Sandals in the Snow: Thoughts on Conscious, Mindful Travel

I step outside in flip flops, sweats, and a hoodie, with my luggage in tow, in the middle of a Chicago snowstorm at 4 AM. I am leaving for a trip to the Yucatan peninsula today. The purpose: video document my road trip adventures for a week in an attempt to create a video pitch to get sponsored for a TV show centered on integrating spiritual growth, mental health, South Asian American experiences, indigenous practices, and adventure…

My mind is honestly all over the place in the Uber. The driver’s smell is very distracting-he has four air freshener cans open-and I swear the air fresheners must be of cigarette scent. Who would make that?

We finally get to the airport, and I make it through security with ease-a rarity for me given my Muslim name. And as I take a seat next to an outlet, my solitude is interrupted by 3 white couples in their late 40’s, all wearing Purdue gear. Purdue, a straight up, heart of the midwest university, located in Indiana. I try to focus on my own writing, my own journey, but of course they converse in voices that indicate they believe they are the center of the universe.

They talk through the outline of their trip, complaining that it is currently 59 degrees in Cancun (of course, it's 5 AM, do they think night time doesn't exist?). I gather they are staying at an all-inclusive resort and they want to complete one tourist activity a day. And then I’m struck by one of the fathers complaining to the others that his son is not traveling and experiencing the world.

I laugh and think how ridiculous that comment is considering he’s staying in an all inclusive resort in Cancun-as if he’s experiencing a world other than one designed for Americans visiting Mexico. He has no desire to see the real Mexico. I share this laughable comment on instagram-share my frustration with ignorant white people that think traveling to all inclusive resorts in other countries makes them “worldly.”

Upon boarding, I found myself in my window seat chatting with the woman next to me about where she intends to travel. She’s an elderly white woman, fifty or so, and never worked. Her husband is retired. And they are staying at an all inclusive and golfing the majority of the time. She asks me what I will be doing, and without going into full details, I say I’ll be road tripping the Yucatan peninsula with a friend. I also say that I’ll be looking at an eco community land to purchase. I get excited as I tell her about the deal. And she responds asking why I would even consider it. I look at her quite puzzled, and she explains further: you already have a home, why do you want to take care of anything else?

And that’s when the mentality of the other perspective, the people that don’t travel, or travel exclusively at all inclusive resorts, or even with rigid plans, really came through: You already have what you need, why do you care about anything else? Why even be open to anything else?

It’s the same issue with half the new spiritual community that refuses to educate themselves about the rest of the world. They claim they don’t want to focus on the negative of what’s happening in the world-that it makes them vibe low. I recently conducted a survey on my instagram and facebook-only 33% of people said they educated themselves on current world events. I have so many friends that I adore and respect that refuse to watch world news because it makes them sad.

To both sets of people-I feel like screaming: YOU CAN’T STICK YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND! THAT’S THE OPPOSITE OF VIBING HIGH AND BEING TRULY HAPPY. If your happiness isn't a fragile concept that you are grasping to hold on to, then you know that more experiences and awareness will only elevate you, whether they are heavy or not, whether they confirm your world paradigm or not. That more awareness will enhance your abilities; that understanding others' lives and perspectives will make your compassion exponentially grow. By learning and uncovering the shadows, you entice change, elevating not only yourself but also others around you.

And that’s the basis of conscious traveling-learning, loving, experiencing, and surrendering to being of service. Transcending concepts of your own needs, of your own vibes attracting other “positive” people, and truly being of service.

As I drove to a temezcal in Tulum, I pondered these concepts along with many others.

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I sit in ceremony in the temezcal, and it was beautiful, as they all are. And afterwards, as I’m sitting in between realms of conscious reality in my post-temezcal glow, my keys disappear. I had left them next to a tree stump as I video taped one of the women from the temezcal sing a song. In the two minutes I spent video taping the song, the keys disappeared. Maybe someone took them and returned them to Avis, maybe they are lost in the ocean-I don’t know, all I know is that I could not find them. (Again, please follow @butterfliesfindingaliens to find out how the magical story - filled with mystical stories and symbolism like that of the Aluxes- unfolded.)

Rachel singing Healing Wind post temezcal.

But while I am frantically searching for my keys, while my phone is dying, and while I’m in the middle of an emotional breakdown about everything the temezcal and losing my keys unearthed, an acquaintance, a former friend, messages me. It’s in response to the instagram post I made before boarding my flight, “The annoying part about traveling to the Yucatan peninsula: white people who think Cancun is ‘world’ travel.’”

She responds: Is Cancun not part of the world? Some people have to start somewhere.

I really don’t want to respond to her. I’m panicking about my keys-and still raw from the temezcal, which unearthed a lot of the pain I have been trying to process about my newly established singlehood, the increasing likelihood that I won’t be a mother, and the uncertainty about my future. Also, I’m annoyed that she even sees it fitting to respond to anything I post considering she ditched me as soon as she had kids, much like many other females I thought were friends, no sisters, for life.

I respond anyway, my compulsiveness about getting back to people kicks in: I mean with all due respect, white people that stay at Cancun all inclusives aren’t interested in learning about the world. And to me that’s the biggest problem on this Earth.

She doesn’t ask why I think it’s a problem. She has no interest in conversation. She has no interest in learning another’s perspective.

“But you don’t get to dictate other people’s means, or time, or desires. And it doesn’t make sense, to me, to focus negatively on how other people decide to spend their time doing what makes them happy. No matter how shallow you think they are.”

I’m furious at this point. I can’t find my keys. I don’t want to have a conversation with a woman who was able to find a partner after being divorced, and still have two beautiful kids. Every single emotion about her floods back. How a group of us used to hangout every weekend, a decade ago. How after I went through a breakup, and had to go on a self healing journey to get out of my depression, she just ditched me. Stopped hanging out, stopped talking to me. The irritation of people ditching people in a so-called “negative” space because they can’t deal with the “negativity” comes out. How fake she is if she can’t handle the reality of a situation-that people who stay in a bubble aren’t experiencing the real 3D world. They are acting like an ostrich, burying their head in the sand, just like she did when she ditched me a decade ago for being in pain while her life worked out.

“But I do get to complain about it if I’m surrounded by it. It’s not focused on negativity-it’s focusing and identifying a problem so that at least one person reading it shifts.”

“Enjoy your time on your path. Like attracts like. If you’re focused on exploring and enjoying where you are, you’ll find yourself surrounded by people who feel the same/do the same.”

And that’s when it really dawned on me. She is quoting the Law of Attraction without fully understanding it. The basis of Law of Attraction is that like attracts like IF it is in alignment with service to the world. I hate it when people miss that fundamental concept. Like doesn’t attract like if it’s only for self-service.

We go back and forth for a while, but the message is clear. And the biases are clear too-she thinks I’m “blessed” because I post travel, and I think that she’s on a high horse discussing how life doesn’t work out for anyone. She lists out that she isn’t married and has a southern California mortgage. Clearly, she doesn’t understand the law of attraction principles she ignorantly recited back to me just minutes ago. She has a southern California mortgage because she chooses to live in southern California-and if she traveled more, she’d understand that having two beautiful children that didn’t struggle with nutrition was her life working out based on the choices she made. She had choices. If she traveled more, she'd realize that so many people don't have choices. She believes her distorted bubble vision of focusing on the positive, but for her own self-improvement. And she’s talking to me as if she’s understood anything that I have been through over the last decade-truly believing that people who have been through pain she can’t even comprehend can “positively” think it better.

People believe that self-improvement begins with themselves-and it does to a certain extent-but it can’t be a separate independent entity from the improvement of the collective. We are all apart of the collective and we can’t just cut the chords we have with the 3D reality experiences of others, even if we think it “negatively” affects our “positive vibes.”

And the union for self improvement and contributing to the collective is where the difference between conscious world travel and just traveling lies. Travel with the intent to help others grow or improve their condition, and the universe rewards you by enriching your own experience. The converse isn’t necessarily always true, by enriching your own experience, you don’t necessarily improve the collective’s condition, so you aren’t in alignment with the principles of the Law of Attraction. The prerequisite of the intending to be of service has to be met.

All inclusive resorts provide jobs, yes, but they subjugate poor struggling workers and make the owners richer. It’s a similar argument to supporting chains or big corporations, except it’s even worse, because the mom and pop shop owners in the US still have other options, unlike people in countries where there are no other options available and their land is no longer affordable. And forget the fact that we are up in arms about the gentrification in the US, when at least in the US, people still have somewhere else to go, even though the locations probably aren't ideal when considering the first world paradigm of free choice. Forget the fact that these all inclusive resorts source from local water sources; meaning as you take an extended luxurious hot shower in your posh hotel, you literally rob local people of clean drinking water. So as one enjoys the luxury of an all inclusive resort, they literally rob local people of basic survival needs.

Conscious travel means stepping out of the all-inclusive, even for a day or two, and experiencing the local environment with reverence, respect, and open eyes. Maybe understanding the impact of where your money is going. Maybe having a conversation with the person serving your meal. Not just assuming that because you have all that you need, you don’t have to go any further.

Sure, losing my keys was rough, both on the pocket and the mind. But I was able to receive the kindness of strangers. Strangers who took me to dinner. A security guard who offered to let me cry it out on the beach in privacy-promising to let me know when the delayed rental company arrived. Being lucky enough to just flow with the tides of the universe that brought me in the path of locals that shared local ceremonies with me. I was able to learn about their belief systems-which ironically were more in line with my definition of positivity, as opposed to my former friend’s limited view of “negativity” and “positivity” and “like attracts like.”

And don’t be scared. I’m reminded of an encounter a few weeks ago with this woman from Memphis. We were at a retreat center, and we were having a meal and were served coconut water. And she literally looked at all of us and asked if it was drinkable. We all laughed it off, and told her yes. But how ludicrous. Had she really never seen fresh coconut water from a coconut before?

Later that day, one of the younger girls at the retreat center was talking about scoring some coke in Tulum the other night. The same woman from Memphis starts freaking out about how we are in Tulum now and we are going to get killed by the cartel. All of us are irritated at this point. Some people put on their headphones, I turn around and look at her, and thankfully another person finally says, “Could you sound any more American right now?” Like what cartel member is going to kill someone in the richest area of Tulum? I mean just from a business standpoint, the cartel wants more customers, so they aren’t going to allow anything to happen in an area where they get their maximum profit.

A few days later, we are all at our final meal together in Playa del Carmen before many fly home. Playa del Carmen is filled with local fruit vendors on the street. After dinner, this same woman from Memphis insists we go to a grocery store so we can get fruit. It’s 10 PM, there’s 11 of us in the van, 10 of whom do not need to go to a grocery store to get fruit, but she insists and we all agree. And as she steps out of the vehicle, she insists that someone walk in the store with her because she feels unsafe. We are in another completely safe area in Paamul, and this lady has this absurd fear that everyone in Mexico thinks she is important enough to kill or hold for ransom. The reality is, people would have given us money to take her back should she had been kidnapped.

About twenty minutes later, after she and her entitlement make a handful of people wait in a van, she returns empty handed. I guess the person that drew the short end of the stick and went with her to the grocery store informed her that the mangos come from the same place the street vendors get the mangos from :D.

But here’s the thing-this woman was letting her fears rule her trip. She had everything she needed to travel consciously in that moment. The retreat center we were at: the definition of conscious. The owner has local people work there, and she provides them with training to accomodate the needs of Westerners that are looking for the full retreat experience. Local cooks training with gourmet chefs once a quarter, daily activities run by local people that live a spiritual way of life in harmony with service to the universe, and hiring Mayan people for massages with the option of other spiritual treatments. Conscious travel was literally at her finger tips, she was right there, and she let her perceptions and fears prevent her from total immersion.

And it makes you ask the question: why are people fearful of conscious travel?

One could say that we are all brainwashed by the media, but I think it goes deeper than that.

Conscious travel means learning about yourself-it means questioning the paradigms that you live your life by. It means that the “positive” vibe you have worked so hard to emit may disintegrate, and you don’t know if you can handle your own “negativity” that you have suppressed. It means not only wrapping your own shadows in unconditional light, but trusting the collective’s shadows engulfing your own light, and knowing that your own light is enough to carry the shadows with harmony and levity.

I have unsuccessfully scoured the internet trying to find the author of this quote, “"This, my dear, is the greatest challenge of being alive: To witness the injustice of this world, and not allow it to consume our light."

This quote sums it up. Conscious travel is a way to witness the injustice of the world, and people are scared that their own light will be consumed.

So yes, as I began my journey to roadtrip through the Yucatán-with the intention of one day creating a show about conscious travel that integrates self healing, south Asian cultural diaspora, and adventure (insert shameless promotion of @butterfliesfindingaliens ), I made a dramatic post about my frustrations with people that travel, well unconsciously, thinking they are “worldly.”

And yes, I was gifted with someone from my past, that hadn’t spoken to me in over seven years, who hadn’t even responded to an invite to my goodbye party in LA, feeling called to share with me that I “needed to stop focusing on the negative” because “like attracts like.”

And yes, I surrendered to emotions, and reacted bluntly, as I was furious: someone who ditched me during a low spot in my life, lecturing me (while I’m frantically searching for the rental car keys I lost during my first ceremony in the Yucatán) on theories I have spent the last decade studying that she actually didn’t even understand herself. But this frustration was a gift to me. It made me understand the fear people have of their own shadows.

Simplifying the law of attraction to suppress the negative, and focus on what you want to attract is the definition of spiritual bypass on many levels. You can’t ignore the “negative” to “vibe high,” you have to work through your mess, appreciate its beauty, to naturally raise your frequency. The work needs to be done. And “like attracts like” only works when it is in alignment with what is of service to the collective. It doesn’t work if you just force yourself to suppress things in your life - the patterns will keep repeating in your life. It's no surprise that her response to my obvious ineloquent frustrations was that “no one’s life works out.”

YOUR LIFE WILL WORK OUT IF YOU WORK THROUGH THE “NEGATIVE,” which means EMBRACING and FOCUSING on it.

Translating that to all inclusive resort traveling in Cancun not being worldly-when you travel that unconsciously, you are spiritually bypassing the heartwarming, enriching experiences that make you a person in service of the world. You don’t attract positivity by sticking your head in the sand about the problems in the world. That’s not vibing high, that is subconsciously knowing your “positive vibes” are so fragile, reality can dissolve them…

But what do I know? I’m just a girl that wears flip flops in the middle of a Chicago snowstorm.

Maybe my lunar and ascending Leo’s can’t resist the temptation to show off the yellow butterflies on my pastel purple toes.

Yes, maybe I just like connecting to Pachamamita, especially in the storms of her winters.

It could be that my feet just don’t like being confined to the cages of shoes and socks, despite the warmth they bring.

But also, I’m flying to 80 degree weather in Mexico, and don’t want to lug around heavy shoes if I’ll be in flip flops the entire time-so I suck up the coldness of the snow on my feet for the whopping five minutes I have to be outside.

I immerse myself in the winters, so that I can enjoy the summers with love and grace.

If you get the opportunity to travel-travel consciously. Share and receive. I promise you, the experience will be more of service to you and others than an all inclusive resort deal (and you’ll probably get more out your hard earned money than in an all-inclusive).

P.S. I did write a short spoken word piece for my experiences with the “Benevolent Racist in Denial.” See link below if you want to check it out.