Walking The Labyrinth Meditation
Labyrinths, long used as meditation and prayer tools, are an ancient symbol combining the circle and spiral and relating to wholeness. A Labyrinth creates a path for a purposeful symbolic journey to your own center and back out into the world or as symbolic pilgrimages to the Holy Land or other Holy Sites and spiritual journeys. Today, as in the past, meditatively walking the labyrinth is a metaphor for life’s journey and especially the inward journey of self-exploration and discovery of our true nature.
In contradistinction to a maze, a labyrinth has only one path that is both the way in and the way out and which leads the walker in a circuitous fashion to the center and back out again.
Walking the labyrinth is representative of your willingness to get to know yourself more fully, to metaphorically journey to the center of your deepest self and back out into the world with a more complete understanding of who you are and how you relate to yourself, others and the world. As with other meditation practices, there is only one choice to be made, to enter into practice or not. Once engaged, you follow the path with an open, receptive heart and mind, xperiencing, as best you can, the moment-to-moment “felt sense” of walking and moving ever more deeply to the centre of your Being.
Instructions:
- Approach the labyrinth with intention and a willingness to just be with the experience
- Make thechoice to enter or not … be intentional and remind yourself of your purpose
- Enter the labyrinth slowly, undertaking a slow walking meditation
- Open your senses and focus on the process of taking slow and deliberate steps, experiencing the nature of walking itself and inviting the body, mind and spirit to be calm and clear.
- Perhaps include the repetition of a prayer, chant, affirmation or heart-felt aspiration or perhaps bring to mind an important and deeply meaningful to you question to contemplate during the walk to the center
- At the center, pause as long as you need to reflect, self-explore, pray, or listen in silence for insight and understanding.
- When ready, begin the return journey embodying your intention and the same mindful practice of walking
- Upon exiting, engage in further reflection, prayer, or journaling to absorb the experience
