Exploring the Labyrinth_ A Guide for Healing and Spiritual Growth - Melissa Gayle West [11]
“Then—this was the real kicker—I started walking again and realized how much I was missing out on me! It was like I was identifying myself with one tiny little turn in my work path and forgetting that’s all it was—a tiny little turn. When I saw myself as that turn, I lost sight of all of me—just like I lost sight of the whole labyrinth. I’m a whole lot more than office struggles, just like the labyrinth is a whole lot bigger than any of its turns.”
David grinned as he remembered what happened next. “I had to stop again, because I was so blown away by my next thought. ‘Wow!’ I thought. ‘I’m just like the labyrinth. I’ve got lots of twists and turns, but I’ve got a center, too. I can be all of that—the twists and turns, but I am also the center, and the outside, both of which are a whole lot bigger than the path itself.’ ”
David realized with relief that he could bring his “big self,” as he put it, to his job: his integrity, his connection to God, his understanding that office politics were not the Big Picture. When acting from that “big self” he had many options, including compassion for both himself and the other people caught up in the power struggle, simply not available when functioning out of a smaller, tighter self. David returned to work on Monday with a picture of the labyrinth in hand to put on his desk, “to remind me of who I really am.”
WALKING WITH OTHERS
When you’re walking the labyrinth with others, a powerful mirror is held up before you that basically shows you how productive or unproductive are the attitudes, thoughts, belief systems, and behaviors that you carry in everyday life,” says Neal Harris. “It becomes a very powerful opportunity for personal transformation. You can look at these judgments and the belief systems they represent as you walk: ‘Oh, this person ahead of me is going way too slow. I’m so frustrated, I wish they’d get out of my way,’ instead of simply walking around them. You then realize, Gee, I do this same thing when I’m out walking the street. Someone is walking in front of me, too slow for me, but I end up just walking at their pace and not mine. That’s not helpful for me anymore. Maybe that was productive a long time ago when I was trying to learn to be polite, but is it still productive for me now to do that?”
Harris witnesses people experiencing transformation as a result of seeing their own belief systems show up as they walk with others. “You get hit in the head with that stuff in the labyrinth—it’s been such a huge help in showing me the error of my ways, how I still carry old and outdated ways of being with others.”
The labyrinth can not only show us ourselves, but it can lead us into deeper relationship with others, whether we walk with intimate others or total strangers. When we can understand the people we walk with to be sharing the same basic journey through life, with all its twists and turns, we can be freed to respect and love others just as they are in their path.
Debra Jarvis, a hospice chaplain friend of mine, likens walking the labyrinth with others to gaining a bird’s-eye view of relationships. Debra was moved by the very different perspective she gained on relationships while walking. “You know, so often I see others only from my own limited perspective. It’s so easy for me to judge them according to my own criteria about how ‘spiritual’ they are, or where they are on their life journey.
“When I walk the labyrinth, I am reminded that I don’t have the whole picture, the bird’s-eye view, the God’s-eye view. Being with others in the labyrinth removes all that judgment—I can see we’re all on the same path, just at different places. Just because someone seems closer to, or farther from, the center than me doesn’t mean it’s necessarily so; that’s just my perspective on that particular circuit. Walking the labyrinth reminds me we’re all on the same path, no matter how it seems to my own very limited perspective.”
I remember