The Wanderer discovers her unique path by perceiving the world with imagination and feeling. She senses what is possible as well as actual. She sees into people and places and possibilities, and she cultivates a relationship with the invisible realms as much as with the visible. She is in conversation with the mysteries of the world, on the lookout for signs and omens. She attends especially to the edge, those places where one thing merges with another, where consciousness shifts and opens, where the world becomes something different from what it initially appeared to be. . . imagination is the Wanderer’s most potent tool, her way of seeing into the dark, of illuminating the shadows, of digging deeper into soul.
Bill Plotkin, SoulCraft
The physical labyrinth is a spiritual tool. It has the capacity to remind us of the powers that are native to us as human beings–chief among those, imagination. Walking a labyrinth will cause an altered state of mind, and in this altered state, we find ourselves able to hear, see, perceive more clearly the deeper, constant messages of our soul that are so often blurred and noised out by the things we engage in otherwise. Once we begin to receive those messages, it is not long before our powers of imagination begin to suggest to use what and how we begin to work with those messages from our soul.
Used by common license
The physical labyrinth is not required to do this work within ourselves. It’s a wonderful tool, but we can choose to enter that altered state with the next breath, the next mindful step, the next choice to be still, wait, listen. When we choose to engage our powers of imagination while walking around in the labyrinth of our daily lives, we may be more inclined to disbelieve what our imaginations conceive, less inclined to believe the messages our soul offer us. That is because the altered state we need to listen and imagine is harder to maintain while we walk around in our lives–without practice. That’s why many of us love to practice in a physical labyrinth.
Today: walking around in our lives, can we allow the edges of our vision to expand a bit, the sounds we hear to deepen a bit, the impressions within that we notice become a little more tender? And, if we can, can we also allow ourselves to imagine where they may lead?
Bob Patrick
