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- Herausgeber: Identity Publications
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
A daring, intelligent, and unapologetic call to find yourself through wanderlust. When you travel to a foreign place, do you experience this new life as your old self? Or do you become a new version of you? From living in a van on the streets of San Diego, to growing chocolate with indigenous tribes in Central America, to teaching in the Middle East and volunteering in Africa, bestselling author Gregory V. Diehl has followed a worldly and unconventional path through life. Leaving his California home as a teenager, he fully immersed himself, living and working, in 45 countries across the globe--all by age 28. In Travel As Transformation, he puts his diverse cultural experiences on display and asks the reader to question how their own identity has been shaped by the lifestyle they live. As you delve into Travel As Transformation, you will learn just how profoundly travel can influence your perception of yourself. Diehl teaches aspiring travelers, vagabonds, and nomads to let go of their internal inhibitions and former sense of self. To encourage world wanderers to embrace change, he shares his own stirring experiences of transformation across Costa Rica, China, Morocco, Armenia, Iraq, Monaco, Ecuador, and more. By embarking on this nomadic journey alongside him, you will learn to examine all of humanity through unbiased eyes and discover all that lies just beyond your backyard. A new, vast cultural experience awaits. To travel with a truly open mind is to forget who you were when you started. It is to be constantly born anew, and identify with ways of existence you did not know were possible. Travel As Transformation will give you the wisdom, the inspiration, and the resources to conquer the limitations placed on you by your home culture. It's time to take advantage of everything the world has to offer and become everything you can be. Find yourself through Travel As Transformation.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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Travel As Transformation
Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity
Gregory V. Diehl
Copyright © 2016, 2017, 2018 by Gregory V. Diehl
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the website below.
Identity Publications
www.IdentityPublications.com
To inquire about having your book or course produced, published, or promoted, please email:
Ordering Information:
Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others at the web address above.
Travel As Transformation/Gregory Diehl —3rd ed.
ISBN-13: 978-1-945884-00-9 (Identity Publications)
ISBN-10: 1-945884-00-2
Gregory V. Diehl
www.GregoryDiehl.net
David J. Wright, Globcal International
www.Globcal.net
For Anastasia, who gave me my final test of identity.
Foreword by David J. Wright
Human freedom and individuality from the perspective of a traveler is something that few people in the world ever truly realize or experience. I had not met very many of these people over the last 50+ years, that was until social media came around. Uniquely, the author of this book is one of these people who has traveled the world extensively enough that I can trust what he says about nomad-ism, offshore residency, citizenship, human rights and freedom.
Gregory Diehl is working on his third citizenship, is a United States expatriate, and actively maintains residency in multiple states. He has been around the block enough times in his young life to know what the world offers. The reader of this book can expect to learn things which I consider to be “outside of the box” or “off-the-grid.” Many of them challenge our conventional understanding of who we are and who we can become. This is done by harnessing what I call a “non-state mentality,” which is gained through building your international identity outside your place of birth.
Establishing your identity outside of your home country may not be convenient for everyone. They are already happy as North American, Australian or European citizens, which together account for 30% of the global population. For the author of this book and myself – who can both be considered to be part of the world's privileged minority as United States citizens – there are, however, further privileges that can only be understood by leaving. Perhaps you will experience some of the same benefits yourself just by reading this book.
The benefits I’m talking about go far beyond seeing exciting new places. Periodic travel as a tourist for a few weeks at a time along the well-beaten path will never give you all the understanding that is required to consider yourself at liberty in the world. Unless you are a millionaire, spend $100,000 or more per year on personal leisure, and travel at least several times per year, you probably don’t see yourself in a position to make travel a major part of your life.
I first met with the author on Skype, as is the common mode of communication for people who may never be in the same part of the world at the same time, after he had already written this book. I knew then that I wanted to read it because it was a book that needed to be written and the world needed to read it. I was initially surprised, but I discovered we already ran in many of the same circles of acclaimed international travelers. After a few minutes, we both understood that we shared many personal interests, including global entrepreneurship and citizenship, and he asked me to contribute to his work. It is an opportunity of good timing for me. As a goodwill ambassador and observer of the Colombian peace process, representing an international NGO, I am getting ready to move my office to Bogota, Colombia from Caracas, Venezuela.
The information presented in the pages that follow may not empower you to begin living a nomadic life immediately, maybe because you do not know who you are yet. But Gregory’s tale will, at the very least, teach you to see the world somehow differently from the way you did before. Perhaps you will start to see it as a nicer place than you have ever thought before; or, as Gregory will demonstrate, perhaps the very opposite.
From my perspective as a permanent traveler and expatriate, the book offers hundreds of possibilities to those who wish to adopt the non-state or global citizenship perspective. I am certain it will warrant readers who share Gregory’s ideals to ply them until they can reach the cross-roads and make a pivotal choice toward freedom, as many world travelers have already experienced.
Both the author and I understand that this, admittedly, somewhat extreme lifestyle is not for everyone. It is up to you, as the reader, to decide how much understanding you can manifest to define the limits of your horizons and what type of person you want to become. You can live some-place where others only dream of. More importantly, you can become someone you might have only dreamt of.
It took me over 40 years to realize my dream of living someday in the Guiana Highlands (a prehistoric landscape in Venezuela and Guyana). I first had this dream while studying geography at high school, but it was something that I had forgotten about by the time I was 19. After reaching many of the expected stops in life that were programmed into me, such as a being a responsible father, citizen, patriot, business owner, college graduate, and other things modern humans do, I finally came back to living in the Amazon rainforest. Here, I chartered an ecovillage and ecological project spanning 22 square kilometers, which I now manage.
My home here is a place we call Ekobius. It is my permanent legal residence, and where I am accepted as an honorary and functional member of the Piaroa tribe. The only thing that keeps me from residing there permanently is the current political situation between Venezuela and the United States. Because of the bilateral discrimination between the governments, I face many restrictions on my freedom of movement in my own home. But as a soon-to-be resident of Colombia, I will be able to move to and from the ecovillage more freely in the near future. That’s just a small example of the influence that a person’s national identity has over their ability to pursue their own dreams and highest identity.
With the help of a global team of goodwill ambassadors and volunteers, I operate Globcal International. We are an organization which aspires to offer the first legal alternative to state-based citizenship and identity in line with the (new) United Nations Bill of Human Rights for the 21st Century and other bodies of international law. By working with the existing international bodies of law, we believe this is the most viable path to helping every person on the planet to achieve the same level of respect and opportunities no matter where they were born.
Since the first edition of this book comes at such a critical time for human rights, migration, refugees, peace and globalization, I feel it will help others to find the inspiration to start finding the life they were always looking for. It will also help them to overcome their loathing fears of being alone in the world as an individual. The reader should know that people’s very being and identity are based on their existence among others, and the perceptions that people have of them, which in today's populated world is often daunting. In reality, even when we are alone we exist because others see and interact with us and we keep them with us in our minds. How you appear to everyone else in the world is your own grand excursion in life. Everyone should make the most of this. The experience you pour into it and the risk you assume as a human being will determine your outcome and true identity.
Last year, I began a two-month overland journey from Mexico to Venezuela, crossing 18 border entry and exit checkpoints under irregular circumstances in most cases. It was one of the most memorable experiences in my life, with very enjoyable but challenging events throughout the journey. I think that if this book had been available at the time, I would probably have done better as an irregular traveler.
Since my trip over the last several months, we have been working on a global citizenship program that is accessible to all people, regardless of national origin, if they are considered qualified to possess a passport from their own nation. The program involves a supplemental passport credential (Laissez-Passer), open-source software, and individuals claiming their own identity, notwithstanding the nation-state, so they can work and travel as global non-state citizens to some 10,000 worldwide destinations under special conditions as contemporary travelers. The book you hold in your hands will become an essential part of our curriculum for participants.
The project we are developing has already made great progress with international law that is implicit over nations considered to be part of the international theater; but the wheels of politics are much slower than we can imagine, even at diplomatic levels. Fortunately, the progress we have made to date has avoided all of the mistakes our predecessors made in creating their invalid, blacklisted and unaccepted programs, which have all been declared illegal or outlawed by authorities like Interpol, the World Maritime Organization (WMO) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Fantasy travel documents like the World Service Authority passport (which is mentioned in the seventh chapter of this book) get more people arrested today than they enable others to cross borders.
I believe we are living in a world where organizations, corporations, and individuals are now the leading forces of truly globalized ideals. I am sure that Gregory Diehl's words will save many people, including myself, much time by increasing our understanding of international travel and our migration to places we want to go, as well as the people we want to be. I thoroughly recommend it as a part of your library.
Col. David J. Wright
Global Citizen, Traveler, Indigenous People’s Advocate, and Ecologist
Founder, Globcal International
Prologue
A tourist is one who carries their old culture to mitigate the jarring influence of new experiences.
To travel with a truly open mind is to forget who you were when you started.
It is to be constantly born anew and identify with ways you did not know others could exist.
What affirms you most?
What would it take to destroy you?
You grow in conditions that force you to think differently than before.
When you travel to a foreign place, do you experience this new life as your old self?
Or do you become a new self?
You do not have to pursue this path alone.
Exploratory barriers grow weaker all the time. Obstacles that conceal opportunities decline every day. People hear the call to start exploring, discovering a much larger world than they ever imagined. You are not the only one who seeks to answer life’s inconvenient questions.
There is unconscious cooperation on a global scale. We improve our ability to trade and communicate, making life better for everyone by moving beyond local knowledge or limitations.
The process is thoroughly known.
The yearning to know more inspires many to depart from life’s familiarity. Their pain stems from unanswered questions and things they couldn’t yet think to ask. Explorers pursue new knowledge past the point of resistance. This is the labyrinth that all adventurers must walk.
Experience inspires new action. It is a timeless but malleable path to expand oneself through inquiry into the unknown.
Many fear discovering something awful.
There are deep and forbidden parts to each of us. They are the actions and ideas that we have been told were wrong to hold. What we fear about ourselves remains the same until we grow willing to confront it. Under broader cultural settings, these unexamined parts of us can become something more.
With travel comes the freedom to break away from what one has always known and explore, for the first time ever, what it is that makes one who they really are. It will challenge and test a person like nothing before.
It might be something incredible.
There’s a part to each of us that has lived in us since birth. That part is the principle of who we are and can become. It is the instructions for how we respond to change and interact with the world around us and it defines everything we will turn into when circumstance allows. The past does not define anyone more than they allow it to.
What you consider sacred about your identity is only passing. It is your culture talking through you – a trap to stop you from growing. Each new perspective and unfamiliar stimulus provides more ingredients to make you grow.
You may think you will struggle.
The unfamiliar world is at first terror inducing. To venture forward into it is to survive outside your native environment. One’s greatest fear is actualized when reality does not work in the manner they expect it to any longer. Without familiar limitations, one loses themselves to all.
The details of life will come and go. The rules of the game will be cycled and changed. You won’t know what works for you until you see for yourself how different things can work.
You will successfully undo yourself.
What remains when you dismantle your familiar mind? Formative memories may be lost. You only think their structure is essential to your story. You don’t have to continue living as the person you’ve always been. No one is their past or how they happened to have lived until now. They are all the ways they could ever be.
Everyone fears what they might become without familiar limitations. You will conquer that fear on your journey to know the world.
