Exploring the Labyrinth_ A Guide for Healing and Spiritual Growth - Melissa Gayle West [4]
INWARDNESS AND CONNECTION TO SOUL
Stop for a moment. Take a deep breath. What are you feeling and knowing in your heart, your body, your soul, right now? When do you allow yourself to turn inward? How often do you get to unplug from TV, cell phone, to-do lists, computer, kids, partner, work?
For many of us, an uninterrupted turning within would be a delicious but impossible opportunity. We tell ourselves that we’ll attend to our own needs when we get a month off; when the kids get older; or when we win the lottery. In the meantime we live our hurried lives from the outside in, responding to the pressures of work, home, and the impossible demands we put on ourselves.
The labyrinth offers us the great gift of making it easier to set aside the time and look inward. With each step we take we shed the outside world and slip more into our inner lives. During some walks, that inward movement may simply be about moving in deep silence and meditating in rich darkness. In others, tears or unexpected joy might be waiting in that inner space: a memory to walk through and heal; a vision of how our lives could be; a prayer we pray for our community and loved ones.
I encourage my psychotherapy clients to walk the labyrinth in my garden before our sessions to facilitate turning inward and leaving everyday pressures behind, and afterward to let the issues raised in the therapy sessions settle into their psyches before returning to homes or jobs.
“I come to therapy directly from work,” says Robert, an attorney in a high-powered firm. “I spend the day working in a cutthroat corporate setting where I forget there’s another way of treating others and myself. Walking the labyrinth before a session reminds me that I’ve got a soul, even if I have to shut it away to survive in my field. When I walk the labyrinth, I can take off all that battle armor and touch base inside.
“Walking the labyrinth, almost as much as therapy, has taught me that I walk different paths in different worlds—the outside world of my job and the inside world of my own soul. Becoming aware of those different paths, and of walking the labyrinth as a metaphor for my inward path, has helped me learn the importance of knowing which path I’m walking at any given time.”
Like Robert, when we step into the labyrinth, we turn our backs on all the external hubbub that disconnects us from the riches of our own hearts and souls. Unplugged from the relentless demands of the world around us, we are free to look inside and renew the healing connection to our inner lives.
ACCESS TO INTUITION AND CREATIVITY
By turning our attention inward we gain access to intuition and wisdom, inner sources of guidance that can give us invaluable feedback on questions and concerns we carry about our relationships, our work, our health and well-being, our spiritual lives.
“The labyrinth just naturally causes your attention to start turning inward, focusing in the present moment” says Neal Harris, originator of the giant stone Earth Wisdom Labyrinth in Elgin, Illinois. “Walking the labyrinth, it’s so much easier to hear the intuitive messages. It’s those intuitive messages that lead to our outward creativity.”
During a labyrinth walk the left and right hemispheres of the brain are balanced, leading to the perfect state for accessing intuition and creativity. We let go of our typical linear and analytical ways of thinking and move into a more creative and intuitive awareness. Energy is freed up for seeking inner guidance for challenging issues; for looking at new perspectives on relationships; for inspiring creativity for work, projects, or hobbies. I have walked the labyrinth countless times for inspiration and new ideas in writing articles and books, for unjamming creative blocks, and for tapping into my own intuition for help in decision making and life-dreaming.
Many of the traditional methods for accessing creativity and intuition, such as creative visualization, journaling, and affirmations,