Rocks and the Labrynth

The labyrinth is our own spiritual journey and the tree is our own heart. The pattern of entering, getting to the centre, and coming out, is a map of psychological process: shedding, finding and integrating.Within the centre of the labrynth is the heart or the tree. If we were in a literal labrynth, we would have to feel our way through. Deciding which direction to take is not a logical decision. One has to rely on a keen sense of direction that is based on intuition and gut instinct. We also can only see what is directly ahead of us. We don’t see the full image of the labrynth from a bird’s eye view. Often we come across a dead end and have to retrace our steps, often going through the same experience again and again. There lies the heaviness. If we are to cover our eyes, then we are in darkness. And within the darkness, we can only feel our way through. We close our eyes when we make love for it is within the darkness that feeling intensifies. Nietzshe called the concept of eternal return the heaviest of burdens. Milan Kundera asks us is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?

The heavier the burden, he closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful we become.

When I walked the labrynth, I noticed the difference in the energy. Sometimes it was light and easy and other times it was thick and difficult. I had to know that sometimes I could run and others it was so heavy my legs felt like lead. I had to slow down and retreat or stop and stay with the feeling or continue on. I picked up a rock along the path....again, at times it felt heavy, a burden, and other times it lay light in the crook of my hand.

Virginia Woolf walked to the river bank and waded in with her pocket full of rocks and drowned. What does the rock embody? Unrequited dreams, lost love or opportunities? What do we create with the rocks in our lives?

In Flight of the Seventh Moon, the American Indian shaman Agnes Whistling Elk teaches Lynn Andrews how to listen to rocks: "Rocks are very slow and have sat around from the beginning, developing powers ... Rocks can show what you are going to become. They show you lost and forgotten things.

How I Come to You
by Molly Peacock

Even a rock
has insides.
Smash one and see
how the shock

reveals the rough
dismantled gut
of a thing once dense.
Making the cut

into yourself,
maybe you hoped
for rock solid through.
That hope I hoped,

too. Dashed
on my rocks was my wish
of what I was. Angry,
dense and mulish,

I smashed myself
and found my heart
a cave, ready to be
lived in. A start,

veined, unmined.
Tisis how I come o you:
broken,
not what I knew.