I'd like to share this pilgrim's view with you.
I have often found among people who have walked El Camino or other pilgrimage routes that there is a resistance to accept other ways of approaching pilgrimage that are not by foot, or other aspects that go beyond what is culturally and religiously established. These are obviously touchy subjects because they challenge deep rooted personal convictions and points of view. Most of us feel threatened when what we believe to be totally true, to the point we have created a personal identity around it, has the potential of not being the only “truth”.
I was introduced to El Camino through an ancient lineage of Master Builders in which walking was not important as a part of the teachings because pilgrimage is considered an internal process (also because my French teachers were rather lazy in that sense and didn’t care for so much effort!)
The importance was on understanding the energies of the earth and the architectural development of constructions.
Then, years later I was reintroduced to El Camino by a person who had grown in the pilgrimage tradition of India and had extensively gone on pilgrimage for years through Asia. That added to my experience of how important and useful are the foundations - meaning “all the preparations before you go, your pilgrim vows and attitude, etc...” And one of the key aspects is always remaining open to the possibility of change.
Nowadays most people spend more time looking for a pair of boots than going deeply into the reasons why the want to go to El Camino, which cycles are still open that might prevent them from deepening their experience, reconsidering the relation to transcendence and death that is implied in pilgrimage, etc.
I have spent many months in El Camino. Walking, driving, practicing meditations, studying the shrines… It’s never the same, there’s no one form that we can really say “this is it”. It’s just a structure that we use to point from the form to the formless.
The essence of the journeys I have shared have been to point towards that dimension of internal beauty and inner peace which lies dormant in most of us. El Camino has the ability to awaken that if one responsive. Many pilgrims I have met lack the ability to heighten their awareness because their minds were too busy either with mental chatter or too busy with material details about art, kilometers to walk, albergues to stay, etc…
All those things have a value but if one is not careful they will, from my humble experience, distract the essence of one’s true nature away from manifesting.