My Experience on the Path of Love 7-Day Intensive
I was on a shuttle bus with about 15 other people. We all had arrived solo but quickly began chattering about who we were, where we were coming from, and the all important question, "Have you ever done this before?"
There were palpable nerves throughout the group. The 7-day personal development retreat we were headed towards has been billed as "one of the most intensive and life-changing meditation and personal development processes in the world today," and most of us had little to no idea what was about to happen.
Let me add that this is purposeful on behalf of the retreat process. And I myself have signed legal documents restricting me from sharing details of the program. Why? Because an important part of the retreat process IS the trust, trust in yourself and trust in your community, even when we don't have perfect information on what is coming next.
The one thing this little group of 15 headed off into the Colorado wilderness together DID share was an openness to the unknown. We each had had one, or multiple, life events or moments of clarity in the last year or two that propelled us to seek out something that would really pry open our cracks, and facilitate even greater personal expansion.
And expand we did.
Since I cannot share exactly what happened once this retreat process began, what I will be sharing is how it made me feel, the things that I still feel reverberating in me from this week (now one year on), and some small pieces of context that might inform your own journey.
The view from my bedroom taken on Day 1, right before we turned in our phones for the week (that’s right, zero access to technology)!
First, logistics. Ultimately our small shuttle bus was joined by about 30 other program participants, and the same number of staff members once we arrived at the remote retreat center, totalling a group of ~75 people going through the week together.
The staff is comprised of formally employed Path of Love (POL) facilitators, as well as a core group of volunteers who are sourced from past POL retreat participants. The facilitators are mostly trained mental health professionals, from psychotherapists to family counselors to movement therapists. The sheer number of facilitators who were with us the entire week (30 staff to 45 participants), is one of the greatest structural indicators that this retreat is unlike any other.
Within the large group, we were organized into 8-person "horseshoes". My group of 7 other participants became some of my closest confidantes, and now know more about me than any other person on earth. The sharing goes that deep.
Throughout the retreat we were silent, other than when in a facilitated part of the process, and programming ran from 6AM in the morning until 8 or 9PM every night, leaving very little room to deviate from the schedule. This retreat has been run, almost in the exact same format, for about 20 years. Slowly it has been refined, and even though it is held in dozens of countries around the world (40+ retreats each year), every single retreat has the same process - because it really is that, a process.
So, getting to the good stuff. What did I feel?
Terrified. Apprehensive. Weepy. Ready.
When I say I have never been so emotionally exposed in front of one other human, let alone a group of 8-15 other humans, I mean it. The sharing that we did was always safe, we never needed to share more than we were ready to, and yet the liberation that came from speaking my truth honestly, without filter, was enough that I knew I had to go there.
The reason I was able to do this was because we entered into the experience with a focus on dropping our masks. None of us knew what anyone else did for a living (later I learned I was in a horseshoe with a rocket scientist, a world-class mountain climber, a successful entrepreneur..), and so we were able to just be.. us. No assumptions about how we were supposed to present ourselves, how we were supposed to arrange our faces on a daily basis, what emotions were "okay", or what our past experiences, traumatic or triumphant, meant about or to us.
We were given opportunities on a daily basis to be in our heads, use our words, process things intellectually AND ALSO be in our bodies, be in our animal nature, use all of our faculties to process, express and expell what we were feeling. We used music, sound, movement, contact, connection and silence to open more and more.
What else did I feel?
Anger. Resentment. Fury. Just so f*cking pissed off.
I was able to yell the names of all the people who have wronged me. I was able to literally hurl my 115-lb body against a punching bag held by a 300-lb man, looking directly in his eyes, channeling all the frustration, aggression and rage I have pent up over the last 30 years. And this man, this gentle giant, met me there. He egged me on. He got me to a point where I had no more filter, no more hesitance, all the "carefulness" I feel on a daily basis was forgotten and I was a wild.
And I felt really goddamn holy.
There's something about this process that gave me what I think was the first opportunity I have ever had to look out of my eyes, and see myself, see those same eyes, with perfect clarity. In a way that made me weep with joy and awe and realization.
And I felt connected. From the tips of my toes to the top of my head, I felt loved, held and seen.
I felt like no matter WHAT I said, I would be loved. No matter what I had or hadn't done, how many mistakes I had made, how much ego I had been led by, how much pain I had felt or caused. It didn't matter. I was able to look into the eyes of 74 other people and feel love, from each and every one of them. In fact, I was celebrated. We were ALL celebrated. Every body, every mind, every history, every step, we were each the most beautiful thing any of us had ever seen.
Hiking outside the beautiful Colorado retreat center after the conclusion of the retreat.
It was as if through this process we were returned, each of us, to the sweetest center of life. Given an opportunity to experience what usually passes in small moments of epiphany, a leaf settling to the ground, a friend's truest hug, cold air on the top of a mountain, in a serving size 1,000x what we had ever experienced before. We were drunk on life. I was given a big enough dose of all that is good and holy in myself, in each other and the world, that it did shift something for me, towards hope. Towards holy. And gave me a REAL narrative of WHAT IS POSSIBLE. That taste led me back to a commitment I've held loosely through my life, and now grip as if it's my last lifeline, to find opportunities every single time I get out of bed to revisit that feeling of... holy.
Holy, meaning, life is so goddamn sweet. We humans have inside us a world so rich, so luscious, so complex and deep and delicious, that we cannot waste it being distracted.
Path of Love did change my life.
Would I do it again? Yes. Would I still feel terrified on the shuttle ride there? Yes.
Whatever your Path of Love is today, get on the shuttle.
To myself, Julia, get on the shuttle. Stay on the shuttle.
If you want to feel different, you have to do things differently.
I love you. Let's go.
xo,
Julia
