Everyone carries a backpack. It contains unprocessed feelings and emotions related to all the experiences that occur during one's life.
It contains items from both good and bad life experiences. The good can generate desire and longings that may seem out of reach or unattainable.....in the backpack. The bad can be reliving past experiences over and over.....also in the backpack. Religion, Society, Culture and the commonly held views about Race, Ethnicity, Place of Origin, Language, Sex, Politics, Gender, Orientation, Status, Education.... all go in the backpack. It also contains big T and little t trauma.
We carry this backpack around with us everyday, in our body. The weight of it is a heavy burden that slows us down and tires us out. Oftentimes, we can be protective of it because it represents our identity. The backpack often becomes heavier as we get older and have more life experiences or are exposed to more of the experiences of others.
I had occasion to watch as other practitioners asked you to take off that backpack and set it aside so that you could fully enjoy a pleasurable, memorable and sensual 5-star experience. At the conclusion of this heady and exotic vacation-like experience, your backpack was waiting at the door right where you left it and you had nothing to take home with you except memories. You were offered the opportunity to come back and told that you could find this nowhere else. Over time, you were hooked by the lure of pleasure and gratification while your finances diminished and your relationships were destroyed. This just added more to that backpack.
This also created the need for a new type of retreat experience. One where you can come with your backpack and empty some of it out. You can learn skills and tools to continue emptying it out when you return home. Eventually, you can arrive at a place where your backpack only contains what you want in it...what you want to carry. You are welcome to come back to another retreat and empty out more of the backpack, but you won't need to come back because someone hooked you on a pleasure drug. You will likely want to come back and experience greater lightening of your load and greater change and transformation in your life.
If this sounds like a retreat you want to experience, then visit redbirdretreats.com to learn more.