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As hard as I try, I just can’t help getting all these threads I’m constantly trying to handle tied up in knots. And it’s often something I’m reading that leads to the tangle…
Today was my birthday. I woke up very early and lay there, thinking. I’d gone to bed the night before with the latest book I’m reading. The Theory of Celestial Influence is an ambitious attempt to draw parallels between human physiology, history, chemistry and astronomy. It was published in 1954 and as a piece of writing that is clearly trying to join the dots, citing evidence that suggests the active evolution of consciousness, it’s right up my street. I had picked it up intending to pack it – we’re moving, but that’s another story – and had become instantly intrigued following a quick flick through.
The author, Rodney Collin, offers analogies as a form of evidence. Not entirely scientific perhaps but then I tend to think that not everything can be explained scientifically. It didn’t help that many of these analogies mirrored thoughts I have had myself over the years. Analogies such as the echoing of systems; a cell looks like a solar system in miniature, for example. In saying this I’m not claiming the ideas to have been mine. They were clearly planted in the collective conscience many years before I was born. But they were thoughts I was having long before I ever read or heard such theories, hence my desire to delve deeper into the book. As I read on I kept discovering ideas that I thought had been mere quirky oddities of my own creation. To see such things in print that pre-dated me gave me a certain thrill, I must confess.
However, by last night it was all starting to get a bit much. It is understandable that when comparing the molecular world with the astronomical that some attempt will be made to explain the enormous differences in size. The hugeness of what’s out there is so incomprehensible, the distances so vast and the timescales so long that I began to find it quite hard to hold the images comfortably in my mind. I went to sleep last night with the single most depressing thought possible – just what exactly is the point of all this? Of us? It was no wonder I woke up so early with tears rolling down my cheeks on my birthday. Existentialist doubts will do that to you.
But then, as I was to discover, if ever there’s a day to be subject to such harrowing, bone-scratching thoughts of ‘what’s it all about’, it’s your birthday. Because everyone else around you is completely unaware of your private existential crisis and has already planned the day with the sole intent of raising as many smiles as possible. And because there’s always the chance, as there is every day really, of something miraculous happening.
I’d expressed my desire to draw and walk a labyrinth on our favourite beach, weather permitting. Opening the shutters revealed the sun smiling in a sky of blue softly stroked with feathery clouds. Perfect. We arranged to rendezvous with our friends and headed out straight after breakfast.
Now I’m a new initiate into the world of labyrinths but since I discovered them some time last year I’ve been on a bit of mission to try and get others to experience the soul-charging benefits I believe comes from walking them. I haven’t done them with many other people yet I admit, but I don’t believe in rushing things, especially when they feel important. And for some reason, this one feels so important I’m almost reigning it in to make sure I do my part absolutely right.
I don’t know if you know anything about labyrinths and I won’t go into too much detail here, but they are unicursal symbols that have been around for thousands of years and which have permeated almost every culture and society we’ve created. Unlike mazes they are not designed to trick you with twists and turns. There is just one entrance and you keep on walking until you get to the centre where you stop for a while before retracing your steps to come back out into the world again. As circles they represent sacred space and the circle of life. They also represent the life or journey of each of us, because whether we realise it or not, putting one foot in front of the other is what keeps us on our own unique paths. Even when we feel we’ve strayed from our path the chances are we haven’t. Our journey has just taken us to a place we didn’t realise we needed to visit so that we can proceed more lightly, with deeper wisdom and greater insight. Labyrinths are tools that assist with balancing, healing and meditation. Entering the sacred space allows inner energies to well up and outer energies to flow through. They truly are amazing and if you have never walked one I urge you to seek one out or draw one yourself and try it.
There are many different variations on the design of the labyrinth. The little picture I use for my profile is one of them. There is a famous labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral in France and many have been springing up in hospitals, churches, gardens, schools, clinics and similar public spaces over the last few years.
Now a labyrinth can be either right-handed or left-handed depending on whether the first turn upon entering is to the right or the left. After drawing and walking several with a friend over a period of a few weeks she turned to me and said she really wanted to walk a right-handed labyrinth. I hadn’t even really thought about it, but up until that point we’d always drawn and walked left-handed ones. I went home that night and thought about it and the next time I went out, I drew one of each with quite incredible results.
My wonderful friend had given me an idea. Perhaps by drawing and walking both left-handed and right-handed labyrinths we would somehow be able to balance the male and female energies, the yin and the yang. The first time I tried it something special had happened and I wanted to give it another go today, this time with more people.
Arriving at the beach, we cleaned away the seaweed brought in by recent strong winds and drew the two designs next to each other, the left-handed labyrinth on the right and the right on the left, as a kind of mirror-image of the brain. I said a short blessing, expressing thanks for the time and space in which to create and share this opportunity and asked that everyone please be allowed to state their own personal intentions before walking. Then we began. Yuko wanted to walk the yin labyrinth first, so I took the yang.
I’ve read several books about labyrinths and can confirm what many others have already said, that each walk is different. It’s hard to convey just how magical they can be but this post, as long and slightly rambling as it is, is an attempt to do so.
Standing in the centre I looked at the ocean just a few feet away from me and the first thing I saw was two birds flying in synchronicity low over the water. I smiled as I saw them and wondered if they might be a pair, one male, one female. The children were playing near the water and the waves, as they gently rolled onto the shallow beach were especially crystalline and clear. I realised my head had also become clear, my spirit lifting as I walked to the centre and as I stood there, soaking in all that beauty, the following words came into my mind:
“Look at what you see. See the beauty around you. Isn’t that enough of a reason for you to exist? For mankind to be? Think about how a man admires feminine beauty. Not necessarily to possess or own or understand but just because it is there, in front of him, requiring admiration. Maybe there is no other reason for being alive other than to pay witness to the beautiful, remarkable miracle that any of this is even here at all. Maybe you don’t need to think about it too much, just be thankful for the chance to experience life on this beautiful planet.”
Having received such strong comfort and reassurance from the yang labyrinth I felt able to posit a more direct request to the yin. I asked for assistance with a particularly difficult move that my family are about to make, suffering as I do from bouts of self-doubt and lack of courage. It seemed symbolic that my three year-old daughter asked to do the walk with me carrying her on my back. It intensified the weight of the responsibility I am feeling at present while reminding me that we are given no burdens too great for us to carry.
This time, upon entering the centre, I did not open my eyes but stood there in the darkness. “You may not always see the way forward, but you have other senses upon which to draw strength. When you don’t know which way to go, stop and close your eyes. This will intensify your other senses and help make them more powerful.”
As I stood there with these thoughts, somebody else had started walking the same labyrinth carrying a burning incence stick. As they wound closer towards me the smell became very strong, giving me a strong reminder to allow all my faculties the chance to help direct and guide my course of action over the next few weeks, including the deep, intuitive ones. Once again, with both walks, the inner and outer worlds had somehow met in a kind of echo or reflection of each other. I felt humbled and overwhelmingly grateful.
As we gathered our things making ready to leave, I glanced up at the sun. I could make out the faint, upside-down, curved smile of an inverted rainbow. I looked at my friends in amazement, for the first time we had ever met we had witnessed the same unusual weather phenomenon in the sky. We watched as the arc slowly grew to form an entire circle around the sun.
If ever there was a birthday in which to give thanks for the sheer amazing grace of having been born, then this was surely one of them.
For anyone interested in some of the other things I get up to, please feel free to have a look at another site I’m currently running www.lovefromjapan.net
Jinkspots 
What a wonderful post! And happy birthday (much belated) to you. Such a lovely gift you got there on the beach. As for the beginning of your post and your thoughts about comparisons between cells and the universe — immediately made me think of Dr. Seuss and his Horton Hears a Who — the man was such a genius — the things he introduced to us through his deceptively simple stories.
Thank you klrs09! It was a wonderful day. And you are so right about Dr. Seuss. He was a genius. I especially love, ‘Oh, the Places You’ll Go!’ which I think should be compulsory reading for everyone: if we all knew in advance that “unslumping yourself isn’t easily done” we might be better prepared!