Travel Light

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off the baggage of all your anger, jealousies, unforgiveness, greed, proud and fears.

"Less luggage, more comfort" is something that all travelers know to be true. It is particularly true when we deal with the journey of life. Not just in a physical sense (we know very well what it means to be trim and fit), but in a much deeper psychological sense. In that sense, we are always traveling, and each of us carries a fair amount of baggage. It is only rarely that we feel freed of all mental baggage, and are able to glide about freely and joyfully, like birds in the sky.

Both physical and emotional baggage needs to be minimized. We should know exactly what to keep and what to leave behind and what to throw away forever. It is natural to accumulate junk on the way. Spring cleaning is something which we all heard of, but it is actually important to practice it in our closets, if they are stuffed, cluttered, means it is dangerous, things are left unchecked. It weighs us down, keeps us still and makes us slow. At times in my team and at home I would force people to clean their drawers and closets, because that helps in the proper flow of energy and makes you in charge of what is where and how to deal with it. Similarly in your mind we need to organize which baggage we want to carry, and what is to be deleted forever.

The shedding of emotional baggage is very important, to discover the real who I am, who I will be, to create new we have to clear the earlier clutter and debris, we have to make room for creating something new.

Psychological baggage is centered on that notion, and along with it, all my remembered past and imagined future. Along with it comes lot of regrets, misfortunes, why’s and why not’s and bla bla…. But we never count on our blessings, which each one of us has. So from this bla……bla….the things that really matter should remain, and let everything else go away. This bla … bla…is like the weeds in the agricultural field, disturbing the growth of the main crop, what is more important CROP or WEEDS, weeds ofcourse need to be thrown out. So throw this unwanted emotional baggage out and Travel Light.

Let go of the baggage of the ego-self, and be free!

Let go, and be free! How simple! Yet, how difficult it is in actual practice! Especially when we cling to the baggage so tenaciously, and so unconsciously. Dropping the baggage of one’s ego-self and thereby discovering real freedom is the most absorbing errand that a spiritual aspirant can have in life. All that is required is continual awareness, awareness of the clinging, and a letting go of the attachments that binds one…

People have serious difficulty in understanding that attachments are the root cause of human suffering. Until that understanding dawn, clearly and sharply, the clinging will continue, and so will suffering. The understanding can be initially painful, but it is a passing pain, as in a surgical operation. Truth can be very bitter, when one has been deluding oneself all of one’s life.

The dropping of the baggage of the ego-self is common to all spiritual paths. This is why the essence of all religions is said to be the same. Without the surrender of the ego-self, you can never discover your real self.

People are afraid of “letting go”. This is understandable; until one discovers the liberation that follows the “letting go”, one will resist surrender. Indeed, all of us have glimpsed this liberating experience at some point or other in our lives, especially in our early childhood. It is an experience of joy, a sense of oneness and affinity towards everything. It is characterised by an absence of resistance to the natural “flow” of life. It is a state of peace and harmony, bereft of distraction and worry. In it, there is no sense of time. It is, in summary, a truly wonderful state, accessible to all who are able to “let go”.

The ego-pleasure that emanates from an enhanced sense of self-importance (more baggage) is what most of us crave for, but it is an outcome of delusion, and will inevitably bring in its wake its painful opposite, ego-pain.

The joyous experience of the "flow" state, unencumbered by baggage, can be felt in the thick of apparently intense activity. Any skilled worker or talented artiste or sportsman will testify to this. Such activity turns out to be “perfect” when one is fully focused on the task at hand, with a relaxed concentration and without any distraction. One allows the universal energy to express itself through one’s medium, without interference, and without any motive of profit or worry about the outcome. In fact, interferences by the ego-self only serve to contaminate the perfection in the work. When we are concerned about failure or success, then our complete focus shifts from the task in hand to its outcome, and this need to win drains us of our energy to perform well.

In summary, the first thing that needs to be clearly understood is that the baggage of the ego-self is the only obstruction to true freedom and joyous living. Driven by the ways of the world, our normal tendency is to add to that baggage, rather than to lighten the load. The problem stems not from “successes” in life, but from the false notion that “I am the doer” that accompanies these achievements, and from clinging to attachments. Through continual awareness however, we discover the art of traveling light, and becoming one with the flow of life. We discover a sense of joyous freedom and connectedness with the universe. Bon voyage!