I walk with careful steps, with hurried steps, with stumbling steps. Trying to keep my focus on not straying outside the stones that line the path. My head is lowered in concentration… until I lose my concentration. Sometimes I look up to the sun to recalibrate my position and place , where it rises and sets, I feel it is necessary to know where I am, although I don’t know where I am. There are times when I stall and must wait in boring silence, wait for reasons I do not know, wait in frustration as I contemplate the trail that stretches ahead. I walk this path towards some unsaid and unknown point, as if walking up a mountain, never sure when I will reach the peak. On this walk toward this place, I will sometimes fall and stumble onto my knees and where I discover revelation in the fact that suffering brings insight and spiritual awakening. Sometimes I skip in joy and happiness and sing and dance with gratitude at the loveliness of this path.
Then, as if it happens suddenly, I just know when I have reached the end … or the peak.
Here I leave a gift of tobacco and say a silent prayer. I stand in silence and then face the four directions and praise their guidance and presence as they have been accompanying me with each step. Here the ground beneath me feels as if it pulses or breathes beneath my feet, inviting me to remove my shoes. Here the sky smiles down upon me with a beam of sunshine that warms my face. And here, within my heart-space, a Larger-Than-All love tells me of my importance and meaning within this world and gives ME gratitude for walking this path.
And with this blessing, I am sent on my way.
I walk, then, back upon my same footprints. I see now with a sense of introspection and wisdom, with a new and amazing perspective. And, yes, on this path “home” I once again step carefully and sometimes hurriedly, and I do still stumble at times, where I find that I am able to collect the pieces I had dropped when I had fallen here before. But I now walk without fear. Now, the unknown is full of anticipation and is about how I will see things differently, not about seeing things for the first time.
And then I am home again.
So here I turn, as I have done before, and I see the opening trail-head inviting me once more. But now I will know just a little bit better how to walk the path again… And again …. And again.
This is what I have seen
–Owl
The three images here were done as part of my prayers and meditations as I listened to what Labyrinth had to teach me.
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