John

Many years ago, my local Boy Scout troop went on trip to Philmont, the Boy Scout ranch in northeastern New Mexico. It was a fun trip, full of adventures, but often tiring for a group of teenage boys.

One of our adventures was a full-day backpacking trip into the mountains. I’ll never forget when we got back to our base camp that day, and released our backpacks. I felt so light, as if I was flying, free of all that weight. The feeling lasted for hours.

What if we could release all the excess weight we’ve been carrying around all our lives? Maybe then we also could fly. Perhaps literally. But that’s another subject for another day.

Spirit

Humans are fond of hanging on to the familiar, the old ways of being. Often, those ways are painful, but they’re also familiar. And, in a perverse way, they are comfortable.

What are we talking about? Well, here are a few habits you may find hard to release:

• Guilt
• Shame
• Seeking comfort in all the wrong places (food, sex, drugs, alcohol, etc.)
• Giving away your power to others, often because you need their approval more than your own
• Blame
• Resentment
• Hatred of anyone different from you

And so on—you get the idea.

In other words, you hang onto the old ways, not because they are working for you, but because they’re familiar. Painful though they may be.

Now what if you simply release all that, as Johnny did his backpack in that long-ago Boy Scout trip?

We guarantee you would immediately feel lighter, almost as if you were flying.

We can already hear the objections:

But how can I let go of my anger at my mother when she mistreated me 10 years ago?

How can I forgive myself for that stupid mistake I made when I was in my 20s?

How can I not criticize people who deliberately harm others?

And on it goes.

The answer is pretty simple: Just do it!

You have the free will God gave you. You have the power, the creative power, God gave you. So just do it! Release and fly.

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In this short video, we see 2 people stuck on an escalator. They miss the one obvious way out of this mess. This will probably sound familiar to many of us.