4-30: One of my favorite flower fairies from Cicely Mary Barker’s iconic classic poems was Traveler’s joy. The poem’s first verse begins:
Traveler, traveler, tramping by
To the seaport town where the big ships lie …
During this time of lockdown and travel bans, our traveling soul may be hankering for adventure, camaraderie, and new experiences. Mine certainly is, but since that’s not possible I’ve been going on plenty of inward adventures. I have always believed that meditating, dreaming, and practicing stillness are also ways to travel.
But what I’ve realized recently is something completely different about travel. The opposite is true: when we meditate, when we enter deeply into our stillness body and discover our “I am,” we’re not traveling at all. When we settle into our light bodies instead of our physical and conscious bodies, we are home. When I’m in deep meditation and meeting people who’ve died or hearing music I think I’ve never heard, I’m not really actually traveling and exploring at all, I’m back at home, where I belong.
Then, when we come out of our meditation, we get back in the boat and are traveling again on this human adventure. The ‘present’—the ‘here and now’ of physical existence—is actually the journey, the adventure itself. We land back on the couch, and are again the traveler, tramping along the lane, seeking adventure. We’re exploring the physical place of earth and our present moment—we’re back on the interesting road of travel and discovery and the unknown.
Traveler’s joy was one of the first flower essences Dr. Bach developed back in the 1930s, and it’s one of the five flowers in his rescue remedy formula, which I always carry in my purse. (Typically, rescue remedy is used in emergencies for shock or trauma, because it helps us to re-connect body, mind, and spirit.) The essence of traveler’s joy helps us return to a steady, grounded state. Even observing how it grows, we can see how this is so: it’s a dreamy, fragrant wildflower that twines and explores through fields and woodland, and in the fall its soft gauzy petals spread far and wide, bringing us back to our earthly adventures, to the present moment.
Traveler, traveler, tramping home
From foreign places beyond the foam …