pilgrimage – audio · pilgrimage is a journey for a deeply spiritual or religious or other...

Pilgrimage – Audio !Hi, welcome to this month’s VIP lesson, our topic is Pilgrimage. !This is a favorite topic of mine, because we’re talking about travel. I love travel. I’m a bit of a nomad myself and whenever things are tough in my life, if I’m having a really hard time, if I’m feeling bad, my first instinct usually is just to get on a plane and go somewhere new. I find that often heals whatever ails me. A new place, a new experience and new surroundings. !Let’s talk about travel and how you can use it for this purpose and others, in order to make your life more meaningful. How can you make travel more deeply meaningful? First of all, what is the difference between a pilgrimage and just a normal vacation? A pilgrimage is a journey for a deeply spiritual or religious or other meaning. In other words, it’s deep. It has a deep purpose, a deep meaning beyond just laying on a beach relaxing. !Let me give you an example of this from my own life and then we’ll talk about you. A few years ago I went on a pilgrimage in Japan, the island of Shikoku, Japan. My wife and I both did the pilgrimage. This is a traditional pilgrimage. Meaning, it’s a traditional route that goes around the island of Shikoku. It takes about 30-40 days to walk the whole day, it’s a walking pilgrimage. This path is very old. Japanese people have been walking this path for over 1000 years, all the way back to samurai times. !This path is around the island and it goes to 88 different temples, so it’s called the Shikoku 88 pilgrimage and traditionally it was a Buddhist pilgrimage. Japanese Buddhists would start at one point and then walk around the whole island visiting every one of the temples. People still do this today. In modern times, some Japanese people do this by bus, which for me isn’t all that fun or interesting, it’s too easy, but there are still many people who do this by walking. So my wife and I decided that we would do this. !At the time I was struggling with some big questions in my life, what is my purpose and what is the purpose of my business, what am I doing and all these deep questions that I had. I wasn’t finding any answers I was just getting frustrated. So I kept these things in my mind and thought, maybe if I do this pilgrimage some things will come up. Maybe it’ll be a catalyst and it’ll cause some creativity to spark in my mind and help me answer these questions. !

1. That’s the first thing, there was a purpose beyond just relaxing, something deeper. !

2. Second, this was a journey. !

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By journey I mean it was a path. There was a starting point and you walked and walked and walked, we did it in about a month, so it was a 30 day journey from one point to another. This is an important element for most pilgrimages, so it’s not just going to one place and again, laying on a beach that’s more a vacation. So it had a purpose, but there was also a path and by path I mean literally, a physical path going from one point to another and of course, it’s also a metaphor. There’s a mental, emotional or spiritual path as well. !During this pilgrimage we started on the Eastern part of Shikoku, we started walking. Our routine each day is basically we would wake up very early in the morning, because we would spend the night at the temples. Most of the temples had accommodation for people who was doing this pilgrimage and walking this route. So we would wake up at like 5:00 in the morning with the monks. They would wake us up, we would have breakfast and immediately after eating we would pack our bags and start walking and we would walk all day long. !We’d stop at different temples. You do a little ritual at the temples and we would get lunch or take a break, but pretty much our lives consisted of waking up early in the morning, walking for hours and hours every day up and down mountains and then eating dinner at the next temple and then going to sleep. It was a very simple existence. It was physically demanding, because we were walking every single day, it was a lot more exercise than I was used to, especially with a heavy backpack and up and down mountains. !This had the effect of clearing my head, because all the complications of modern life just disappeared and suddenly my life became extremely simple. Sleep, eat, walk, that’s it. That’s all I did every day for one month. We slept, both my wife and I. We walked and we ate food. What it did is it psychologically sort of opened up my mind. It cleared out all the complication, all the junk, all the distractions and just let me, it was kind of a meditation really, a walking meditation that made everything open up and clear. !After about a week what happened is suddenly all these ideas started popping into my head, the mission of Effortless English, which I recite many times in our lessons, that popped into my head one day just walking along on the path during that pilgrimage and many other great ideas came to me, and many other answers to these deep questions I had also started popping into my head. It was a profound experience and it changed my life in many ways. That’s why I’m recommending it to you. !Let’s talk now about this difference between a vacation on one hand, and a pilgrimage and how you can create a little pilgrimage for yourself. You don’t have to walk the Shikoku trip, you can do something that you create, that’s meaningful to you. First of all, when I think of vacation it’s really just about rest. Vacation is about resting. It’s a diversion. It’s a distraction from the challenges of your life right now. Vacations are great I love vacations. Usually the stereotypical vacation we think of is that you go off to the beach and you lay around and rest from all the work you’ve been doing.



!But a pilgrimage is different. A pilgrimage has a deeper meaning, a deeper purpose, however you define that. It’s a wrestling with deeper questions. That’s another way to think about it, that pilgrimage pushes you to go deeper in your life. So let’s talk about how you go about creating a pilgrimage and why you should do it. !

• First of all, as you might guess, choose a purpose. !I find a great way to do this is to just find one or more deep questions that you’re struggling with in your life, about your life, about you. What should I do with my life? That’s a bit vague. What should I do in my career, I don’t know? I’m feeling bored in my career but I don’t know, should I change jobs or not? These big questions that you wrestle and struggle with. Or it might be related to your family or your health, who knows, but find a deep question and build your pilgrimage. Plan your pilgrimage around that deep question(s). !

• Second, choose a challenging journey. !Journey again, point to point, I find that works the best rather than just going to one spot and staying there. I find it works better when you’re actually traveling during your pilgrimage. You’re moving from one point to the other and you can be visiting meaningful points along the way certainly, but something about that path, that movement tends to open us up psychologically and emotionally. I can’t explain it but it works. Once you’ve determined that, the purpose of the question that you have that you want answered and you’ve determined a path, the next thing is to create some rituals, things that you’re going to do every day during your pilgrimage. !This helps to reinforce that question. It helps to reinforce the deeper purpose of your pilgrimage, so it doesn’t just become a big long vacation. Here are some ideas for some daily rituals you can use during your pilgrimage. Choose one or more or even do them all, or come up with others yourself, these are just ideas for you. !

1. Have some questions for every morning when you wake up. !That’s where you write out the big questions you have and just review them every day. Every day you wake up during your pilgrimage what is my purpose? Those questions help to keep you focused on what’s important on the purpose of your pilgrimage. So each day reading those deep questions you have, whatever they are, keep you focused on making this deeper experience, a more meaningful experience, rather than just a vacation. !

2. Another technique or daily ritual you can add to your pilgrimage, to your trip is the practice of giving offerings or meditations, prayers or gifts. !

Especially if your pilgrimage has a more spiritual or religious element to it. For example, when we did the Shikoku pilgrimage, we were visiting temples. It was an old



traditional Buddhist pilgrimage, so we went to these temples and at each temple we did a little ritual, left some coins, some offerings and it was a nice way to keep us focused on a deeper purpose. It gave the whole trip a more meaningful feeling, a more meaningful purpose or atmosphere than just walking around looking at stuff. !

3. Another great ritual, fantastic ritual that you can use every day during your trip is journal writing. !

This is a good one for any kind of trip, whether it’s spiritual or not. Journal writing is just sitting down with a little empty book of pages, a notebook, and writing out your thoughts and feelings. Now, to make it most useful, focus your journal writing on those big questions. So you might write your big questions, the focus of your pilgrimage, write those at the top or at the top of each page and then each day let your feelings and thoughts about those questions pour out, and anything else that pours out of you, related to your trip. You’ll be surprised at all the creative ideas and insights you get, simply by doing this journal writing every day during this experience. !

4. Finally, one that I’ve personally found to be really special, really emotional is drawing or sketching. !

I’m not a great artist at all, but I find that drawing and sketching creates a kind of heightened awareness of my environment and especially of the thing that I’m sketching. For example, again I was in Thailand and I was doing a bit of a pilgrimage, a trip and one day I sat down outside a famous temple in Bangkok. I had already been to Wah Po several times as more of a tourist and in tourist mode I went around snapping pictures with my camera, point shoot. !All these amazing sights within the temple and that was okay, but one day during this trip I decided that I would just to go out there and I sat in a little sidewalk café, and you could hardly call it a café, it was a hole in the wall, this little small old place that wasn’t very pretty, but it was a little table on the sidewalk and I had some coffee. I got out my sketch book and I just looked at a little section of the temple from the outside and started sketching it. As a piece of art it wasn’t pretty, but what it did do was just the process of looking at it, carefully sketching everything, it made me hyper aware, super aware of all the little details of the temple. !It was a form of meditation. I can still picture that moment in my mind. Very clearly, I can relive it and that doesn’t happen to me when I just run around snapping pictures, so this process of sketching it’s really more for the psychological benefits. It’s a great thing to do as you go through your trip. !Let’s talk finally about the path that you’re going to take. How do you choose? Of course, there are no rules to this it’s just whatever is meaningful to you. I’m just going to give you some ideas. !

• You need to choose a path that you’re going to travel.



!You can do it walking. You can do a cycling pilgrimage where you’re riding your bike from one point to another or you can take local transportation, buses and things like that, whatever you decide, it’s up to you. It’s good to choose a path that again, somehow connects to the purpose or the questions that you have. So if you’re having deep spiritual questions and struggles then maybe a spiritual path would make sense. In that case you might visit temples along the way or other spiritual sites, whatever that means to you. !You could do a creative, artistic pilgrimage. Let’s say you want to be a writer. You could do a path where you follow some famous path and visit the graves of the famous sites that are connected somehow to your favorite writers. Let’s say you love the beat writers from the 50s and 60s in the United States. Or, you could visit all the different places in the world that the beats visited or lived or that have some connection to those writers. If there are people who are alive who have some sort of connection to the purpose or meaning of your trip, you could actually go visit them or see them. !Or, you can go to natural sites. If you have a pilgrimage that’s more focused on the natural world or on something physical like getting healthy, then you could go do something like hiking the Appalachian Trail in the United States. That would be an amazing pilgrimage where you’re connecting with nature every day. Or, you could go do something that is actually focused on an event, a big event. For example, in India every few years they have a huge spiritual religious festival called the Kumba Mela, which his insanely large and intense. You could add that as part of your pilgrimage, which would be a very interesting experience. !What are the different types of pilgrimages you could do? !Religious/spiritual, the most obvious, because this is the traditional idea of a pilgrimage, is that it was a religious or spiritual journey. The Shikoku trip was a Buddhist trip within Japan. There’s the Camino de Santiago in Spain, which is a Catholic pilgrimage traditionally, a walk across northern Spain, which I’m going to do next year. Muslims have Mecca, the pilgrimage to Mecca and Hindu’s have the Kumba Mela and things like that. !So, if you are focused on something a little more religious or spiritual, you could do one of these very traditional ones, they’re very interesting. If you’re not super religious, and I’m not, it can still be quite interesting to do, just because there’s such a deep tradition built into and surrounding these very old spiritual or religious pilgrimages. They can be quite powerful and you meet some amazing people along the way. !Artistic/creative this is another one. You could focus your trip or journey on famous writers or writing or on art. I have friends who are artists and they’ll do this, they’ll go to Europe and visit all the art museums. They plan a journey to see all the museums that display their favorite artists. They’ll go there and sketch the paintings sometimes



themselves they’ll sit and do that. It’s a very meaningful thing for them. Whatever your art is. Nature/health is another. Any one of these pilgrimages that involves walking is going to help your health, so the Shikoku trip or the Camino de Santiago, it kills two birds with one stone. In other words, you can get two goals accomplished with the same trip and do something like that. Or you could do something that’s more out in the wilderness. You can hike the Himalayan Mountains for several weeks or the Appalachian Trail that I mentioned. There are many of these trips or journey’s as well, in the world. !It’s up to you. The point is, what is meaningful to you? Build a trip. Build a journey around that and I guarantee this will be one of the best experiences of your life. Try it, tell us your ideas and what you’re going to do on our forums. I look forward to reading about it. !See you then. Bye-bye. !!!!!!!!!



Pilgrimage – Mini Story !Welcome to the mini story for this month’s lesson. Let’s begin. !******* There is a little boy. He’s only three years old and his name is Makun. Makun is not a normal little boy. In fact, even though his name is Makun, everyone just calls him ‘mushroom boy’, because he loves mushrooms. No one knows why, but ever since he was a tiny baby, Makun has loved mushrooms. He has always been fascinated by mushrooms. He has enjoyed looking at them and holding them. !What has Makun always loved? !He has always loved mushrooms. !Has he always loved cars? !No. He hasn’t always loved cars. !What has he always loved? !He has always loved mushrooms. !He has always been fascinated by mushrooms. He has enjoyed looking at them and holding them. And now, every day mushroom boy bugs his mother to go outside and collect mushrooms. Mom, mom, mom let’s go outside and find mushrooms. !What does mushroom boy do to his mom? !He bugs her. Mushroom boy bugs her. !(What does bug mean, to bug? It’s a kind of idiom or slang. To bug means to bother. To annoy, to harass, but in a minor way, a small way) !So mushroom boy bugs his mother. !Why does mushroom boy bug his mother? !Because he wants to go outside and collect mushrooms. !When he bugs his mother, when he bothers his mother, what does mushroom say? !



He said, ‘let’s go outside and find mushrooms.’ Mom, mom, mom let’s go outside and find mushrooms. !Even though she’s busy his mom takes him into the woods to search for mushrooms. Every day mushroom boy collects mushrooms. When he gets home he looks in a mushroom book and identifies each mushroom. !What does he do after he collects them? !He looks in a book and identifies each mushroom. !Where does he identify each mushroom? !In a mushroom book. ********* Of course, Makun can’t read yet so his mother must read the names to him. Mushroom boy also dissects the mushrooms, studies them and eats the edible ones. !What does he do first? What does he do with the mushrooms? !He dissects them. !(To dissect something means to cut it open, cut something open. Usually for studying, so you can dissect a dead animal. You cut it open to study it. He dissects mushrooms, he cuts them open to study them) !What does mushroom dissect? !Mushrooms. Mushroom boy dissects mushrooms. !Why does he dissect mushrooms? !Because he wants to study them. He wants to study inside them. !Does he dissect animals? !No. Mushroom boy doesn’t dissect animals, he dissects mushrooms. !After he dissects and studies them, what does he do? !He eats them, but he only eats the edible ones. He only eats the edible mushrooms. !(Edible means eatable, able to be eaten. Edible means they’re not poisonous. Some mushrooms are not edible) !



Which mushrooms does he eat? !The edible ones, the ones that are safe to eat. The edible ones. Mushroom boy only eats edible mushrooms. !Are all mushrooms edible? !No. All mushrooms are not edible. Some mushrooms are poisonous. Only some are edible. He eats the edible ones of course. *********** Well finally, when he gets a little older, mushroom boy goes to school. During his first class the teacher opens a textbook and gives worksheets to the students. Mushroom boy is bored. He says to the teacher, ‘I want to go outside to find mushrooms.’ The teacher says, ‘mushrooms aren’t important. You need to study important things so you can get a good job when you grow up.’ Well, mushroom boy is skeptical. !(Skeptical means that you don’t agree with something. That you’re not sure about something. You say I’m skeptical about that, it means I’m not sure about it. I don’t completely agree with it. I’m wary about it.) !So is mushroom boy skeptical about what the teacher says? Is he skeptical or does he agree completely? !Mushroom boy is skeptical. He doesn’t really agree with it. !Does he agree or is he skeptical? !He’s skeptical. He’s not very sure. He thinks maybe it’s wrong. ********* He thinks to himself, after all, what could be more important than mushrooms. As he grows older he continues to be fascinated with mushrooms. When he learns to read he checks out every mushroom book in the library. He reads websites about mushrooms too and he continues to collect and identify mushrooms with his mother. When he enters high school, Makun’s mother goes to a parent/teacher conference. (That’s where the parent talks to the teacher) The teacher says to his mother, ‘Makun needs to get his priorities straight. Mushrooms are not important. He needs to focus on improving his test scores.’ !What does Makun need to do, according to the teacher? !Get his priorities straight. !(To get your priorities straight means to understand what is most important. To decide what is most important. To know what is most important.) !



!!Makun thinks what is most important? !Mushrooms. Makun thinks mushrooms are the most important thing in the world. !Does the teacher agree with these priorities? !No. The teacher does not agree with Makun’s priorities. The teacher says, ‘Makun needs to get his priorities straight.’ He needs to improve his priorities. *********** Mushroom boys mom second guesses herself. !(To second guess yourself means to doubt yourself. To second guess means to doubt) !So mushroom boy second guesses herself. She wonders, ‘should I stop encouraging him? Should I stop him from collecting mushrooms?’ But, when she sees how happy he is collecting mushrooms she decides to ignore the teacher’s advice. Eventually, mushroom boy manages to enter college. Of course, he majors in mushroom science. All the career counselors at the college tell him he’s crazy. !(To major in something means to study it. It means it’s your number one focus of study. If you major in journalism then it means you get a journalism degree. If you major in economics then it means you’re trying to get an economics degree. !What does mushroom boy major in? !Mushroom boy majors in mushroom science, of course. He majors in mushroom science in college. He studies mushroom science. !Do the career counselors think it’s a good idea to major in mushroom science? !No, they tell him he’s crazy. ********** The career counselors say, ‘you should choose a useful major, like business or computer programming.’ But, Makun ignores them. He studies mushrooms every day. He grows them in his dorm. He eats them. He cooks them. He writes papers about them. After he graduates everyone tells mushroom boy, now it’s time to get serious and find a real job. Instead, mushroom boy goes on a round the world trip. He travels the world. His goal is to discover new mushrooms and study them. Everyone, except his mom, thinks he’s crazy. !After many years of travel and learning mushroom boy discovers an amazing new mushroom. This mushroom cures disease and makes people stronger and healthier. Mushroom boy cultivates (grows), harvests (collects) and dehydrates



(dries) this special mushroom and then he sells it on the Internet for a reasonable price. What does he do with this special mushroom? !First he cultivates it, he grows it. !Does he cultivate it or does he kill it? !He cultivates it. He grows it. !What does mushroom boy cultivate? !He cultivates a special mushroom. !After it grows, after he grows it, after he cultivates it he harvests it. He collects it. And finally, he dehydrates it. He dries it. !What does he dehydrate? !The special mushroom. !Why does he dehydrate the mushroom? !So he can sell it more easily. He dehydrates the special mushroom so he can sell it more easily. !Where does he sell the dehydrated mushrooms? !On the Internet. ******** His mushrooms become very popular, everyone loves them and mushroom boy’s company grows and grows. He becomes very wealthy. He buys a nice new home for his mother. And, he starts a new charity to help sick people. ********** That is the end of our mini story. As usual smile, have your shoulders back, be energetic when you listen to this story. Move around if you can and when you answer the questions, pause and shout your answers with energy. !See you next time. Have a great day. !



!Pilgrimage – POV !Welcome to the point of view stories for this month’s lesson. Let’s start. Our first version is in the past. Imagine the same story, but it happened already. ******* There was a little boy. He was only three years old and his name was Makun. Makun, of course, was not a normal little boy. In fact, even though his name was Makun, everyone just called him ‘mushroom boy’, because he loved mushrooms. No one knew why, but ever since he had been a little boy, a little baby, Makun had loved mushrooms. He had always been fascinated with mushrooms. He had enjoyed looking at them and holding them. !Every day mushroom boy bugged his mother to go outside and collect mushrooms. He said, mom, mom, let’s go outside and find mushrooms. Even though she was busy, his mom took him into the woods to search for mushrooms. Every day mushroom boy collected many mushrooms. When he got home he looked in the mushroom book and identified the mushroom. Of course, he couldn’t read yet so his mother had to read the names to him. He also dissected the mushrooms, studied them and ate the edible ones. !Finally, when he got a little older he went to school. During his first class the teacher opened a textbook and gave worksheets to the students. Mushroom boy was bored. He said to the teacher, ‘I want to go outside to find mushrooms.’ The teacher said, ‘mushrooms aren’t important. You need to study important things so you can get a job when you grow up.’ But, mushroom boy was skeptical. !After all, what could be more important than mushrooms? As he grew older he continued to be fascinated with mushrooms. When he learned to read he checked out every mushroom book in the library. He read websites about mushrooms too and he continued to collect and identify them with his mother. When he entered high school, Makun’s mother went to a parent/teacher conference. The teacher said to her, ‘Makun needs to get his priorities straight. Mushrooms are not important. He needs to focus on improving his test scores.’ !Mushroom boys mom second guessed herself. She wondered, ‘should I stop encouraging him? Should I stop him from collecting mushrooms?’ But, when she saw how happy he was collecting mushrooms she decided to ignore the teacher’s advice. Eventually, mushroom boy managed to enter college. Of course, he majored in mushroom science. All the career counselors at the college told him he was crazy. !They said, ‘you should choose a useful major, like business or computer programming.’ But, Makun ignored them. He studied mushrooms every day. He grew them in his dorm. He ate them. He cooked them. He wrote papers about them. After he graduated everyone told mushroom boy, now it’s time to get serious and find a real



job. Instead, mushroom boy went on a round the world trip. His goal was to discover new mushrooms and study them. Everyone, except his mom, thought he was crazy. After many years of travel and learning, mushroom boy discovered an amazing new mushroom. This mushroom cured disease and made people stronger and healthier. Mushroom boy cultivated, harvested and dehydrated this special mushroom and then he sold it on the Internet, for a reasonable price. !His mushrooms became very popular, everyone loved them and mushroom boy’s company grew and grew until became very wealthy. He bought a nice new home for his mother. And, he started a new charity to help sick people. ********** Our next version is in the future. Imagine this is happening in the future. ********** In the future there will a little boy. He’ll only three years old and his name will be Makun. Makun, will not be a normal little boy. In fact, even though his name will be Makun, everyone will just call him ‘mushroom boy’. No one will know why, but ever since being a baby, Makun will have loved mushrooms. He’ll have always been fascinated by mushrooms. He’ll have enjoyed looking at them and holding them ever since he had been a baby. !Every day mushroom boy will bug his mother to go outside and collect mushrooms. He’ll say, mom, mom, let’s go outside and find mushrooms. Even though she’ll be busy, his mom will take him into the woods to search for mushrooms. Every day mushroom boy will collect many mushrooms. When he gets home he’ll looked in the mushroom book to identify them. Of course, his mom will help him because he can’t read yet. He’ll also dissect the mushrooms, study them and eat the edible ones. !Finally, when he gets a little older, of course he’s gonna (means going to) go to school. During his first class the teacher is gonna open a textbook and give worksheets to all of the students. Mushroom boy is gonna get bored immediately. He’ll say to the teacher, ‘I want to go outside to find mushrooms.’ The teacher’s gonna say, ‘mushrooms aren’t important. You need to study important things so you can get a job when you grow up.’ But, mushroom boy will be skeptical. !After all, what could be more important than mushrooms? As he grows older he’ll continue to be fascinated by mushrooms. He’ll read about them. He’ll websites about them. He’ll continue collect and identify them with his mother. When he enters high school, Makun’s mother will go to a parent/teacher conference. The teacher will say to her, ‘Makun needs to get his priorities straight. Mushrooms are not important. He needs to focus on improving his test scores.’ !Mushroom boys mom will second guess herself. She’ll wonder, ‘should I stop encouraging him? Should I stop him from collecting mushrooms?’ But, when she sees how happy he is collecting mushrooms she’ll decide to ignore the teacher’s advice. Eventually, mushroom boy is gonna manage to get into college. Of course, he’s gonna



major in mushroom science. All the career counselors at the college will tell him he’s crazy. !They’ll say, ‘you should choose a useful major, like business or computer programming.’ But, Makun will ignore them. He’ll study mushrooms every day. He’ll grow them in his dorm. He’ll eat them. He’ll cook them. He’ll write papers about them. After he graduates, again everyone will tell mushroom boy, now it’s time to get serious and find a real job. Instead, mushroom boy will go on a round the world trip. His goal will be to discover new mushrooms and study them. Everyone, except his mom, will think he’s crazy. !After many years of travel and learning, mushroom boy will discover an amazing new mushroom. This mushroom will cure disease and make people stronger and healthier. Mushroom boy will cultivate it, harvest it and dehydrate it and then sell it on the Internet, for a reasonable price. !His mushrooms will become very popular. Everyone will love them. His company will grow and grow. He’ll become wealthy. Then he’ll buy his mother a nice new home, and he’ll also start a new charity to help sick people. !********** !That’s the end of our point of view stories. As always, just listen to the different versions, mini story and point of view stories. Your understanding and feeling for natural grammar will get better and better every month. !See you next time. Bye for now. !!!!!!!



!Pilgrimage – Commentary !So there I was, struggling up a mountain, a big mountain, an all day climb up the mountain. Huge cedar trees to my left and right covering the mountain top, covering the whole route, the whole path, winding my way slowly up. Back and forth, not alone but with my wife as well. Of course, we were pouring sweat soon after we started the climb. My legs hurt. My shoulders hurt, because I was carrying a heavy backpack. It was an all-day struggle. !Finally, we reached the top of the mountain near the end of the afternoon. At the top was a beautiful temple complex, several old temples. We went to one of the temples, lit some incense, lit the candles. It was a feeling of elation to have struggled all day long and to finally reach this incredibly beautiful area at the top. From the top there was an amazing view of the valleys below, so we savored this moment. It was very meditative, very calming. !Now later in the journey, this same pilgrimage this same trip, we were winding along another mountain path, but this path was along the side of a mountain, so we could see off to our left the valleys, the landscape extending all the way to the ocean. There were towns below us. And this time as I was walking I got a sudden rush of ideas, just spontaneously without trying, with no direct conscious purpose or thought, ideas began to flood into my mind, coming into my mind again and again, rapidly. !Ideas about the mission of Effortless English and my own personal mission. This is a question I’d had during the entire trip, this one month hiking trip, this one month pilgrimage was constantly struggling with the question of, ‘what is my purpose? What is the deeper purpose? What is the deeper mission?’ !Finally, at this point about midway between the beginning and the end of the trip, ideas came flooding in very quickly, very rapidly. And they were almost random at first, I thought of one of my favorite TV shows, Star Trek. I don’t know why, it just popped into my head so I started thinking about that. Then I thought about a lot of different memories and past experiences I’d had. And then I thought about teaching experiences. Then I thought about the future and what I wanted. They all just started coming into my brain very quickly and mixing. !Then later in the trip as the days went by, all of these thoughts began to organize and I began to get a clear picture of what my mission was and how my mission connected to the mission of Effortless English, and in fact they’re basically the same. It gave me a surge of energy, a big increase of energy this clarity of purpose, of mission. That had a very profound effect on my life, a deep powerful effect on my life and it has continued to influence me ever since that happened five years ago. !



That’s the power of a pilgrimage. Why did it happen? Why could I not get those answers in my normal life? Because, I had been asking myself the same questions. I’d been struggling with the same questions back home in my normal life, but could not find an answer that felt good, that felt right. But, out on these mountain paths away from everything doing this pilgrimage, suddenly the answers came. !Let’s talk about why. Why are pilgrimages powerful? Why have people been doing these kinds of trips for thousands of years? Personally, I can day that number one, the pilgrimage, this trip, removed me from my daily routine and not just for a few days like a vacation will. There’s nothing wrong with vacations, I like vacations too but they’re short generally and so they give you a little bit of time to rest, but not really enough time to go deeper. !But a pilgrimage totally removes you from your daily routine. It removes you from your familiar home. It removes you from your routines. It removes you from your job. It removes you from your social connections. It removes you from everything. It’s a sudden break from all of that. !The second thing that a pilgrimage provides is a magnified, an increased feeling of purpose, of meaning, through symbols, through the symbolic nature of the trip. In other words, it’s not just a trip, I’m gonna go see some place, but when you start it you already have a question. You have an expectation of deeper meaning. You’re doing it for some reason that is very personal to you. So, the trip is symbolic. What happens on the trip? You see it differently. You see the events as being more meaningful. You look for meaning in each event. !So as all those thoughts came into my head, I was looking for meaning. Oh, this must have meaning, this must be related to my questions. !The third element of a pilgrimage, especially mine that I did, was that it was also a physical challenge. It was 30 days of walking and walking 6-8 hours every single day. That’s a lot of walking. It’s a lot more walking than I normally do. That physical challenge also had a strong effect on my mind. So indeed it was also a mental challenge. !Why was it a mental challenge? Because for one month I had basically no contact with my business, so all the things I usually thought about were gone, I didn’t need to think about them anymore and so I just had to let go of my whole life for one month. Everything I thought was important. Everything I was used to doing, goodbye, let go. All I did every single day was wake up, walk, eat and sleep, that’s about it. Thirty days of extreme simplicity and also 30 days of physical challenge, carrying this backpack up and down mountains all day long. !This was a very powerful trip for me. As I said it had a very strong powerful positive effect on my life and that’s why I’m sharing it with you and that’s why I’m encouraging you to create your own pilgrimage this month. You don’t have to do it this month,



because sometimes it may take planning. It may take time to schedule. You might have to find the time in your work or with your family. You might have to save money to do it. So this month I just want you to plan and schedule your pilgrimage and do it when you can. Do it when possible. !Let’s review again the important points for creating a pilgrimage, for creating your meaningful trip, your meaningful journey. !

1. Step one – choose the type of pilgrimage you want. !• Religious • Spiritual • Psychological • Artistic • Family • Health • Something else !

If you are a religious person you have a specific religion, many religions already have traditional pilgrimages. Islam has the pilgrimage to Mecca. Hindu’s have pilgrimages to Varanasi or other places. Buddhists maybe go to Bogaya or Japanese people go to Shikoku, like we did. There are many possibilities. There’s the Camino de Santiago in Spain. If you’re religious, there are some actual established traditional trips you can take, and those can have a lot of meaning, because you’re doing them with others, who share that purpose and because they’re so old there’s this rich history behind them that can be quite beneficial and powerful. !But, if you’re not specifically religious you might want a spiritual pilgrimage. Spiritual means a more generally philosophical, we could say, but not connected to one specific religion. So for me, the pilgrimage we did in Japan, this one I just described, for me it was more spiritual I would say. It was not about specifically Buddhism for me, it was more just generally about what is the meaning of my life? What is the purpose of my life? What is my mission? It has a deeper philosophical meaning, but not connected to one religion, for me. !I will also do the Camino de Santiago soon, which traditionally is a Christian pilgrimage, but I’m not Christian so again it’s more generally spiritual for me. !You might choose something psychological, we mentioned artistic in the main lesson, where you might focus on drawing, writing or painting. !Family, this is something a lot of Americans will do sometimes is that, because we are an immigrant nation mostly, some people really are fascinated by their family history and going back as far as they can. If their family originally came from Scotland then they might go visit sites in Scotland where their family originally came from. That could



be a family type of pilgrimage. You can visit your ancestors or sites connected to your ancestors. !It’s up to you, you can design this yourself so that it has meaning for you. !

2. Step two – choose a challenging route. !Choose the route of your journey. Where are you going to start? Where are you going to finish? Challenging is an important word. Choose your route and again it should be a meaningful route for you. It should serve the purpose of this trip. !

3. Step three – choose challenging limits for your trip. !What do I mean by this? The power of a pilgrimage often comes from the limitations that you choose. The rules that you choose. In modern life now it’s very easy to be comfortable. We can travel conveniently. We can do everything quite conveniently now. !For example, I could have done that trip in Shikoku visiting those 88 temples, I could have done it by bus. I could have just taken a bus to each one of them and finished it quite quickly, in a few days. It would not have been as meaningful, however. It’s the limitations that make it powerful. The limitation we had was we’re going to walk the whole thing, 30 days of walking every day. That was our limitation. We chose that. We didn’t have to do it, no one made us do that. We could have ridden bicycles if we wanted to. We could have hired a private car. We easily could have made that trip much more comfortable, but it was the struggle of it, the challenges, overcoming them that gave a lot of the meaning. !So, choose challenging limitations for your trip. Those might be related to transportation. You might choose, I’m going to walk this whole journey, no cars, buses or trains. Or, if it’s a very long journey let’s say you’re going to go all the way across Siberia or something, maybe you could decide no planes that’s my limitation for this trip. I’ll take trains or local buses but only local transportation no airplanes. Or, another type of limitation might be related to food. You might decide I’m going to fast, to avoid food during certain times of the day, like during the sunlight hours you will not eat, you’ll only eat at night. Or maybe, if it’s a shorter trip, you’ll avoid food completely for the whole journey. !Or, you could have some other limitation, like I will meditate for 3 hours every day, whatever it is for you. If it’s more artistic than I will draw and sketch for at least three hours a day. Whatever it is you have to choose it, but choose the limitations well. It’s generally useful for this kind of trip to have tougher limitations than easier ones. !

4. Step four- choose your daily rituals for the journey. !



We mentioned this in the main lesson. Have some daily rituals that are meaningful for you that connect to the meaning of the trip for you. In our Japan one, that was something like at each temple we would light some incense, light a candle, do a little meditation, it was a ritual that we repeated again and again, every day. In fact, more than once a day because we usually arrived at more than one temple per day. There were other little rituals for that pilgrimage. It was a tradition for that pilgrimage for pilgrims, people doing the journey, to dress in white, especially people who were walking it. So we wore white clothes. !For your trip, your journey, your pilgrimage, choose the rituals that are meaningful for you. !

5. Step five – choose meaningful sites along your path. !You know the beginning point and the end point, well in the middle are there some meaningful locations you want to visit, that have a special meaning to you, that have a connection to the deeper meaning of the trip? Choose those, even if they’re difficult to get to. In fact, if they’re difficult to get to it’s even better. !

6. Step six – schedule it. !Schedule the time. Decide when you’re going to do it, put it on your calendar and… !

7. Step seven – buy the tickets. !If you need to fly to where you’re going buy your flight tickets. Save the money you need, whatever it is. Ask for your vacation time from your job, whatever it is. Just schedule it and lock it in, commit 100% to doing it. !And finally of course, share this with our members. We have such an incredible group of people in the VIP program, such an amazing group. So share your ideas. Share your experiences with them. They want to comment. They want to hear about you. They want to hear about your ideas. They especially want to hear about your experiences, so do I. I want to read about them on our site. So please get on our social site, get on our forum and tell us your progress with this. Let us know and comment on other people’s posts as well. !This way we build our community. You’ll develop real friendships with people all over the world, but you must participate to do that. !All right that’s it that’s the end of our commentary, have a great month. I’ll see you again soon. Bye for now. !! !



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