Labyrinth Walking with Dream Elements
As the Dreaming in the New Year January Series participants and I walked the labyrinth we experienced a swirl of beautiful, personal, universal, self- and spirit-revealing experiences. We brought a symbol or figure, an element or energy, from our dreams and walked with them, to deepen into their messages and receive more guidance. Each woman had her own profound deepening. Each experience was unique to her own process and chosen focus of attention— so utterly personal and sacred. This is the beauty of the walk. As we walk, we see how the soul, the dream, and the Great Mystery circle one another.
Labyrinths are living mandalas. Jung wrote about the power of mandalas and the sacred act of “circulation” around the still point, the center. He says, “Psychologically, this circulation would be ‘movement in a circle around oneself,’ so that all sides of the personality become involved.” He adds, “It is nothing more than self knowledge” through concentration (i). He also reflects that, “The soul, too, according to tradition, has a round form” which often appears in dreams in different objects (ii). As a living symbol, pointing to something completely ineffable, this resonates.
Walking the sacred spiral dates back to many of the earliest human cultures. Centering oneself, while walking to the center, leads one toward the “primordial pass,” or the “primary force,” which Jung explains as being the ultimate source of the mandala, and of existence itself (iii). And as T.S. Elliot so eloquently said, “Except for the point, the still point,/There would be no dance, and there is only the dance” (iv).
As each participant drew still within, as she circled the center, she could witness aspects of this dance, each in her own powerful way. And so, we begin to live our dreams' energies forward into our waking world. It was awesome and I feel so incredibly blessed to be part of their journey!
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References
i C.G. Jung, Encountering Jung: Jung on Active Imagination, ed. Joan Chodorow (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 80.
ii ibid, 101.
iii 78, 80.
iv T.S. Eliot, Excerpt from “Burnt Norton, ”(No. 1 of Four Quartets).