The Labyrinth

http://www.crystalinks.com/labyrinths.html

A labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path. It represents a journey to our own center and back again out into the world. Labyrinths have long been used as meditation and prayer tools. A labyrinth is an archetype with which we can have a direct experience. Walking the labyrinth can be considered an initiation in which one awakens the knowledge encoded within their DNA.
A labyrinth contains non-verbal, implicate geometric and numerological prompts that create a multi-dimensional holographic field. These unseen patterns are referred to as sacred geometry. They allegeldy reveal the presence of a cosmic order as they interface the world of material form and the subtler realms of higher consciousness.The contemporary resurgence of labyrinths in the west is stemmimg from our deeply rooted urge to honor again the Sacredness of All Life. A labyrinth can be experienced as the birthing womb of the Great Goddess. Thus, the labyrinth experience is a potent practice of Self-Integration as it encapsulates the spiraling journey in and out of incarnation. On the journey in, towards the center, one cleanses the dirt from the road. On the journey out, one is born anew to consciously dwell in a human body, made holy by having got a taste of the Infinite Center.



This is from a fast google search.

And here is my poem about my second labyrinth experience.

October 2008

My Charlotte sways, her music mind
talking to trees, hands in pockets.
Collecting stones, twigs, small dark things for finding later.
She is a wild sweep of circles,
footsteps turning inward and out.
waltzing onto a path, between blades of gray grass.
She is hiding from her own shadow-
Now she crosses mine.

Jackson watches, measures something only he can.
All at once he finds himself and loses himself.
If you weren’t paying close attention you wouldn’t know it happened:
a slight change in his face, mostly his brow-
a relinquishing of something old that didn’t belong to him to begin with.
Locating himself in relation to sky, tree, long stone wall.
I have always been his compass point-he, my orbiting moon.

Their father walks the path like he has done this before
But fears someone will notice he hasn’t.
If he let all the combustible joy in his chest out,
he would stumble,
and so he holds it puts one foot in front of the other.
There is song and there is calculation
there is a scared kind of wandering.
He exits triumphantly.

I enter the exit path, something pulling deep in my chest.
I watch myself intently, sparrow-walk backwards out.
Breathe.
Start over, enter at the entrance, follow all of them,
Half of me already writing this poem,
I greet myself halfway through.
I won’t let the heat out of my eyes, feel it dissolve.
I am peacefully terrified. Here we are walking,
my boots making contact with stone.