: Sue Richards

Ok, so we’ve talked about what the future of travel might look like.

Condé Nast Traveler magazine, on the other hand, decided to recently air out the top five rumors about the future of airline travel.

I must note all of these are much less exciting and futuristic than want we think is going to happen.

Yet in consideration of our hard economic times, and the unfortunate losses that so many corporations are facing daily (’we only made a $999,000,000 surplus last quarter, down from $2 billion last year during the same quarter!’), I think it is our duty to try and help out, at the very least, the airline industry.

I mean, how much can they really be making from charging us for meals, checking in luggage, and cramming in more seats? It really is the only fair thing to do.

Rumor #1: Southwest will fly to Europe

Guess a rumor has been going around that some $99 seats would getcha outta JFK and into Rio. Nice thought, but no dice.

But really, with jokes like, “Pushing the light-bulb button will turn your reading light on. However, pushing the flight-attendant button will not turn your flight attendant on,” I’m willing to pay at least $150.

C’mon, Southwest, then you too could charge us for peanuts. Really, I bet you could get $5 a pack on one of those eight-hour flights.

Rumor #2: Airlines are planning “standing room” seats

If they make it mandatory to check all of your luggage while charging you $50 per piece, there will be plenty of room in the overheard compartments for small women and children.

Also, get some good, sturdy straps and the plane’s wings suddenly become another 30 seats (just make sure there are small TVs installed the length of the wing to keep people entertained). It’s a win-win-wing situation.

Rumor #3: Ryanair is going to install pay toilets on its planes

Photo: Sapphireblue

Soon enough, flying will be just like being about to pee in your pants in Europe and not having €.50 to get into the toilet. Seems this one hasn’t fully been dashed yet, so you can keep your hopes up. Anyone have change for $100?

Rumor #4: A 1,000-passenger commercial jetliner is on the drawing board

Sweeeet! If they could just squeeze in a few more, it could be like an Indian wedding! We’ll have sari-wrapping in one corner of the plane, and bhangra dancing in the other. Maybe even a pig-on-a-spit to give it a little Southern flair?

And we can all be dancing, eating, and laughing as we lift off 50 feet in the air and then crash into the end of the runway.

Rumor #5: Richard Branson will install casinos/discos/health clubs/[fill in blank here] aboard his new planes

Traveler notes that, “Branson has also been a master of smirky references to the mile-high club when unveiling plans for ‘double bed’ suites.” Now that Virgin megastores are on the downward skid, wonder if he’s having more trouble getting some and has to live vicariously through his clientele?

Maybe they can just charge double when people would like to ‘go to the bathroom’ together? Don’t let him down, my friends!

What other crazy rumors have you heard about the future of the airline industry? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: kevindooley

Uh oh, here we go. Seems a new film on Charles Darwin can’t find distribution in the US, despite opening the Toronto Film Festival and being sold to most other countries in the world.

And guess why they can’t seem to find a distributor in the States?

Because Darwin’s “theories on human evolution are too controversial for religious American audiences,” at least according to the film’s producer.

Ok, I know that there are a good amount of people in the US that don’t necessarily concur with what Darwin had to say. But Hollywood isn’t necessarily known for its conservative ways. Didn’t Bill Maher just do a scathing movie about religion not too long ago?

And I’m not quite sure I agree with this comment:

…US distributors have turned down the film that could cause uproar in a country that, on the whole, dismisses scientific theories of the way we evolved.

Really, “on the whole”? But, this is the Daily Mail, and they certainly enjoy making inflammatory remarks.

Then again, with basic health coverage for all US citizens continuing to be labeled as “Socialism,” and that word being worse that the Devil here on Earth, maybe they’re right.

Do you think that on the whole, the US does not believe in evolution, or is this just a media ploy? Share your thoughts below.

“Looking forward, thinking back”/Photo: HAMED MASOUMI

Whether you are a part of the world of travel, finance, or simply a human being in the Western Hemisphere, today certainly marks a tragic day in history.

Around the internet, you’ll find all sorts of pieces related to that fateful day in 2001, all the way from how Obama is handling terrorism to an extremely poignant recount of being in New York the morning of 9/11 by Matador’s own Tom Gates.

Here is a blurb from a 9/11 conversation on Reddit which asks, What were you doing on September 11th, 2001 when the planes hit?:

I called my girlfriend at the time and told her to stay at home because some bad stuff was going down. I made it to work in time to see the second plane hit the towers. Within hours, my company had 6 million dollars worth of software contracts canceled. A week later, 90% of the company was laid off. Over the next 7 years my rights were systematically destroyed, billions were wasted on an unjustified war and the name of America was dragged through the mud.

The terrorists won.

You may need to tweak the story a little, but the last sentence describes how many people feel.

Memorial To The Future

Memorials tend to remind us of the past. In essence, that is their purpose, beauty and how we honor innocent lives lost. But what if, along with remembering the horror of what happened, where we were when a tragic experience took place, or the sometimes painful repercussions of that experience, we contemplate all of the other amazing things that have happened since?

My big question for you on the 8th Anniversary of the US 9/11 is: where have you gone? Where have you traveled that you had previously never even contemplated going; what life work have you accomplished that might have once seemed impossible; what love has been brought into your life?

What have you learned about yourself, and the world, in order to make both better?

How have you memorialized lives lost, whether those lives were in New York at Ground Zero, fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, your grandmother, or your 23-year-old friend that died of cancer? Beauty begets tragedy and tragedy begets beauty; what I think counts most is what you are doing with the only moment we are guaranteed: now.

Those who have given their lives willingly or unwittingly wouldn’t want it any other way.

What are some of the amazing things you’ve done since September 11, 2001? Share your experiences below.

Community Connection

Check out Julie Schwietert’s thoughts on last year’s anniversary of 9/11 in “History is ours, and people make history”: Some thoughts on 9/11. And I can’t reiterate enough the importance of reading Tom Gates view of 9/11 in 8:46 am, 9/11 Manhattan.

Photo: badlogik

I will attempt not to stray too far in the direction of ‘political’ in this post, but there will certainly be politics involved.

Mostly US politics in fact, so I will go ahead and apologize to those outside America, or who are trying to stay away from the madness. I’m not here to make anyone’s head explode.

But, there has been quite the ruckus about President Obama’s supposed “socialist agenda” stay-in-school speech being shown in classrooms, which finally occurred yesterday. The Obama administration has also had a tough week with what I see as the forced resignation of Van Jones, the Green Jobs czar, over the fact that several years ago, he signed a petition asking that the Bush administration be investigated for allowing 9/11 to happen.

The specific issues don’t really matter when it comes down to it; there will always be something. For me, it brings up the question of how we, both as a nation, and as a world, plan to ever move forward.

We don’t all have to believe the same things, and we never will, but we need to be respectful of each other in the process, whether the question be about religion, our sexual orientation, or our politics. We are 99.9% genetically identical, and doesn’t that count for something?

Or really, most everything?

Thinking Critically and Repectfully

I was moved by a piece by Terrance Heath on Huffington Post entitled, How To Think. In it, Health talks about a high school teacher he once had named Mr. Harrison. Mr. Harrison was politically conservative and a devout Christian, while Heath was a gay teenager who was reading the The Gnostic Gospels.

Photo: Capture Queen ™

But instead of pushing a particular agenda, this teacher was doing what all teachers should do: showing kids how to think critically, and then make up their own mind.

For example, Harrison was supportive of Heath and other students as they wrote letters to the school board opposing the banning of certain books, even though Harrison didn’t approve of some of the books in question.

To think critically, we must see and hear both sides of the story, and come up with our own truth. This truth may not coincide with the truth of the person next to you, but hopefully in the process, you’ll come to understand, at a least a bit, where they are coming from.

Blogger Munz spends this whole post trying to convince us of Van Jones “socialist” and “communist” roots, which are just so anti-American. I certainly have quite a bit to say about this, having worked in the same social justice circles as Jones. But instead, I’ll just ask, so what?

How many openly racist, sexist, and/or classist conservatives have held office over the years, and are those things that the US was supposedly founded on? No. Can these people still do their job? Probably. Because each and every one of us holds some “extreme” beliefs that other people will not agree with.

Stop Blaming, Start Listening

I’m not trying to blame only the right in America – the left is just as guilty in spouting inflammatory remarks. Same goes for either side of a belief system in just about every country in the world.

Maybe the deeper question here is why, as a world facing economic hardship, fear of persecution on just about all sides, and environmental implications that could easily mean the end for us all – really, really soon – do we continue to have these snide and unapologetic discussions in mainstream media? Why are we burning our brain cells on standing in place?

Critical thinking, and listening on ALL sides, is necessary now more than ever.

What do you think it will take to make the world move forward instead of stand still? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: jcheng

I found myself around two old friends in the past week who are living extremely hectic lives.

One friend is in law school, and barely has a moment to breathe, much less sleep or eat properly.

The other has a four-month-old baby to breastfeed, along with taking care of her 22-month-old, working a couple of night shifts as a nurse, finishing her Masters, and somehow cooking and cleaning.

Yeah…

I watched as they moved frantically around me and thought, “wow, I’m not doing enough in my life.” Even as the law school friend’s head just about hit the table at dinner, and I barely exchanged a word in four days with the friend who is a mother, I berated myself for taking too much time to, well…relax.

And then I thought about what “too much” looked like, and how it made me feel, in my 20s: extremely sick.

What You Love

Erica Johansson’s (not related to Scarlet, as far as I can tell) recent blog, Reminding Myself of What I Love, drove it home even further. Many of us can get caught up in what we see other people doing, and compare ourselves – positively or negatively – to how we perceive them.

Instead, as Erica points out, it feels better (and I believe, gets us further) to remind ourselves of what we love in our life. The best part about her list is the fact that she names pretty simple things, ones most people can do pretty much anywhere in the world. Yoga, reading, writing, music, movies, water, driving, cycling, running, dancing, food, and museums made her cut.

As I sat on a long train ride Saturday, I thought about what would make my list, things I could do on the road as well as at home. This is what I came up with:

• Travel
• Writing
• Dance
• Being connected to others
• Driving a different car than my own
• Balancing food (having a little bit from every type of food, but knowing what feels best to my body to eat)
• Hiking
• Plain old excitement

I could go on, but I’ll stop there. The point of this little exercise, though, is palpable: thinking about what you love in your life takes away the need, or desire, to compare yourself to others.

And isn’t at least one of the points of life to find contentment with what you have?

What makes your list of things that you love? Share your lists in the comments.

Community Connection

Interested in finding out the guilty pleasures of Matador editors? Then check out Travel Guilty Pleasures: What’s Yours? And if you want to employ the simple pleasure of saying “Cheers!” just about anywhere in the world, How To Say “Cheers!” In 50 Languages is your go-to reference.

Photo: Fabian Bromann

I’m assuming most of you reading this believe in evolution, or at least parts of it.

The most interesting aspect of an article I just read on the Daily Galaxy website is that it states evolution, as we have known it, is now obsolete.

Oh, really?

The piece begins with this quote from Freeman Dyson at the Institute for Advanced Study:

Now, after some three billion years, the Darwinian era is over. The epoch of species competition came to an end about 10 thousand years ago when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the planet. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the driving force of change.

This brings up several questions for me (global warming, anyone?), but for the purpose of this post, I’ll stick to author Casey Kazan’s point of reference: the “domestication” of biotechnology will be the driving force of the next 50 years. To some extent, this is already the deeply-embedded case: take a look at food engineering (with the newest scary idea to breed cows that feel no pain), and the continued debate over stem cells.

But the real gist of the article is that cultural evolution, which is not Darwinian in nature, has replaced biological evolution. So what does this mean for the 21st century traveler?

Cultural Interdependence Vs. Separate Identity

Kazan adds:

Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence which we call globalization.

Interesting view, especially if we consider whether it is possible to culturally integrate based on nature vs. nurture. But Kazan once again quotes Dyson, who says, “…the rules of Open Source sharing will be extended from the exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then the evolution of life will once again be communal, as it was before separate species and intellectual property were invented.”

Photo: h.koppdelaney

This information makes me wonder, will the need – or desire – to travel then become obsolete?

If you contemplate that the evolution of man came about from constantly moving to new areas and developing survival mechanisms based on place, if biological evolution is “over,” do we need to keep moving? Or will biotechnology simply bring another place to us?

Part of Kazan’s argument sounds wonderful to me: the holistic interpretation that we are not separate, but instead are all one and interconnected, and that this will extend to how we share and live in a global community.

The other part, though, I must admit I’m afraid of: losing any separate identity, and therefore culture, will negate the need to see other places. We can just conjure up our desired locale based on an antiquated idea that the people of a different place had something to offer us. But these positive differences will no longer be a reality.

Then, we might just long for the past.

What do you think about the “end of evolution” and its implications on travel? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: The Wandering Angel

Is there a common thread between different religions throughout the world?

Of course there is. And there is certainly more than one.

But the one that Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener, author of the new book, Claiming Earth As Common Ground: The Ecological Crisis Through the Lens of Faith, takes a look at is environmental activism.

I have to admit, I’m intrigued about the prospect of religion, science, and environment coming together. Cohen-Kiener, along with being a spiritual leader and author, also heads the Interreligious Eco-Justice Network. In a recent article on the Mother News Network, she claims that:

…The major faith traditions offer not only clear instructions [for taking care of the environment] but also an urgent mandate to do something about them.

She claims that religious leaders the likes of Pope Benedict are on board and are openly discussing the need for conservation. But, she adds, there is also a “trickling up” from the masses to these leaders in the need to be open and honest about environmental degradation.

In 2007, Grist.org published a list of 15 Green Religious Leaders, which included obvious ones such as the Dalai Lama, and maybe the not-so-obvious, like Richard Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. According to the article, Cizik “travels the U.S. spreading the doctrine of ‘creation care,’ a Bible-based understanding of why Christians have a duty to be environmental stewards.”

The Other Side

But, as usual, there are some out there that disagree. Gerald Zandstra, in his piece Religious Leaders and Social Activism: Prophets or Captives? on the Acton Institute website, argues that at least some environmental groups and causes are simply bringing in religious leaders to “inject religious language into a non- (or even anti-) religious agenda.”

Photo: northbaywanderer

The example Zandstra specifies has to do with a project that is attempting to ban PVC-based products in healthcare. He believes this greening project is both secular and based on “an irrational bias against all things ‘artificial’.”

In an even more convoluted take on environmentalism found on the same site, a blog post by Jordan J. Ballor, a Ph.D. candidate in historical theology, entitled, Pro-Consumption and Pro-Environment, states:

Fossil fuels would thus have the created purpose of providing relatively cheap and pervasive sources of energy. These limited and finite resources help raise the standard of living and economic situation of societies to the point where technological research is capable of finding even cheaper, more efficient, renewable, and cleaner sources of energy.

He adds a statement from the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship that says, “A clean environment is a costly good…the tendency among some to oppose economic progress in the name of environmental stewardship is often sadly self-defeating.”

Um, ok. So they are saying we have to essentially wreck the environment in order to save it? That environmental agenda goes along perfectly with the idea that we have to kill people in order to save them in all those “freedom” wars.

Too bad we could have chosen ethanol for our autos back in the early 20th century rather than oil. But, it seems as if most established religious leaders get it…

What do you think about religious leaders taking a stance on the environment? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: inhisgrace

Have to admit, I had a few toxic thoughts this weekend.

First, there was some jealousy of the many friends, acquaintances, and basically everyone surrounding me in Truckee, California who are on their way to Burning Man. This is the first year I really wanted to go, was supposed to perform, and have been living in a town right off the I-80 path to Black Rock City. But I couldn’t afford to go.

Then there was a feeling of being disconnected from one friend, my roommate, and a couple of other people I was hoping to meet up with. Feeling disconnected with one person is doable for me, but these things tend to come in threes, and end up making me feel pretty unhappy.

Yet, toward the end of the weekend, I came across the piece, 10 Ways To Transform Toxic Thoughts by Sandra Ingerman. Aha, right, there is something I can do.

Whether we are on the road or at home, we all face some of those moments or days (or weeks), but without sounding too new-agey (I’m trying hard here), we do have a choice of how to look at things. Sometimes we just need a little prompt to see things in a different light.

In that vain, here are my favorite four ways, from Ingerman’s list, to transform those ugly, unhelpful thoughts:

Breathe Through Your Heart

She says: “Place your hands on your heart and feel your heart moving as you breathe.”

Photo: helgasms!

We often forget both the power of breath and the power of the heart, much less the power of touch (even our own). Put all of those together, and you have a recipe for feeling calmer, safer, and less toxic.

Don’t forget breathing through your stomach. The number one thing that quiets my sometimes extremely loud head is the breath of fire, a kundalini yoga technique.

Breathing at a very fast pace seems to clear out my anxiety and leave my mind soft (yes, you are free to compare it to sex – I have no problem with that).

Express, Don’t Send

One of the issues that I was having this weekend was feeling an acquaintance had some sort of a problem with me, though I had no idea what. I sat with the feeling of anger and general pissed-off-ness (’what did I ever do to him?’), vaguely understanding that hurt lived underneath that anger. Finally, after rolling the situation around in my head for so long that I couldn’t sleep, I realized I had to say something.

I’ve learned that in this life, with my personality, I need to express myself or I will eventually explode in a much less constructive way (to put it mildly). I actually believe most of us need to verbally express our issues, but we are taught we aren’t supposed to, that we need to keep the peace. Yet I wonder if more peace would occur if we actually expressed our feelings more often.

So I want to shift the “don’t send” part of this one to “don’t send negative thoughts and feelings.” Express what you have to say in a respectful and constructive manner. For me this weekend, I started out wanting to write an email saying, “What the hell is your problem with me?” It evolved to asking if there was something that happened which bothered him, as I was feeling hurt by his disregard, and I wanted to clear the air.

Much less toxic.

Connect With Nature

Sometimes, this is easier to do on the road than at home. I know that nature saved me this weekend. Right now, I’m lucky enough to be in a place that is filled with amazing fir trees, so many hikes it would take a lifetime to do them all, and more watering holes (of the lake variety) than most states contain.

Photo: Mike Pedroncelli

I sat by the Truckee River on a warm rock, feet dipped in the cool water, getting my Vitamin D on. It was lovely.

You can’t help but feel better, physically and emotionally, once you get outside in nature. If you don’t have that luxury, try and have a plant or an animal close by – they can also work wonders.

Respond With Love

Ah, yes. The easiest and the hardest thing to do in life: show love. It’s especially hard to show appreciation when someone, or something, has hurt you. And feeling angry, hurt, or upset is completely valid. Just don’t let it take you down.

After fully feeling the pain, it can be really healing to respond with love to whatever has hurt you. It changes the energy of the situation, and probably even the outcome.

If you can’t seem to show love because it feels like the other person doesn’t deserve it, do it for you. Then you get to move on with your life and bring more good people into it.

So I’m sending lots of love to everyone I know and don’t know who is heading to Burning Man, to my roommate, and those I have felt a bit disconnected from. And I’m taking that love along with me to the East Coast. See you guys on the other side!

What are other things a person can do to transform toxic thoughts? Share your ideas below.

Here’s a previously unlikely combination of two of my favorite things, that I’m sure will come together more often in the age of organic açaí-infused energy drinks and late-night yoga jams:

Buddhism and Gangsta Rap. Hells, yeah.

What can the Buddhists say? Recruitment has hit the skids along with the economy. Can always use a llama-turned-woman-in-a-bikini to get the troops motivated.

Go total consciousness Lama Boy.

Community Connection

Buddhists aren’t the only ones who can rap. Southwest Airlines is still keeping it real as Julie Schwietert notes in Southwest Airlines: Still Cool After All These Years. And it’s not just about rap when it comes to Buddhism; alcohol may also be involved, as Ian MacKenzie ponders in Buddha Booze: The Practice Of Mindful Drinking.

Feature photo: utpala ॐ.

Photo: The Gainesville Sun

I don’t take a lot of comfort in the direction we are heading when I read that a 10-year-old wore a shirt to a Florida school proclaiming, “Islam is of the Devil.”

She isn’t the only one. Seems children who attend the Dove World Outreach Center are showing up at school in these kind and loving t-shirts (view the Dove Center’s explanation here).

They are being sent home by school officials when they refuse to change or cover up their apparel.

Free speech comes up against freedom of religion, although district attorneys have said the school is more than likely safe “from a First Amendment standpoint.” The US Supreme Court has ruled several times in favor of schools not allowing speech that may be disruptive to students.

My larger concern is the hate message being espoused to those of other religions by a church “based on the Bible, the Word of God…bring(ing) Godly changes to our entire society.” Especially when the news article notes:

Dove Senior Pastor Terry Jones said no local company “had the guts” to print the shirts.

Guts or anger? One of the member’s daughters, who also wore a shirt to school, said the “statement was aimed at the religion’s beliefs, not its members.” Ah, yes, of course.

I know this is nothing new, with the “shock” religious advertising that seems to have become a daily occurrence, but I have to say I always hope the next generation will be a bit more tolerant. But how can they possibly have tolerance when their parents are instilling these “we’re-just-trying-to-save-the-nonbelievers-from-going-to-hell” messages?

What do you think of this anti-Islam t-shirt? Share your thoughts below.

Indian students in AU protest attacks / Photo: will ockenden

Although I’m under no delusions that racism isn’t alive and well in this world, I have to say I’m a bit surprised about the attacks happening lately to students of color in traditionally white countries.

Between Buster’s piece on Matador Abroad asking Should People of Color Go To Russia?, and a recent article in the Times of India about attacks on Indian students in Australia, the fear reverberating from the ruling class of the past is palpable.

It hardly escapes attention that those being targeted, according to both of these pieces, are students, some of which are working on their Ph.D. To me, it seems like the fact that people of color are being educated to a higher degree than most of the rest of the population is triggering some deep insecurities of being ‘less than,’ which are being acted out with vigilantism.

For both Blacks in Russia and Indians in Australia, the need to tell roommates their whereabouts at all times, be on full alert while taking public transportation, and not be out past a certain time at night certainly makes one feel like a second class citizen.

What Is Being Done About It?

The Times of India tried to come up with a more subdued reason for the prevalence of attacks:

Another possible reason for the attacks against the Indian students could be the fact that they work part-time along with pursuing their studies and travel late in the night, which makes them vulnerable to assaults.

Hmmm. Well, the Victorian Police have started “sensitisation programmes” in order to educate the community about the attacks happening in Melbourne. Also, Buster notes in his article, “most people in Russia are not violent racists.”

While in one way, these are attempts to stem the assaults, I feel like a much stronger message needs to be sent to those initiating the attacks. Unfortunately, that may not come from within these countries, so pressure from the outside – by the media, or your blog posts – might be the way to help keep these students safe.

What can we do to help stop attacks on students of color? Share your thoughts below.

Community Connection

The first week of August was International Blog Against Racism Week, and you can find links to blogs leading the revolution here. And if you think that racism isn’t outwardly tolerated in the US anymore, check out the piece, A “Whites-Only” Pool in 2009?

Photo: Source

Alright, kids: the future is just about here.

A British scientist was recently awarded £100,000 by the Royal Society to develop an invisibility cloak. Yes, really.

It seems the good (mad?) scientist, Professor Ulf Leonhardt, believes he can develop “a material that bends light around itself, making it invisible to the naked eye” in just two short years.

Sweet. Sounds simple enough. Have the cloak simply “grab hold” of light rays so they don’t bounce off into our eyes, which enables us to see objects. Instead, curve the light around the object, basing this approach on Einstein’s theory of curved space. Use the Invisible Woman and Harry Potter as your inspiration. Don’t forget to check with the What the Bleep?! people.

But it seems this type of project has already been in the works for a while. Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have been working on a garment since at least 2008, with funding from the US Military (hmmm). And way back in 2006, Duke University researchers released this video demonstrating the world’s first working invisibility cloak:

My question is, when will that invisibility cloak get me across the globe without having to board a plane?

What do you think about the possibility of an invisibility cloak existing in the next two years? Share your thoughts below.

Community Connection

Interested in the possibility of time travel? Then check out the article, Is Time Travel Possible? Or, if you think we should be already be farther ahead in our travel options, 6 Revolutionary Forms Of Travel That Don’t Exist Yet… But Should will comfort you during the wait.

Photo: Ingorrr

Many of you who tune into BNT on a regular basis are not only travelers who contemplate life’s big questions, but you are also writers who get those questions down on paper (or the 21st century version of paper – blog).

I’m sure many of you have also thought about what roles traveling and writing play in your life. Are they hobbies? Are they parts of your life that get you through the 9-6 job? Are they your life’s purpose?

For most of my life, I wasn’t sure of my purpose, or even if each of us have a particular calling.

I now blame that lack of belief on a system that doesn’t want us to find our calling, unless it is to be a doctor, lawyer, pharmaceutical developer or sales rep, or some other job that fits nicely into the wheel that keeps the market going.

Yet, I also believe we live in a time that more than ever before, there is an underground movement gently nudging everyone to find their own joy through some sort of spiritual practice and connection.

So when I came across a short interview with author Jill Jepson on American Chronicle, I thought about how writing is both a spiritual and sacred process. Jepson recently released her book, Writing as a Sacred Path: A Practical Guide to Writing with Passion and Purpose, where she “delves into the practices of four great spiritual vocations—that of the shaman, warrior, mystic and monk.”

Using Intuition to Access Creativity

Photo: Temari 09

The book shares an intuitive approach to writing, using myth, meditation, and ritual to find, or ‘get at,’ the creativity hidden deep inside of each of us.

Sometimes, it is hard to access this creativity when we constantly have to be in our minds (and being on the computer and millions of different websites a day keeps us up there).

Even when we are traveling, attempting to see all the sights – and hit all the nightclubs – keeps us disconnected from this inner knowing. And when we are at home, ideas start drying up; inspiration is, well, lacking. We get frustrated and hit a wall…then, nothing.

But if we can remember there are tools, sacred and centuries-old ones at that, which can help us get over, under, or around that wall, than we can ease ourselves out of that frustration. And, more importantly, we can move away from the question, “Am I really capable of doing this?”

Jepson adds:

Keep writing. I know that sounds simplistic, but I really feel persistence is the key to success at writing. It is at least as important as talent and luck, and more essential than connections. Many writers fall by the wayside because they can´t deal with the rejection—or with the many hours of hard work writing requires. It´s vital to learn how to deal with frustration and disappointment and get back to your keyboard or paper.

So if travel writing, or writing in general, is your calling, don’t give up. Get back on that horse as many times as you need to, meditate on what might be blocking you, and share your experiences with others – the community you build will take you where you need to go, and keep you inspired.

Do you have a recommendation on how to stay spiritually connected to your writing and get through those blocks? Share your thoughts below.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert / Photo: jurvetson

I recently learned they are filming a movie version of the much-loved spiritual travel memoir, Eat, Pray, Love.

Have to admit, as soon as I saw it is a big Hollywood affair with Julia Roberts as the star, I cringed.

For those who haven’t read the book, author Elizabeth Gilbert goes on a spiritual-quest-of-sorts to Italy, India, and Indonesia after surviving a painful divorce. Many people have been inspired by both her travels and the lessons she learned along the way.

I have no doubt that Gilbert will fair well monetarily from the big screen version of her book. But I’m afraid that the authenticity, and well, spirit, might be sucked right out of it. Hey, that’s Hollywood’s forte.

Turns out I’m not the only one who is worried, though this group has much more at stake than I do. According to an article on Yahoo! India, there are “concerns among Indian yogis and Hindu leaders about whether the film will portray Hinduism and yoga authentically.”

The leader of the Universal Society of Hinduism, Rajan Zed, is a bit worried that the movie will get Hinduism wrong once again. With Mike Myers’ recent film Love Guru, who can blame him?

Misrepresentation of Religion and Land

There is also the possibility of the misrepresentation of the country often thought of as synonymous with Hinduism – India. For some, even Slumdog Millionaire was a much more a “foreigners’ concept” which, in actuality, “demeans” the country, rather than being a celebration of its people.

Of course, there will be some who will think the film version of Eat, Pray, Love, is a great adaptation, and others who will believe that the production got it all wrong.

But as Zen added:

The people of India will be anxious to see how perfectly Roberts does her job of cleaning ashram floors as a part of her devotional duty, trying to recite 182- verse Sanskrit chant, and going through grueling hours of meditation, while being feasted on by mosquitoes.

It certainly will be interesting to see how much time the film gives to this part of Gilbert’s trip.

Do you think Hollywood will do justice to Elizabeth Gilbert’s book? Share your thoughts below.

Feature photo: Emuishere Peliculas

Photo origin

Thing is, no matter where you go in the world, this is what most people at help desks are thinking.

So beware about those questionable questions now.

Know a link for another funny travel sign? Share it below.

Community Connection

Revisit the signs that signaled America (supposedly) wanted change with Artists For Obama: Signs of Change From Across America, and don’t forget about the The #1 Road Sign You Do Not Want To See.

Feature photo: aturkus

“Gay Liberation” sculpture, NYC / Photo: Tony the Misfit

As people in the US continue to debate over whether or not two people who love each other tremendously, but are the same sex, should be allowed to marry, a new survey shows that gays may be more religiously devout than their non-gay counterparts.

The Barna Group, apparently a well-known evangelical pollster, surveyed 9,000 gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans and found that 70% describe themselves as Christian, with 60% saying their faith is “very important” in their lives.

David Gibson of Politics Daily added:

…Both anecdotal evidence and some research shows that gays and lesbians who are involved in their churches and denominations are often more committed to the church and more involved in ministry than their straight brethren.

Scott Thumma of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research has been studying gays in churches since the 1980s, and says that he has found gay congregants in every denomination, even evangelical and Mormon congregations.

What are some of the reasons for the stronger showing of faith? Gibson noted a few possibilities, including the desire to “avoid the risk of eternal punishment,” or the draw to minister to others because of their own experiences, which brings in the Christian ideals of forgiveness, redemption, and acceptance.

There is also the theory that once a person has discerned one call from God, they are more adept at understanding God’s call to ministry.

No matter the reason, it certainly makes me wonder if conservative, straight churchgoers will continue to call gay people heathens. This survey seems to throw that insult out the window.

What do you think about the survey’s findings? Share your thoughts below.

Photo: Ed-meister

More than one of us have heard a grandparent or elder say, “Back in the good old days…”

What surprised me is when I began to utter these words, about days that came before I my existence was even a contemplation. I think it is a by-product of studying alternative health, and more specifically, ancient medical and spiritual practices.

I think believing the Eastern spiritually-inclined of the past kinda knew better than we do, or were at least more tuned in than we are, is part of my generation’s burden. We have much more access to Eastern ideals than ever before, and spirit beyond Christianity has infiltrated pop culture.

So when I came across a recent article on Slate.com entitled, Do Shamans Have More Sex?, I chuckled a bit (at myself) when I read author Robert Wright’s opening paragraph:

Wouldn’t it be great to be back in hunter-gatherer days? Back before the human spiritual quest had been corrupted by the “relentless onslaught of Western scientific materialism” and “dogmatic male-dominated religion”? Back when there were shamans—spiritual leaders—who could plug us into “the realm of the magical,” show us “the reality behind apparent reality,” and thus lead us to understand “how the universe really works”?

Wright goes on to say is that he doubts “selfless, spiritual leaders” were any more common in the “heyday of shamanism,” or that the “spiritual quest was any less corrupted by manipulation and outright charlatanism” than today.

Though I’m not sure I agree that there was a heyday of shamanism, I can see his point. Along with our search for purity, we often like to grasp at the grass is greener on the other side.

The Conundrum of Inner and Outer Travel

I know I can also take this approach with travel, as the inner and outer travel are obviously deeply connected. I often think another place (in this case, physical land) is better, offers more, and has more depth than the place I currently find myself.

Where to next? / Photo: Randy Son Of Robert

And so I set up in a new place, and for a few days, I see all of its greatness. But eventually, I begin to notice the less bright spots “hiding” underneath, as the varnish slowly comes off.

Suddenly, many of the issues that were there in the last place have shown up in the new place, and I start to dream of that next perfect destination. But what is the connecting factor here? Me.

If we are always looking outside ourselves for perfection – whether this be an ancient tradition that did spirituality right, or the ultimate place to set u