Why take an ordinary vacation when you can create a spiritual journey of transformation? Below are ways to bring more soul into your trip this summer from my own spiritual travel experience and Joe Dispenza, author of You Are the Placebo.

 Before you leave:  

1. Create a travel shrine. This is a simple home altar in which you place pictures and symbols that creates your intention for the underlying spiritual nature of the trip. 

2. Pack virtues such as courage, patience, forgiveness -- place these words on 3X5 cards or bring crystals or sacred objects that allow you to be reminded of these as you encounter experiences on this trip. 

3. Keep a "fear" box. Write down any fears you have about the trip and place in a box - leave this behind - you are leaving your fears behind. (Christopher Colombus practiced this!)

4. Prepare gifts to bring. Gifting raises your trip to a journey of gratitude and adventure. Small, inexpensive items from home acknowledges our one-ness with strangers and enhances the spiritual character of the trip.

5. Prepare a "Journal of Feelings." Focus on the interior journey as well as the sites. Bring this to record your emotions along the way. Leave the first page blank to be filled-in later as a reflective summary.

6.Close the Door. Upon leaving home, walk across the threshold of awareness.Say: "I am leaving the past behind me. I am sealing the past away with the closing door. Before me, now, lies the future- and I willingly and lovingly step into it."

When you Return: 

7. Make a Triumphal Entrance. Arriving back home from a trip, do as the Romans did. Make an imaginary triumphal entrance. Symbolically end the trip and acknowledge that you have been transformed.

8.Tell the story of your journey. After you return, call your friends together and tell the story of your journey using objects you collected on the trip. This helps you reflect on your lessons and changes.

9.Name the trip. You've left the first page of your Journal of Feelings blank. Now name the trip. For example, "My Journey of Compassion." Also include a reflective summary.

10. Be the hero of your adventure. All travel is inner travel, because wherever you are, we are processing our experiences internally. Remind yourself that you are the hero of all your journeys, and that all your travel in the outside world is really travel inward, toward ever higher spiritual consciousness. 

Bon Voyage!