STAGE ONE: Know and share the labyrinth by walking and discovering the labyrinth. By finding and walking many labyrinths. By studying and reading … and again and again… WALKING the labyrinth. By finding others who know… and inviting others who do not… to walk the labyrinth with you and in doing so, learn with and from them. Stage one is about gaining knowledge and insight not only from your own personal walk, but also through the study of the walks of those today and in the past.
STAGE TWO: Build the labyrinth with prayer and meditation and deep work inside. Listen closely and write it down and create what you are told to create. Build with the willing help of your community and family and friends and with the utmost approval of all people, and the permission of all things that need to approve. Ask each stone and spec of dirt and plant that will be displaced for their desire to participate, because this will magnify the healing power and the important magic this labyrinth will hold. Let your heart and Spirit, more than your head, guide you. Once complete…. Clean it with sage and cedar and rattles, then walk it with the most graceful of barefoot steps and gift it with your most sacred of sacred offerings, tobacco, and cornmeal and flower pedals.
STAGE THREE: Clean and maintain and treat the labyrinth with sacred respect. Establish a plan and schedule, and commit to keeping this sacred place clean and energetically active. Return regularly and pull the wandering weeds. Prune the overhanging limbs. Rake the dirt smooth. And share with it your happiness and sorrows, of both life-changing and mundane encounters, of both lost friends and new-found loves. And most importantly, always be in a sacred place within yourself when you visit, because this is what it desires.
STAGE FOUR: Bring the Labyrinth along within the heart. The Labyrinth has become a guide of sorts. An internal altar or medicine tool. Carry it within your heart-space and access and walk it whenever and wherever it is needed. Physically bring it out by scratching it in the dirt or as a doodle on a notepad at work or school. Follow it as if it is a tunnel as you journey within. It will show up for you, as well, in a serendipitous way, seemingly of its own accord … and you will suddenly see it in places you never thought to look before. At this stage, you will find it even more important to step back to stage three and clean and maintain its integrity and intent.
STAGE FIVE: This stage has not yet arrived. The Labyrinth will reveal it when its ready… when I am ready… when we are ready…
This is a Journey we all walk
— Nate Long “Owl”