Exploring the Labyrinth_ A Guide for Healing and Spiritual Growth - Melissa Gayle West [67]
I walk the labyrinth both on the eve of my birthday, to contemplate the passing year, and on the day of my birthday, to celebrate and ask for guidance for the coming year. Others walk the labyrinth to honor the ancestors on the Day of the Dead, to celebrate in community the completion of a group project, to honor the coming of age of a young man or woman in the family.
How you use the labyrinth in ritual or celebration is limited only by your imagination and willingness to play and experiment. Ritual and celebration are powerful when thoughtfully planned and carried out. But also give yourself permission to play with spontaneous ritual and celebration.
The labyrinth is a container for life, life in all its glories and griefs, its heartaches and joys. The labyrinth welcomes all experiences into its circuits, teaching us to enter more deeply into the experience of life itself.
I have walked the labyrinth for many years now. My relationship with this powerful tool and archetype of wholeness and transformation reminds me in many ways of a relationship with a beloved other. The mysteries and spirit of the labyrinth seem only to deepen with time. The more I walk its circuits, the more I realize I have barely begun to fathom its depths.
What the labyrinth has taught me, more than anything else, is the gracious power of process. Each time we step into its circuits, we step into the unknown, just as we do each morning when our bare feet first touch the cold floor. Walking the labyrinth has taught me to walk my own life more consciously, with more trust for the unfolding, knowing that I am always moving toward the center.
My hope for you is that your journey, both through the labyrinth and in your life, will be equally graced.
POSTSCRIPT
Gratitude Walk
I light a white candle at the entrance to my favorite labyrinth in this misty Northwest predawn. Other candles flicker around the perimeter and in the center, creating circles of fire in the darkness. Before taking the first step onto the labyrinth’s gravel path I pause and say a brief prayer, as I have done so many times before.
As I walk the winding circuits in the growing light I feel the coastal mist on my face, listen to the crunch of gravel beneath my feet, and settle into the rhythm of step upon step, inbreath and foggy outbreath. I am walking in the light on this cold December morning, participating with earth and sky in the re-creation of the world, the birthing of a new day.
My breath catches and I halt at an unfamiliar faint sound. I listen carefully but hear nothing save the soft sighing of wind in the long limbs of the redwood tree at the center of this labyrinth. I take another step and stop. There is something, or someone, here with me.
Curious, I look around. I see no other creatures.
I begin to walk again and realize that the presence, or presences, I am sensing are unseeable. Other labyrinth pilgrims are here walking these circuits beside me in the gray and growing light. They journey with me, all those who have trod this winding path for almost four thousand years, pacing labyrinths of wood or turf or stone, on deserted moors and in Gothic cathedrals, on wild and rocky coasts and in hot desert sand.
The crunch of my sneakers on gravel is all that I now hear. I stop once more and bow in deep gratitude to all those who have walked the labyrinth before me. Taking a deep, frosty breath, I continue on, celebrating that others have walked, and will continue to walk, this sacred path.
Annotated Bibliography
Artress, Lauren. Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool. New York: Riverhead, 1995.
Artress’s engaging story of “rediscovering” the Chartres