A Pilgrim’s Call: The 6 Stages of a Pilgrimage

For starters, what is a pilgrimage? A pilgrimage is a journey to a sacred site of spiritual/religious significance. Typically a pilgrim travels to a shrine or other holy location of importance to their personal beliefs. But sometimes it is a metaphorical sacred journey into someone’s own beliefs. A person who makes such journey is called a pilgrim.

My humble opinion, everyone needs to go on a pilgrimage...alone. A pilgrimage is a deeply personal journey and it needs to be experienced in as much silence and solitude as possible.

If you’re reading this, it’s no coincidence. I’ve gone too far for too long to know that there is no such thing as a coincidence. I bet the call has already begun. Are you going to answer? I will say this...you have no choice.

Stage 1: The Call

“The opening clarion of any spiritual journey. Often in the form of a feeling or some vague yearning, that summons expresses a fundamental human desire: finding meaning in an over scheduled world somehow requires leaving behind our daily obligations. Sameness is the enemy of spirituality.”

The call began during my first trip to Costa Rica in 2014. I had absolutely no idea what it was that was calling me or where I was being called to, but something so vague, seemingly so far away yet so near and dear was calling me. And I began to answer. First in the form of a break-up with a long-term live in boyfriend, then by multiple trips back and forth to Costa Rica. I still wasn’t sure what I was answering, but the call kept getting louder & louder.

When I got laid off from my job in 2016...for now the second time...the vague call became a piercing cry. I had no choice, I had to answer.

You have no choice. You have to answer.

Stage 2: The Separation

“Pilgrimage, by its very nature, undoes certainty. It rejects the safe and familiar. It asserts that one is freer when one frees oneself from daily obligations of family, work, and community, but also the obligations of science, reason, and technology.”

And then came the worst anxiety of my life. Once I made the decision to answer the call, I knew I was giving up any and all control. The separation from the only life I knew had officially begun, and I was essentially undoing certainty, shattering this false sense of security I had worked so hard to create.

I was simply trusting this vague call that is now screaming at me while attempting to explain this to myself and to my concerned loved ones. “I dunno, I just know I gotta go.”

You don’t know. You just gotta go.

Stage 3: The Journey

“The backbone of a sacred journey is the pain of the journey itself. In India, pilgrims approach the holy sites barefoot. In Iraq, they flagellate themselves. In Tibet, the more difficult the trip the more merit the pilgrim acquires. In almost every place, the travelers develop blisters, hunger and diarrhea. This personal sacrifice enhances the experience; it also elevates the sense of community one develops along the way.”

My pilgrimage was 16 months. But most of my time was spent in India, where now I know was the heart of my pilgrimage. Now I know who was calling me and where I was being called to.

It wasn’t meant to be easy. Good to know the constant diarrhea was not in vain, but in the name of enhancing the experience. And it is true, it does elevate the sense of community, when you’re sick, alone, 8,000 miles away from home and you have to rely on the kindness of strangers to help you.

And yes, you will absolutely get sick, very sick, more than once.

Step 4: The Contemplation

“Some pilgrims go the direct route, right to the center of the holy of the holies, directly to the heart of the matter. Others take a more indirect route, circling around the outside of the sacred place, transforming the physical journey into a spiritual path of contemplation.”

I spent a few months in Costa Rica, Nepal & Sri Lanka. Without a doubt I took an indirect route, mainly because I didn’t know exactly where I was going. I circled, and hopped, and ran, and jumped, and skipped, and trudged along as the call illuminated the way.

Before I knew it I was knee deep into a spiritual path of contemplation, questioning everything I thought was “real”, challenging everything I labeled as “true”. Every single second of the physical journey was dedicated to my spiritual path of contemplation.

Whether your route is direct or indirect, you will question everything you know, you will challenge the core of your belief system, you will contemplate right into realms unknown.

Step 5: The Encounter

“After all the tool and trouble, after all the sunburn and swelling, after all the anticipation and expectation comes the approach, the sighting. The encounter is the climax of the journey, the moment when the traveler attempts to slide through a thin membrane in the universe and return to the Garden of Origin, where humans lived in concert with the Creator.”

I can’t really explain in detail when “the encounter” happened for me, or if it was even one specific moment in time or one definite site, but rather a culmination of turning points and realizations that actualized my pilgrimage. It wasn’t anything outside of me that lead me to the Garden of Origin, but rather the countless hours of meditation, yoga, 3rd class train rides, backpack trekking, solitude and silence that created the climax.

You will climax. And then what?

Step 6: The Completion & Return

“At the culmination of the journey, the pilgrim returns home only to discover that meaning they sought lies in the familiar of one’s own world.”

The very same voice that nagged you to pack your bags and travel across the world, the very same voice that told you to go here, then go there, now go here, now go back there, will now tell you to go home. The same voice.

It’s funny that I still think I can ignore the voice. I didn’t want to come home. I was terrified of returning. Probably more terrified than I was when I first departed on my pilgrimage. Like a bird in a cage when the door is first cracked open.

But the voice, it will not stop. You have to answer the call, the calls. You have to come full circle to complete the pilgrimage. You have to go home. Only to discover what you were desperately searching for has always been and always will be within.

I’m planning my next pilgrimage. Once you answer that first initial call, the other ones come in much sweeter and clearer, because you’ve relinquished the resistance to a pilgrims call. You’ll know exactly where you need to go and when. And rather than fear trekking along, you now pack with you hope and joy.

You’re no longer afraid of the food poisoning or the foreign strangers or the local buses, because you know it’s all part of the sacred journey of traveling deeper and deeper within to the only destination we’re all headed to...The Garden of Origin.

So, are you answering the pilgrim’s call? I’ll tell you this...you don’t have a choice.

Source: PBS - Sacred Journeys