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After you have your list, take the questions one at a time into the labyrinth. Walk into the question just as you walked into earlier questions or intentions. Let go of the need to receive an immediate answer; the purpose of these questions is to open up space in your soul for deeper guidance to come through.

As you walk into the question, you may receive first glimmerings of answers or full-blown intuitions. Remember, the guidance may come in the form of images, feelings, sensations in your body, snippets of songs, and just plain knowings as well as verbal responses. Write them down, either as you walk or later; sometimes first knowings are ephemeral and hard to remember a day later, even if they are important.

In the midst of serious illness or chronic pain, it can be a challenge to see the illness and pain as anything but an affliction and enemy. Walking the labyrinth with the intention of seeing the suffering as a teacher can change the relationship, soften the suffering, and make room for gratitude, a healing force in itself.

I want to be very clear that walking to see the illness as teacher is not about being responsible in any way for the illness. Rather, it is about saying yes to all of one’s life in a fundamental way, opening to the possibilities for healing and transformation inherent in any challenging life situation.

Real healing, someone once said, isn’t about finding peace outside of the storm; it’s about finding peace right in its center. Accepting your illness and pain as an ally and teacher, rather than something you have to push away or deny, opens the possibility for healing at a very deep level. By removing the sense of being at war inside of your body, you give your body the additional gift of peace, which can do nothing but boost your immune system and give you a greater chance of curing your disease.

Try walking the labyrinth into some of these questions:

What is the most important lesson or lessons this illness or pain has taught me?

In what ways am I more whole, healed, than I was before this illness?

How has this illness spurred my search for meaning and wholeness?

What in my disease or pain can I find to be grateful for?

How can I continue to work with my illness as a teacher rather than as an adversary?

Adair, one of my psychotherapy clients, suffers from fibromyalgia, which brings with it significant chronic pain. She told me after one of her weekly walks in my backyard labyrinth, “I never wanted this illness or this pain; I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But walking into it in the labyrinth has taught me more about myself and living my life fully, from the center of my own soul, than any workshop I ever attended.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Ritual and Celebration

Marlene just finished her two-year graduate program. She gets her long hair highlighted and cut short.

Eloise, the day before kindergarten starts, decides to give up her cherished pacifiers and puts them away in a box she has decorated specifically for the occasion.

Rick’s divorce just became official. He spends the afternoon going through his closet and drawers, taking out clothing he hasn’t worn for a long time or that just seems too worn. With a great sigh of satisfaction, he loads the bags in his car and heads for Goodwill.

Pat just turned sixteen. New driver’s license in hand, she picks up her best friend and they drive to the mall to celebrate.

Humans are hardwired for ritual. From time immemorial we have marked the power of transitions by enacting ritual. Tribal cultures commemorate birth, adolescence, marriage, priesthood, and death with elaborate and lengthy rituals in which the whole community participates.

Even in our sterile American culture we enact ritual to sacralize passages, because we must: The bar and bat mitzvah, the graduation ceremony, weddings, birthday parties, christenings, funerals, all carry vestiges of the numinous power of ritual. We unconsciously ritualize life transitions by cleaning out closets, cutting hair,