labyrinth of our being
I met SJ one summer in Amsterdam. She did a house swap for two weeks from Berlin, and woke up every morning recording her dreams. She was part of a dream interpretation circle, studied psychodrama, and a few days after we met at dance, she invited me to the beach one hot summer day.
We took the train to Zandvoort. Over lunch, she drew six sketches on a piece of A4 paper and asked me to interpret what I saw. She noticed my hesitation and encouraged me to trust my intuition, my answers revealing how I perceived her drawings. That whole summer I’d started asking the question of what intuition was, how I could connect to my intuition. It felt unfamiliar voicing my interpretations, after a lifelong reliance on the outside world to interpret my experience.
We swam in the sea, the waters a far cry from the familiar clear waters of the Pacific. When we dried off, we collected shells and pebbles along the beach, a slow meditative process of gathering evidence of all we’d accrued - experiences, belongings, places, relationships, states of being.
Setting the piles of shells and stones aside, we began building the labyrinth. We started with three points, three half circles and a chalice, then moved outwards.
We took turns entering the labyrinth one by one, moving with the intention of leaving something behind (people, places, possessions) and walking into the centre, back to the centre of us, arriving at the beating heart of where we are now. Turning around, we returned, changed by the process of walking with open hearts into our inner life.
I stepped out, and moments later, the sea swept away the edges of the labyrinth in perfect symbolic timing, cleansing away all we’d left behind.
Our bodies and our being do not delinieate a clear lineal path, rather a complex winding journey where the start doesn’t reveal where the end is. I am stepping into complete presence when I let myself keep walking, another step in front of the other, even when it feels like I am going in circles, an eternal spiral.
The labyrinth takes us into the heart of what we are seeking, a metaphor for what we are walking through now in our outer life.
For those of us used to the markers and signposts of external reality, a labyrinth is a symbolic reflection of our accumulated experiences we bring with us wherever we are, the reminder of how we carry stories and sensations forward, invisible companions on our journey.
What if there is no destination when we enter into a query with our bodies, our psyche, our spirit?
What if entering into the process of being changed is the destination, each step an opening into the next?
Later I found out the labyrinth we created was a Venus Labyrinth, an ode to my celestial guide before I knew who she was to me.
Two summer solstices ago, I re-created the Venus labyrinth with two friends, jotting down only the starting shape and making our way with soft eyes towards the center.
When we left that evening, past twilight, we left a single pink rose in the center, an offering to the unfurling of our hearts - thorny in the stem, tall in the sand, fragrant in the wind, precious in her essence.
*GIF by Nicolas Monserrat
