Eat, Pray, Love is a book many of us love to hate. From picking apart sentences to comparing the fact that Gilbert’s life-transforming travel moments are like, omg, totally commonplace for the seasoned adventurer, the reflection of someone’s opening up to life experiences, sharing them authentically, and then benefiting from it all can ignite certain sense of rage and jealousy. It burrrrrns, baby. Rrrr!

Here’s what we at Conscious Girl’s Guide love about Elizabeth Gilbert: this is a woman who followed inspiration, when it hit, and opened herself up to the flow of words as they came out. She then made herself vulnerable to the process and to the sharing of it by publishing it in a book. In addition, the timeliness of her own processing and unleashing it on the world made her personal transformation spread like wildfire through the hearts and minds of women everywhere. GO GILBERT! We love this. Are we a little jealous of the fact that you gave a TED talk? Perhaps….but we’ll let that slide.

Now, for you seasoned Conscious Backpackers who may had your bathroom floor moment years ago, who scooped yourself up off the floor, didn’t broadcast it to the word, and went out there and rocked the house in the far corners of the volatile world the wild, instant popularity of this kind of novice exploration of a few of the world’s more scenic countrysides can stir something up within you. I mean, really, you are out there doing things. You are out there transforming things. Where is your wild, best-selling book, multi-million dollar, Julia Roberts’ blockbuster hit and gorgeous international man of mystery?

Conscious Backpacker, this is called jealousy. Jealousy is a reflection of that which you’ve created for yourself that you have not yet allowed into your experience. This is also why we love jealousy. It’s a gift of insight into yourself. So yet again, we thank and honor Gilbert in her bold ownership of a process that so many of us needed to see to be reminded of the depths of what we want to offer and experience. Also, Gilbert’s work is a beautiful reminder to us of the power of being open about who we are and what our truths are, at whatever stage. Mmmmmmm.

So what do you do if you don’t have a $30,000 book advance to spend three months out there frolicking through the world to get in touch with yourself? What do you do if you don’t really want to wait until you have a “bathroom floor” moment where you realize you hate your life so much that you need to take drastic action? What do you do if you feel like you’re dying a little bit on the inside every day but can’t see how you could get to there from here from where you stand right now?

These perpetual questions for the determined, free spirits in this world are EXACTLY why I’ve created a unique 5 week teleseries called “Adventure Rockstar: Be the Powerhouse You Know You Are (6 Steps to RESCUE Your Authentically Adventurous Life).” In 5 weeks of content and group coaching, you will gain the tools to craft your authentically adventurous life from the inside out, starting exactly where you are right now. No $30,000 book advance necessary. No need to drive yourself to a breakdown. No need to go broke hopping around the world trying to find your truth, only to come home to a cube that you hate and be right back where you started.

In “Adventure Rockstar: Be the Powerhouse You Know You Are” you can expect to gain the tools to integrate your life so that your adventurous self comes home with you and stays with you. You will find the courage to go where you know you need to go in life, find the clarity to know what your next step is, and find the freedom to be yourself and let your gifts out to share with the world. And you will be able to do it all authentically. Energy work and high energy will flavor the whole experience.

I am so glad Elizabeth Gilbert wrote Eat, Pray, Love, even if it took me 3 months of denial to actually pick up the book and read it (cover to cover, I might add). I’m looking forward to the movie. But I know that I’m even more excited to see what each of you Conscious Girls and Guys unleash on the world in your way. I can’t wait to see the ripple effect. It’s gonna be huge!

If you want to get solid on your core before you leap out there, join us for “Adventure Rockstar: Be the Powerhouse You Know You Are” and get yourself prepped to rock it. We start Monday, August 16th and I know just the right people will be showing up. Is it you?

But as far as marrying that awareness with the real world demands of down and dirty travel throughout the far corners of the world, sometimes managing heightened awareness begs the question, “where do we start?” When we’re on a bus that seems to suddenly be heading into nowhere, what do we do? Well, Conscious Backpacker, I’d bring you back to what you already know: unknown crossroads are one of the most fun opportunities to whip out your direct channel to the infinite wisdom and soak in the answer.

One of my preferred methods for getting a quick shot answer is to just tune in to the eternal wisdom around us at all times, of which we are also a part. I know what my body feels like when I’m pulling in an answer that feels slightly “other worldly” – or, rather, expanded. It’ a different sensation in my body when I have expanded thoughts than it is when I have balled up, furiously thinking, solving-the-problem thoughts. When I’m literally in a bus, feeling into something, I send my question out into the ether and I pay attention to where I’m noticing things light up within me I get thought block answers. The more you pay attention to the subtle flavors, the more you can get very specific with your own body and muscle reaction patterns. You can track your own types of answers within that beautiful body of yours. What’s true for you may not be true for me, so it’s good for you to have your own read on yourself.

The benefit of developing such acute physical awareness to your extra-sensory awareness is that often our bodies know answers instantaneously while our brains are fast computing information logically. Or, other times, logically computed information may not catch everything you’re perceiving because something isn’t ticking off on your “watch out for this” mental radar.  Holl-A. (I think this one’s a no-brainer for packing…wait…but it’s not about the brain…but it kind of is…and it doesn’t need to be packed! Ah!)

You can also open up, enter, the channel by writing. When I write, my directed questions come out directed towards “God,” but for you it might be “Source,” “Spirit,” “Allah,” “All-That-Is” or just electromagnetic energy. Whatever you call “it” – that greater thing, that Trusted Source, tapping into it can be a life-saving and illuminating practice.

If you haven’t been in the practice of doing this for yourself, an easy way to start is by writing and seeing what answers come to you. One great starter exercise is to write out your question with your dominant hand and then answer with your non-dominant hand. Using your non-dominant hand can help the subconscious come through with more ease.

You’re a Conscious Backpacking Rockstar, but there’s nothing like the threat of death to send your internal compass spinning. While we all love a little drama, maybe try not to be such a drama lover so that you don’t come back from your adventure.  I recommend you open up that on-ramp to the information super-highway in your brain and body in a time and place where you feel safe and calm. That way, you can get a good base read on your own Self before needing to use any information you get in this way, say, in a life or death situation.

And yeah, you don’t have to self-consciously admit it to me…you’re a little bit psychic! Get in the channel, and have some fun.

**Many thanks to George from OneTravel.com (providing cheap tickets) who is shortly going to publish this post on his site. Thank you for inviting me to be a guest blogger, George! Check out his site!**

Yes, Hunny, I’m here.

Where do I start?

Start where you are.

What if where I am is not good enough?

You and I both know that is not true.

What if I don’t get to where I’m going?

You will get to the perfect place, in the perfect time. It just might look different than you imagined it to look.

Then how does that work with me being a “Conscious Creator” if I can’t even manifest a sunny afternoon picnic on a hillside somewhere?

You have manifested it, thousands of times over – you’ve just been so pinched off thinking about what you’re not seeing that you haven’t let the rest in. You have stepped into the energetic footprint so many times, but your eyes have not always seen it. Your heart has felt it, though.

Yeah…I think you’re right. When I tingle, I know I’m in the sweet spot.

Good girl.

God, I want to give my readers right now the best piece of advice ever. Ever ever ever. They’re travelers. They want to go out and know the world and see the world. I am here to help them understand their own power and to raise their vibration while they’re traveling. Can you help me out with the best words to give them in this article?

Love.

Love. I like that.

You can put all kinds of different fancy words to open up doorways to this central core, but really, it’s all about love. Love is the strongest force in all of this world. It transmutes everything. It opens doors and pathways that never previously existed until the person beholding the vision of that which they are wanting does so in a space of love. And desire.

Can you help illuminate for us why love is so important when it comes to travel?

I think you know that answer.

Well, I mean, I do, but I think it would be a lot cooler coming from you.

Love is what opens all doors. Love is what carries you from one place to another. Love is what lines you up with the people and experiences you wish to experience. Love is what arranges you the sweetest deals. Love is what gets you handed what you’re wanting. Love is boundless, love is without rules, without limitations, without grudges. Love is non-physical and transforms the physical.

Sweet. So, you think it’s ok if I just tell my readers right now that the best thing they could do now – whether they’re in their cube aching for their getaway, or they’re on the road reading this in an internet cafe, or they’re wishing they were somewhere else – to just take a deep breath and let the love in for a second?

Perfectly stated.

[deep breath.]

I love you guys.

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Don Miguel Ruiz writes in his book The Four Agreements “Words are a double edged sword: they can create or they can destroy.” This is why when the lovely, nice, educated woman who just gave me a body treatment said to me, “You have a hard time coming into your heart, don’t you?” How DARE she say that? It’s always a little awkward to watch yourself have these feelings of utmost rage, too…like a mother Tiger swiping at a predator’s face – RAWR!

Cardinal sin #1 of healers is to use their words for anything less than utmost praise and celebration of the true spirit. The true spirit of you, me, them, and anyone else is one of utmost radiance. Anything reflected back that is less than that is not a true reflection of your true self. Tsk tsk healer who I just paid to have give me an imperfect reflection! Fool me twice, shame on me! Or maybe I should have listened to Coehlo’s Shepherd and resolve never to pay someone with half my flock to tell me something I knew for myself….

A little tension is a normal human experience when you’re in the process of creating big, new things. It’s a little intense staying there when your heart calls you far and wide. The words “You have a hard time coming into your heart, don’t you?” is a POOR CHOICE OF WORDS. It’s an accurate reflection of temporary tightness, but they are not words that transmute the energy. Shame shame! Frustration! Wasted opportunity!

And, cardinal sin #2: a healer should never say something so damaging. Has she not read Ruiz’s fabulous words? Does she not know that in some indigenous cultures you would never say the words of a disease in front of a patient, let alone tell the patient they have it for fear of cursing them with the disease? In other words, to utter the words, “You have a hard time coming into your heart, don’t you?” left me feeling cursed. I felt poisoned. Cough cough! Gah!

Writing these words help purge the experience from my system. I feel wrath (albeit, the little video clip on the Swagger Coach did just help lighten me up a little bit) because the dynamic I just experienced is not empowering – it’s the exact opposite. Gaaaaasp! It’s extra dangerous when you’re lying prostrate on a table, with soothing music, in a space where you’ve come to open your heart up. Must…rip…out…dagger!

As this just happened to me, yes, I created that experience, and yes, I walked into that office, and yes, I stayed there when my breath started becoming shallow, but still. It’s still frustrating. It’s almost more frustrating when you know enough to “know better.” When this happens, you’re not just out your juice for the morning, you’re out some cash, too. Baseline, it’s just *annoying* when you let someone come into your sphere of trust and they end up NOT empowering you, but leaving you foggy, disoriented, cold, fuzzy, and tired.

A healer is not healing. They are serving. They are facilitating. They are holding a space for the person to do what they could do on their own, but may be struggling to do on their own. This is what Jesus did. This is what all the great healers do. So, why on earth would a self-professed soul assistant ever dare to utter words that are anything less than glorifying of the person who has been kind enough to let them in? Who knows. Based on what it feels like to be on the recipient end, it feels like my gas tank was just siphoned off.  I can tell you at least now I’m totally clear that it is not worth it to me to ever be in the presence of someone who leaves me feeling that way, no matter what they can, in theory, do for me.

A brilliant healer is the kind who will find you in any state and leave you even more uplifted and radiant than when they found you. A brilliant healer will always remind you of your power, and a brilliant healer will never say anything that makes it about them and not you.

Let’s be totally clear here: in your world, it is ALL ABOUT YOU. It really is.

To set the power straight and on the record, this is why I have a chapter in my upcoming book The Conscious Girl’s Guide to Backpacking titled “You Are Your Own Shaman.” I want each of you to know and understand your own power to create miracles within and around you. I don’t want you to retract from yourself and the world in some way due to the unfortunate mishap of having a run-in learning experience with someone who’s business card title or ancestral lineage would leaves the burned mental imprint that they, in some way, could offer to be a spiritual authority for you. Why? Because the world is more fun when you’re living large and fully expressed.

The book I’m writing ‘The Conscious Girl’s Guide to Backpacking’ has been field tested ad nauseum for the last 3 years. I know what tone of voice turns people off, I know what engages people, I know how to lift people up with particular messages and how to deliver others. I probably could have just come out of the gates and written it while it was fresh, new, conversation sizzling topic. But I wasn’t ready yet….the vision grew to something larger and so I needed to take time to acquire the next level of skills so that I could implement in a way that felt GOOD to me, not just sizzly and sexy with the potential for massive personal backlash as I couldn’t handle publicity like I will be able to now. I have all this calm about it now, but then I bogged the creative process down with stymieing, totally irrelevant questions like, “How am I going to prove to a bunch of ‘suits’ in a Board room that my book has merit? That I’m not crazy?” The hunch that I needed to position myself appropriately so that I could use a little leverage was a pretty good hunch…and so I’ve learned a ton about marketing and what it takes to make a best-selling book. But I bogged down the hunch with days that I would spend at another town’s research library hunting for totally irrelevant stats on trends in awareness in the marketplace. That is a prime example of the logical brain running amuck and wasting your time.

So if you know you’re onto a hot idea, and you think you need some market research, I say arm yourself with your own awareness of the feedback you’re getting ALL THE TIME from all the interactions you’re having in your day to day life.

Here are a few good Intuitive Market Research Techniques:

1. See if your skin tingles or you get goose bumps as you talk about your idea.

2. See if other people get tingles as you talk about your idea (the RIGHT people, that is….)

3. Notice if all the information you’re hearing on the media screams out for your idea to fill the market consciousness need (answer: probably YES.)

4. Do people give you real names of other people to talk to when you share with them your idea? This is a great sign that the portals of the Universe are making way for you to march right on through.

If you’ve got the cosmic green light, don’t fuss around too much with boring stats that suck the life out of you as you try to collect them yourself. If you need them, hire someone to find them for you. But be careful that you’re not using “the need for sufficient research” as a VERY WELL HIDDEN EXCUSE to stay put right where you are, muddled by nagging fear (like fear that you will fail, fear that others will ridicule you, fear that you will have to leave some old friends behind, etc.).

Go forth, Brave Adventurer!

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Sometimes it’s like this with travel…you get up and go to have your epic adventure, to write your book, to know the world and to live and to love and to serve, and wait! Lo and behold….everywhere you go, there you are!

That’s right…you brought your neuroses and your self-limiting beliefs with you. Darn the way that happens!

If you’re lucky, the stark contrast of the new environment will provide you with enough mental freedom to allow in exactly the thing you’ve been asking for – and you’ll attribute it to the place, when in reality it has everything to do with your mind. It has to do with your state of openness.

The converse is true as well – often a wanderer will happen upon a city or a town and have a terrible experience. They immediately attribute it to the local people, the local bus system, the lack of local resources, the culture – whatever. The jerky people. And really what has happened is that for some reason, in that environment, the wanderer closes their brain to the expansive version of his or herself. They are unable to receive that which they want.

Most importantly,  they don’t realize that what they’re getting actually is in response to an asking they’re putting out there, and they walk away none the wiser about themselves or the world we live in.

In either case – going home singing praises of the people and the place or ranting and raving about the horrible scenery – which may all be true – the key is to open up to what is going on inside of you and how that is affecting the experience.

Conscious backpackers enjoy and relish the thrill of colorful experiences, but we are always reaching for something higher, something of more understanding, a more empowering way to view the world. We look for it to hold it and examine it and own it and then share it, person by person, on our love-filled adventures.

Why does this matter? Because not all wanderers are wandering spirits. We’re focused spirits, wandering physically to know ourselves to the deepest level we can embrace. Now, who’s the wanderer, eh?

You envision everything snapping into place the way it seems to elude you back home. You envision feeling free of any self-imposed limitations you may have created around yourself back home – the familiar sights and roads and sounds triggering endless onslaught of old thoughts, accompanied by mind-numbing radio DJs and overplayed 90s lite rock.

Wouldn’t it be just so much easier there instead of here? Am I denying myself by forcing myself to stay rooted? As you watch your body literally puff up in reflection of the stagnant energy you feel around your life at home, you are convinced that you would be a more attractive, beautiful person back there where you just came from.

How can you know when it really is the place that is beckoning you to join it in joyful celebration of life and exploration, or if you’re just egging on your own subtle version of escapism? I’m inclined to say that many of us who appear to the locally rooted crowd to be consummate wanderers are actually often suffering from our own gargantuan effort to stay in one physical place. Is it really such a bad thing to fly the coop? perpetually, for months or years on end? No. I’ve never actually done that – I more fall in the category of the spirit who wants desperately to roam and is plagued with the eternally burning questions and efforts to achieve the optimal balance on all levels. Do you follow?

It raises the question – is desperately trying not to fly the coop an act of self-awareness or self-deprivation? How much of both?

Transitions to and from places of love are not just plane flights. They are true challenges to the sensitive of heart, body and soul. In grounding we fly, in flying we sometimes fall short. The plight – or the divine challenge – of the adult human, is to integrate both spiritual with physical with the child within.

As conscious backpackers, or any and all movers of light and vision, we must be able to ground anywhere. While we pride ourselves on not needing a bed to have a good night’s rest, certain common place events – such as a plane ride – can trigger the utmost self-evaluation. Questions like, “should I live here, or there?” “Is my body telling me to return to that place where I felt so good?” “Is my larger self knowingly pushing me to return home so that I leave nothing unresolved, no part of my life unexamined, all infected with pure love?” “What if I can’t manage to fly at home?” “Where is my home?”

To fly, we must ground in truth. The truth of love and the acknowledgment of our gifts helps this…but it doesn’t save the hurt…the ache…the physical crumpling of a supposedly non-physical thing…the wings that we need to fly.