Sacred Journey Sites Mingle with Those Devoted to Time and Astral Travel

Ah summertime! Even though travel has become a year-round experience, the summer months still can set your feet to itching and your thoughts a-wandering. And it's not just about exotic destinations anymore. There are plenty of choices for the spiritual traveler who desires to combine an inner journey with an outer one.

One of the best ways to sample a wide range of spiritual adventures is by hitting the highways and byways of the World Wide Web. While on the Net, you can book the trip of your dreams-or play New Age armchair traveler. It's all up to you.

Staff Choices

One stop on my own Internet journey was a site I spotted in the June edition of The Monthly Aspectarian. In addition to some August events with Louix Dor Dempriey (Sri Pranananda), the ad highlighted a November 19 to December 2, 2000 trip called "Return to the Holy Lands." I decided to take a closer look at this trip via the registration web site at www.Synergy-One.net. Synergy One turns out to be a privately held, Australian business specializing in the production of tours, conferences, seminars and spiritual pilgrimages worldwide. Dor Dempriey has been called a living Christ. "Come and experience this beautiful country with world teacher Louix Dor Dempriey and be forever touched by his love," states the Holy Land information.

A recommendation by the Aspectarian staff led me to Inner Light Discovery Tours at www.ildt.com. This one is a New-Age Directory SPOTLIGHT Award winner. It's a beautiful site that is meant to be viewed on a large screen. Small screen users will have to do a bit of scrolling. One unique feature are the mouseovers that make the stars seem to twinkle. Inner Light invites you to join a scheduled tour or to create your own. Upcoming tours include Languedoc, France-The Cathar Region in conjunction with the Through the Heart to Peace Foundation and Machu Picchu, Peru with "the original Soul Man, Dr. Albert Taylor, a recognized expert on Out of Body Experiences." As a Spiritualist, though, my personal choice would be the one called "Study Mediumship in England: "Experience the mystical side of England. Spend one week in intensive classes with an unforgettable team of certified British Mediums…"

Key Words: "Spiritual Travel"

My next step was to check out Aol.comsearch (http://search.aol.com). I typed in "Spiritual Travel" and was rewarded with a list of 5,245 sites. Not all of them really fit the overall category, but there were plenty of choices-some of which took me on wonderful tangents.

The Time Travel Research Center site (www.time-travel.com), for example, invites you to "explore the possibilities on the exciting new frontier of time travel." The center is a private research and development laboratory dedicated to advancing the study and development of time control and time travel capabilities. According to the center, research advances are coming close to taking time travel out of the realm of science fiction and making it science fact. Articles at the site include "Reversing Time at Sub-light Speeds!" and "Time Machines in our Future!" This is a serious site, folks, with lots of detailed information. They point out that only 100 years ago space travel, nuclear power, and even computers were nonsense and the sheerest fantasy."

Those of us on a budget should check out the Astral Traveler site at www.astraltraveler.com. Just think, no plane fares, no car rentals and no hotel fees. The whole trip is free if you can master the intricacies of astral travel. This site promises to guide you with your training and on your journey.

One of the sites that popped up at the top of the AOL list is a unique destination called Spiritual Travel to Korea (www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Coast/9227/main.html). This page was developed by Dong Gwan Kim. It is unique not only because of its travel opportunities, but because of the wealth of knowledge in sections like "Buddhism," "Ki," "How to feel ki?," "The World of Spirit," and "Meditation." This is a learning as well as a travel experience, and well worth the visit.

Saluna Tours/Sacred Journeys (www.solunatours.com) has a wide variety of offerings including Mystery School Tours, Shamanic Studies, Yoga & Meditation Retreats, Goddess Gatherings, Expeditions and Sacred Journeys. Destinations include Peru, Egypt, India, Costa Rica, Tibet/Nepal, Israel and Sedona. The background information on this company indicates that they have been traveling to sacred destinations for more than 20 years.

Sacred Travel at www.sacredtravel.org offers tours that appeal to both traditional and New Age travelers. The trip to Assisi, Italy, led by Bruce Davis, Ph.D., author of Monastery Without Walls, features a retreat and visits to the places where St. Francis and St. Clare "prayed and opened to God's joy." The trip entitled "Sacred Travel to Bali, Indonesia" invites you to "feel your feet dancing up the steps into the exquisite peace of a Balinese Temple."

In addition to trips, the site for New Age Travel (www.newagetravel.com) features a section on New Age travel books. Titles include: The Pilgrimage: A Contemporary Quest for Ancient Wisdom by Paulo Coelho and The Art of Pilgrimage, The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred by Phil Cousineau. The site is also announcing the grand opening of a section called "Retreats and Gatherings." There were no listings at the time of my visit, but the section promises to contain a comprehensive list of worldwide spiritual retreats and gatherings.

Another interesting site belongs to SpiritQuest (www.biopark.org/sprtqu3.html). This site is devoted to shamanic travel and training and is subtitled "Listening To The Plants." Since 1997, SpiritQuest and El Tigre Journeys have been facilitating "illuminating workshop retreats exploring multi-disciplinary ethnobotany and traditional shamanic ayahuasca healing practices in the rainforests of Amazonian Peru". SpiritQuest is designed for the mature, sincere and respectful seeker of cultural knowledge, spiritual enlightenment and personal healing. Tourists need not apply.

Cruising Along

One surprise was that so few spiritual or New Age cruise companies appeared on my AOL search list. I tried typing in "spiritual cruises" and "New Age cruises." I also tried switching to other search engines. Still, the pickings were slim. One site called The Inner Voyage (www.theinnervoyage.com) sponsors cruises with over 500 like-minded individuals. Participants on the Western Caribbean Cruise will travel with 25 best-selling authors, visionaries and experts in holistic health and conscious living. Speakers and presenters include Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Healing Words, and Prayer is Good Medicine; and Sarah Ban Breathnach, author of Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy.

One of the attractions of Spiritual Journeying is getting a chance to spend quality time with a particular spiritual leader, author, etc. Often, the best way to find out about these types of tours is to go to the individual's personal web site. For example, the company that hosts trips with Brian L .Weiss, M.D. did not pop up during my search. However, the Web site, www.brianweiss.com, contained a section with information about a journey called "Voyage of Enlightenment on the Mediterranean Rivieras," October 14 - 21, 2000 on Windstar Cruises. Dr. Weiss will be joined by James Van Praagh during this seven-night cruise that features a variety of group workshops. Whatever the price, this has got to be a great deal. After all, participants will not only travel half way around the world, they will travel back through the mists of time to explore their past lives.

Practical Pointers

One of the pleasures of the Internet is being able to print out a variety of information that can be perused in-depth at one's leisure. Many New Age sites seem to favor black backgrounds and that can present printing problems. Often that's all you'll get -lots of black and very little readable print. The way to get around this is to copy the text into something like Microsoft Word. Then highlight all the text (even if you can't see it because it's white on white) and change the font color to black. Voila! Now you can read what you print. Also, I noticed that a number of sites were designed for large screens. Even if you have a large screen, the copy will probably cut off at the right side of page and be unreadable. As a rule of thumb, I always go to page setup and print everything from the Internet at 85 percent. I found that I had to go down to 80 percent or lower on some of these travel sites, though.

Do you have a favorite spiritual or personal growth Web site that you'd like me to review? Please drop me an e-mail at Monty764@aol.com.

Mary Montgomery-Clifford is a certified web author and developer. Her company, Montgomery Media Enterprises ("Freelancing with Finesse!"), specializes in public relations, events, promotions, writing project and web authoring, development and publicity. Contact her via e-mail at Monty764@aol.com, by phone at 773-235-8821 or at her web site at www.montymedia.com.