How to Travel Without Luggage

In 2010, my wife and I enjoyed a two-week honeymoon adventure in New Zealand, and we have many fantastic memories from this trip.  But, I also remember a stressful scene upon our arrival at the Auckland airport.  The very first thing that I did after exiting the plane was to fire up my laptop as we walked toward baggage claim.   ​There were several anticipated emails related to my real estate business that required, as I perceived my priorities at the time, my immediate attention.  The Wi-Fi signal at the airport was terrible and I found myself in a prolonged state of distracted stress until I eventually found a stable internet connection several hours later.   At the time, I perceived my behavior as normal.  When I allowed myself to travel, which was rare, this was how I rolled.

Just over four years later, in the summer of 2014, I was able to relax and enjoy a weeklong Alaska cruise while being disconnected from emails for virtually the entire duration of the trip.  What changed during the intervening years?  I credit my dreams with helping me to rebalance my portfolio of beliefs, habits and priorities.

When I started to study my dreams, one of the first recurring dream symbols that emerged for me was luggage.  In March of 2012, over a span of less than 3 weeks, I experienced a trilogy of stressful luggage dreams:

• In the first dream, Ann and I are vacationing in New York City.  We are walking briskly from a train station toward our hotel.  Suddenly I’m concerned.  Where is our luggage?  My emotional state is one of mild panic.  In contrast to this, Ann is calm and keeps striding toward our hotel.  In my dream notes, I wrote: “Ann seems to think the bags will take care of themselves.”  Then Ann’s relaxed belief system plays out before my dreaming eyes.  A bellhop magically slides in front of us, wheeling a cart loaded with bags.  I watch Ann casually check the tags, confirming that they are indeed our bags.

• In the second dream, Ann and I are stranded on an island.  A small boat pulls up to the shore. It is like we are being rescued from Gilligan’s Island!   The captain tells us we can have five minutes to gather up a few items.  My sense of relief does not last long, however. I dash over to our bungalow and start stuffing a suitcase to the brim with all kinds of unnecessary items, including towels.  I even start unloading clothes from a clothes dryer.  But, my clothes are still damp!  Uggh!  I’m running out on time!  The boat is going to leave without me!

• In the final dream, Ann and I are riding on a bus.  When we arrive at our destination, I suddenly realize that I’m missing one of my bags!  I start to panic (in contrast, Ann is, once again, quite relaxed).  I plead with the bus driver to give me more time to find my bag, but he has little patience for me.  He closes the door and starts to drive away.  I wake up, relieved to learn that this worrisome scene was just a dream.

What are these dreams about?  One of the most powerful tools for interpreting dreams is to match the emotional vibe of the dream with waking life situations and relationships that are evoking similar emotions.  Usually, the dream is about the waking life scenario that matches the vibe of the dream.  Dreams often provide us with cartoon-like exaggerations for purposes of gaining our attention and driving a point home.  In providing me with these three stressful dreams in short succession, it was is my Inner Self was saying:  Pay attention! Pay attention! Pay attention!

These dreams are amazing to me in terms of their consistent symbolism and emotional feel.  They all revolve around luggage and they all involve the emotional state of worry, at times bordering on panic.  The recurring luggage symbol served as a hint that the dreams might relate to travel.  These dreams all had a vibe, albeit exaggerated, that was similar to the stress I felt about my work whenever took time off to travel.

In the wake of these dreams, I decided that I needed to change my beliefs about my business life and to ground these belief changes with new patterns of behavior.  There was a lot involved with this shift, but the chart below will suffice as a quick summary:

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OLD BELIEF

NEW BELIEF

NEW BEHAVIOR

My professional and financial success requires my constant and immediate attention to emails, phone calls, text messages etc.
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​Periods of undistracted relaxation are refreshing to my psyche and help to unleash fresh creative energy.

​​Cell phone is set to silent mode at all times.  All email, voice-mail and text message alerts, badges etc. on my phone and computer are deactivated.

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OLD BELIEF

My financial and professional success requires me to carry a heavy load of projects at all times.
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NEW BELIEF

​I’m better served by focusing on the 20% of projects that excite me the most, as they generate 80% of my income.

NEW BEHAVIOR

Turn down or delegate any real estate project that does not excite me.
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OLD BELIEF

Free time on my hands is indicative of laziness and irresponsibility.

NEW BELIEF

Free time is necessary for me to discover new and higher creative expressions.

NEW BEHAVIOR

​Use freed up time for new creative endeavors, such as writing and teaching about dreams.

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As I began to implement these belief and behavior changes, I continued to dream periodically about luggage, but the dream scenarios and their vibration shifted noticeably.  For one thing, the luggage in my new dreams became much lighter, manifesting in such forms as a shopping bag, a briefcase, a backpack, or a small carry-on bag.  

A single lucid dream from the fall of 2013 served as the most important marker of my inner shift.  It involved a clever and synchronistic weaving of my dream and waking reality luggage experiences.  In waking reality, I had recently donated a large silver suitcase to Goodwill.  In my dream, I find myself in a room with this very same silver suitcase.  Aware that I have previously donated it, I realize that I must be dreaming!

I’m lucid and I want to fly.  But my hands are like Patrick Swayze’s in Ghost and I can’t use them to manipulate the door knob!  I manage to twist and slide my dream body through the door and I start flying.  The scene below me is like a surreal college campus - everything is crisp, clear and bright.  I decide to land near a statue.  I then realize that I’ve been flying around with a backpack over one of my shoulders.  I think to myself: What is the point of hauling a backpack around in this dream?  This dream will be over in 5 minutes.  What use will this backpack be then?  I drop the backpack by the statue and resume my lucid exploration of the dreamscape. 

The backpack metaphor provided by this lucid dream is easy to apply.  There is no point in hauling even a backpack sized piece of “luggage” (worries about work) around with me when I want to “fly” (travel, explore etc.) in my waking life.