Exploring the Labyrinth_ A Guide for Healing and Spiritual Growth - Melissa Gayle West [59]
RECONNECTION TO SELF AND SPIRIT
Walking the labyrinth affords a new perspective, allowing for new ways of seeing, and relating to, the illness itself. Mary Ellen Johnson, a Unity lay minister and labyrinth facilitator, remembers a woman suffering from arthritis who participated in a labyrinth workshop. “Walking was so difficult for her. Somewhere during the evening walk the pain just disappeared for her for quite a remarkable amount of time. She was able to soften and relax and just open up.
“I don’t know how long after the workshop the relief continued, but it certainly opened the possibility in her thinking that she could have an effect upon her pain level, rather than feeling helpless or powerless. She was actually skipping around a lot as she came out of the labyrinth. It was remarkable.”
I also have witnessed people with multiple sclerosis dancing gently through the turns of the labyrinth, normally a serious balance challenge for anyone with that disease. I have watched people with chronic pain moving with ease in ways they haven’t for a very long time. Walking the labyrinth relaxes and softens us, allowing for pain to lessen, and also allows us to reconnect with a core self, unaffected by pain or disease.
When dealing with chronic or serious illness or pain, we can easily restrict our identity to our disease and our pain. Walking the labyrinth frees us up to find a deeper identity and the power that comes from that. “The greatest power we have is to be who we really are,” says Robert Ferré, a labyrinth maker. “Our true nature, in the language of Christianity, is made in the image of God. The expression of that true nature is a powerful healing force. The labyrinth takes us back to our essential selves when we are ill; it unloads all our extra baggage. And a lot of that baggage is directly connected to our experience of our illness, because of the deep connections between mind and body.”
Try walking the labyrinth to reconnect with your deeper Self, untouched by your illness. Imagine as you step into the labyrinth that you slip off your illness or pain for a moment. As you walk to the center, ask yourself, “Who am I if I am not this pain, this disease? Who is it that is beneath all this?” Imagine as you walk toward the center that you are walking into your essential Self, that deepest part of you that is unaffected by time, by pain, by illness.
Spend some time in the center, in your own center. From this standpoint, imagine looking back at the entrance, at the smaller you who is dealing with the suffering of illness. Walk toward that smaller you while asking yourself, “How does that smaller me get caught in the illness? How does that smaller me allow it to diminish me? What can that smaller self do to help me remember that I am not the illness or pain? How can my smaller self remember, and call upon, the larger vision and wisdom of my larger Self?” When you reach the entrance, welcome and embrace that smaller self, integrating both perspectives into your life.
ILLNESS AND PAIN AS TEACHER
Serious illness can be a profound invitation to living life more deeply and honestly. At cancer retreats, and in my own therapy work with people who are dealing with serious illness, people are surprised by the unexpected gifts that pain and serious illness can bring.
Sandra Sarr found that cancer sharpened her need to find her “heart’s desires” in life. She used the labyrinth to explore the big questions, opening to guidance she received while walking: “I needed to know: What is truly important to me? What am I really doing here? What’s my life about? When you’re facing the potential end of your life, believe me, you’re much more motivated to ask these questions, and receive guidance on them, than you might otherwise be.”
Make a list of all the Big Questions that pertain to your life, ones that you may have, as most of us have, put on the back burner while you went to work, raised kids, took vacations,