Meaningful Travel to Brazil: This is Not a Bucket List

This past week, with the turn of the New Year and the welcoming spirit of 2015, our news sources were inundated with their yearly top ten lists. We, of course, paid close attention to the best travel destinations of 2015. Botswana! Chile! Cuba! screamed National Geographic and Travel + Leisure. New hotels, fancy resorts, shopping, food, culture. Yet absent from many lists were mention of the very people who make a destination truly worth your time.

When it comes to travel the term “bucket list” occasionally makes us flinch. The sentiment reminds us of Caesar’s declaration, “Veni, Vidi, Vici!” Something with underlining (overwhelming?) tones of unfavorable actions. It should not simply be about checking a destination off your list, but provide a meaningful sense of accomplishment.

Travel has the ability to prop open our eyes (and hearts) to those we would otherwise rarely think about. When done right, it grants us true meaning into the human spirit not only across geographical boundaries, but also cultural ones. Meaningful travel has meaning. Meaningful travel makes us better people than when we departed.

Over the course of the past decade, our organization has partnered with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) to plunge deeper into understanding the people and places we visit, to surpass the bucket list item and make our journeys a permanent memory.

The IONS mission statement includes transformation through consciousness research, educational outreach, and engaging a global learning community in the realization of our human potential. When these practices are targeted towards visiting foreign societies, the outcome becomes lifelong practice.

This coming September, CCJ and IONS are cosponsoring another trip, this time to Brazil titled Exploring Other Realities, accessing not only the people, art and history but also the myriad healers from across the globe who have converged onto this one great country.

Highlights of this journey, lead by Dr. Katia Peterson, the Executive Director of Education at IONS, include discovering cities such as Salvador, Bahia, Cachoeira, Brasilia, and Rio, visiting a variety of healers across the country, their places of worship and engaging in real, meaningful conversations with their faithful leaders and followers. If you are interested in this journey, you can locate more information here.