Emptying Your Backpack

“Robert Bly said that we spend the first twenty tears of life filling a backpack with a variety of impressions and experiences… and then we spend the rest of our life trying to empty it! This is the work involved in recognizing our own shadow. As long as we refuse to empty our backpack it will get heavier and become more dangerous with each attempt to open it. There is no alternative to the encounter with one’s own self. Either we open up to seek out the most secret, anguishing or painful regions of ourselves or the regions will surface at the most untimely moments of our lives.”

~Laura Gutman