Exploring the Labyrinth_ A Guide for Healing and Spiritual Growth - Melissa Gayle West [55]
As you stand at the entrance to the labyrinth, ask for help from Spirit in letting go of, or surrendering, your fear, and name that fear. Soften around the fear as you walk. Feel where you carry it in your body. Breathe into the spaces around the fear, letting it float.
When you reach the center, release your fear. Imagine reaching into your heart, or wherever in your body you feel the fear, and taking it out with your hands. Hold the fear up in your hands and let Spirit carry it away, or lean down and offer it to the earth, allowing the earth to take the fear and recycle its energy. Say—out loud or to yourself—“I release this fear. I open to the support and love of Spirit. I let that love and guidance fill me and surround me.”
Listen for any guidance you may receive at this time. If you wish to, you can write it down. Walk out, feeling the absence of fear and the presence of Love. If you weren’t able to totally release the fear, imagine what it might feel like to be without the fear. Notice how your body feels different, how you walk differently. Notice how releasing the fear changes how you think about the situation that triggered your fear and empowers you. If you received any guidance, breathe into that as you walk.
If the fear was a baby-size fear, one walk might be enough to release it. If the fear is more Goliath size, the releasing may take many walks and become a practice for you in a difficult time. The point is not about doing it right or perfectly; it is more like meditation, a conscious practice in turning the heart and soul toward Spirit in the midst of difficulty.
One client was struggling with a great deal of fear around an undiagnosed illness her small son was suffering from. Each week she returned to the labyrinth and surrendered her fear at the center. “Each week I would take it back,” Elaine recalls. “However, the more I walked the labyrinth, the longer the lag time got between me releasing the fear and taking it back. It started reminding me of a small child giving a parent a broken toy, asking that the parent fix it. Well, the parent starts to fix it, but then the kid snatches it back. I started feeling like that little kid after a while—offering my fear up to my Higher Power but then snatching it back.
“After a lot of labyrinth walking I could start really trusting that my Higher Power could take my fear, if I could just really release it. When it would come back, when Jimmy and I were at the hospital with him undergoing more tests, sometimes when the fear would come up I’d just close my eyes and imagine releasing it, again, at the center of the labyrinth.”
Her son Jimmy turned out to be fine. “I think about all the energy I saved from worrying from walking and releasing my fears about Jimmy’s health,” Elaine says. “Even if he had turned out to be seriously ill, saving all that energy from worrying would have given me a lot more coping resources to deal with it.”
ANGER
Anger is another emotion that can paralyze, hardening the heart and blocking the possibilities for healing either within oneself or in a relationship. Walking the labyrinth when constricted in anger can soften your heart and often allow you to see the situation from the other person’s viewpoint, releasing the tight grip around the certainty that we’re 100 percent right and the other person 100 percent wrong.
Remember Mary Ellen Johnson and her friend, who walked the labyrinth together to resolve what then seemed like an unresolvable conflict? Both were able to release their “sides” and find common ground for healing the relationship.
If you are in conflict with someone, ask him or her to walk the labyrinth with you. Just agreeing to walk together can soften the conflict and allow room for healing. If the person won’t walk with you, or if this is not