Travel within

I started getting another inspirational message to my email account from the author o the Gita book I am reading, Eknath Easwaran. This quote below was particularly interesting to me...

"There are many going afar to marvel at the heights of mountains, the mighty waves of the sea, the long courses of great rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the movements of the stars, yet they leave themselves unnoticed!" -Saint Augustine

Easwaran's comments:
Today many people who enjoy traveling are not content with visiting London or Paris; they want to travel by camel in the Sahara, or kayak in the Antarctic. But no matter how exotic, this is horizontal travel, where we stay on the surface of life. Much more fascinating is vertical travel - that is, meditation, which takes us to the Land of Love in the utmost depths of consciousness.

For a long time we may not get very far, but if we insist on traveling deep, meditation will become a daring adventure. We will pass through level after level of consciousness, just the way one travels from one country to another. There is this difference: when we pass from the United States into Mexico, we know when we have crossed the border. We must stop and speak to the guard. Then the language changes. We know we are in a new land. In meditation, it is rather different. The changes are likely to take place so gradually that we may not even be aware of it immediately. But slowly and surely we will begin to have a strong feeling of coming home to our native land.

As I delve into yoga, I am becoming more aware of aspects of my life that help or hurt our environment be it Nature, relationships, or the growth of humanity. I used to think it was an item of success to be able to travel the world, visit new places. But now I think about the Carbon Footprint I leave--the jet fuel, the dumping of waste by ships in the ocean, the special small packaging items I buy so I do not have to carry so much with me. Or how about the layers o sunscreen that wash of at the beach, destroying coral reefs? Oh, there is much damage. Am I really going to be a better person by travel distant places to learn? I wonder...