Oh this labyrinth!

Oh this labyrinth! Oh this labyrinth!

The words must be written twice!

I love it. I hate it. I mourn that its going to melt even though we are months away from the threat of higher temperatures.

I worked to make the patterns (you already read that post). I had SO much help from my husband and kids (same post) and now the beautiful pattern sits there. Because I have more to do in the world than simply walk the labyrinth and write about the insights I have gained from it, I often am required to just walk past it. I am leaving to go to work. I walk past it when I come home feeling world-weary. I rush past it to run an errand and home again with my arms full.

It, the labyrinth, simply stays put.... and looks at me. Observing me as I am meant to observe it. I want to yell: Stop looking at me!!

It simply stays. Lit up beautifully (now) with lights all over- except one part of one outer loop. It's perfect the way it is. I love it. A perfect spiritual path just staying there. Waiting. Looking. Mocking, almost. 


What a metaphor! Or as I like to call them now: effin-metaphors!

My spiritual path lies in wait for my own body and mind to settle in to it's direction. No judgement (Yeah, okay I'll admit it: the judgement is mostly all mine and not the labyrinth's per se.) And as I am busy in the to-and-fro of life, spirit stays steadfast and waiting until it is called upon.

I LOVE my labyrinth. I love, adore, honor and cherish it. I have developed a strange attachment to something that is made out of small snow mountains and Christmas lights. I check on it before bed. I relish, with a warmth in my chest, when I look out at it from the bedroom window. I love it because it stays. Like a dog waiting with a wagging tail. It's there for me when I am coming and going. (The loyalty of spirit should not be compared to a snow path or a dog, but there it is.)

I HATE my labyrinth. It is mocking me. Calling me. Telling me how inadequate my attention to spirit and inward reflection really is. It shows me every day that I'm out of balance and how ridiculous I am for not simply choosing... simply choosing... to step on to the spiritual track and allow myself to breathe out my anxiety and breathe in my calm knowing my self and self worth. What's it take? 10-15 minutes? I can't find those few minutes to reorient to spirit and my authentic/ aligned self?

I HATE the way it simple sits there like it knows it all.Sometimes I want to stick my tongue out at the dummy-know-it-all-labyrinth. 



10:30 pm.

I walk my labyrinth. I'm putting on my boots near the back door and I'm mumbling under my breath: "Well, I guess I better walk the stupid thing." and I'm out the door with my ear buds in and my phone in my coat pocket. The music helps set a calming tone and drown out the naysayer doubts in my head.


I walk in: "I'll find spiritual comfort in 15 minutes and head back inside. Here we go. Let's do this thing."

I keep walking. "Ahh... breathing. Letting go. Easing in. Leaning in. I really *do* love my labyrinth. Forgive me for all my negative thoughts."

I finally reach the centre.

The neighborhood dogs stop barking. The music, with the labyrinth, have been talking on their own. They tell me a forgotten story about love and unconditional value and connections with all things on earth and in the stars. I remember. Did you think I could have forgotten?! (I had forgotten, but I won't admit it.)

I inhale and face South. Inhale- West. Again-inhale- north. Inhale.... East. I stand again toward the North and remind my self that this forgotten story is not that old nor that forgotten. This is the place of my own self--- truly "MY divinity in MY own backyard". How on earth or in heaven can you forget your own divinity in your own backyard? And yet I do. Multiple times. Over and over again. 

(Gawd damn effin' labyrinth.)


I walk out. I let go some more. I feel my shoulders come down from their place of standing guard around my ears. I know I am loved. I know (even more so) I am loveable.

I keep walking out. " Ahh...breathing. Letting go. Easing within. Allowing." I know this place: I love you. I love me. I could write a book about the heavens and the stars and our place on earth and the meaning of love and truth and light. Why would I ever doubt it? Why don't I stay home and walk this labyrinth all the time- like three times a day? And write the book because I know it all. I understand the all the answers to all the big questions.

I reach the exit. I turn and face the labyrinth. I stand in awe at my own transformation.

Again.

I bow my head and whisper: thank-you. thank-you.

I don't know exactly to whom I say thank-you: my spirit guides and friends? Yes. My own self? It's my creation. My family? Because without them I wouldn't know how wonderful it could truly be?

Yes. That's who. All of them and me.


I miss my labyrinth.

I mourn you already. I'll miss you when the sun is warmer and the snow walls are melting. I'll have rings of Christmas lights in the brown grass before I give you up.

I'll find you in other places, I know. Spirit is not only in this snow-path and only right here. But right now I feel like a child who knows the vacation days are numbered. I need to eke out of you all the wonder that I can.

Winters are long, but this year won't be quite long enough for me.

Let me take that as a metaphor for this life and eke out of it-- my 80 years or more, I hope-- all the wonder that I can. Let me remember, that somewhere inside of me, I know love and spirit so well that I could write a book. Let me remember that all of this is as close as my own 'backyard'. It's all right there and waiting for me to choose to reorient to that place.

This is the gift of my labyrinth.

Oh this labyrinth!

:-) With a knowing love,
Heather. 

It's the end of the world...and I feel fine!

We have been celebrating winter solstice-December 21st, the shortest day of the year- as a nuclear family for many years now. Its a quiet day just for us and we leave December 25th for my parents' traditions and extended family.

This year is a little different- we built a labyrinth in the backyard. I love it. I walk past every time I leave the house for the car and every time I come home again. My metaphorical spiritual path is much more in my awareness when my physical representation is right there all the time!

So, partly with those thoughts, I started reading 'the stuff' about December 21st. In 2012.

It's the end of the world! It's the second coming! It's when earthlings will make contact with aliens! And if we live through all of those predictions, it's the beginning of a New Era.

I suppose my reading should have, at best left me jaded and, at worst left me fearful or scared, but it did neither. I feel FINE! In fact, I feel ELATED! What a relief! Maybe we can get past the end of the world language. Maybe we can move past it and into whatever this New Era will be.



I was born in 1971. For as long as I can remember the world was ending. I grew up with the Cold War and then the beginning popularity of environmental awareness- the end of CFCs (who knew my big hair in the 1980's/ hairspray was killing the earth?) and the beginning of popular recycling and various environmental reforms.

But... before we had time to collect ourselves, everyone was carrying on about Y2K. The world was ending because the digital world we created wouldn't be able to cope. We lived past the clicking dial of December 31, 1999 and so did our ATM machines and PCs. We saw January 1st, 2000 and so did our extra supplies of bottled water and canned food.

I know we are hardly past the threats to the earth. I know that threat of the escalation of conflict (used to be called war) and the threat to the environment exist in this moment while I'm writing. In both areas things have not come far enough fast enough and threat is still there. I don't minimize the important issues that require attention and advocacy, but I don't think that they are likely to kill us by any instant dramatic means either.


And so there is something about the anticipation of December 21,2012 that leaves me relieved and hopeful.

At the very worst anything bad will have happened and we'll be dealing with it. At the best, the sun will rise on the 22nd and things will look relatively the same (most likely scenario!). The governance model of the planet won't have changed. We won't be ruled by aliens. And we won't have disappeared- wafting away in smoke as the last day of the Mayan calendar has passed.

What will have happened is simply that we will have survived another numerical designation of our doom. Will the problems all be solved? Of course not. However, we will have arrived at another important milestone in our collective human history. We will have lived to say: "I survived the end of the world."


I'm elated, perhaps in part, from ignorance. I don't know of any other markers coming in my lifetime that are predicting the death of all humanity as we know it. The December 21, 2012 prediction was a bit of a left over from the turn of the Century in my view. We made it through. That's it people. Now it's time to just live.

Stop worrying about who will be judged and who will be condemned. Stop worrying about eternal hell or being made a martyr or a saint on Earth. It will be time to move ahead. Into the New Era? I hope so.


I'm also elated because it brings all those bits and pieces in my own life back into perspective. Who the hell cares what is clean in the house and what is not if the world is ending?

Q: What's important if I have only 2 weeks to live *as-I-am-now*?

A:  Love.
     Being enough.
     Knowing that I am, and all the people I love are... Enough.

There are no children that need teaching, molding, changing. There is no husband who needs to hear me or do this or that. There are no imperfect relationships in my life. And really everything else is just non-sense.

If it's the end of the world as I know it? Well, I feel fine.

Let's start anew. If you're still here on December 22nd and things are pretty much as they are now, consider committing to these ideas:

1. There is nothing that needs to change in my life.

2. I love who I am and where I am at even though it's imperfect, messy and not exactly like a picture from a magazine/ movie/ Facebook.

3.  I will share with the people around me the authentic person that I am and not some image of the person I think they will accept.

4.  I will accept *all* people around me as they are and love them for their effort without judging them for not being the image I want them/ need them to be.

If that brings us to a New Era, one that will be seen 2000 years from now as turning point past the domination of individualistic thinking and one that begins radical self-acceptance and community-oriented thinking, that's the best 'end-of-the-world' gift I can imagine.

Because it is only when I consider myself, others and my planet with acceptance and compassion that I can truly influence anyone or anything. 

Whew. Truth! Let's move on, shall we?