Life is a Circular Spiral Path

The biggest surprise on the magical journey of life, weather as a philosophy or a spiritual path, is that the path is a spiral. We go up, but we go in circles. Each time around, our view gets a little bit wider. 

The ancients revered the power of the circle. In the African tradition, as well as in Disney movies like the "Lion King," our earthly span is called "the circle of life." Black Elk, the leader of the Ogala Sioux, taught that "The power of the world always works in circles." 


Buddhist and Hindu pilgrims circle the base of Tibet's Mount Kailas as an act of worship. Muslims circle the Kabah in Mecca. For thousands of years the creation of mandalas - circular, geometric designs - has been part of both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Seekers create personal mandalas in order to invoke the sacred through the visual. 

Circles are found at sacred sites throughout the world. The gigantic prehistoric megaliths at Stonehenge, England, form
a circle.  

If we search for circles, we will find them everywhere. Plato  believed the soul was a circle. If it is, and our higher self is the Soul made visible, how could our awakening to higher consciousness be straight and not circular?


I am reminded of just how much of a spiral life's journey is when I get stuck in a set of circumstances from which escape seems impossible. When this occurs, I ask myself, "What's the lesson here, so that I can move on?" 

I usually discover that I've stopped using Cosmic Principals as my stepping stones to wholeness. I've become too "busy." I am dropping in my tracks because I was unable to say "No;" I'm frazzled because I've let myself forget that moments of solitude  and meditation  are necessary to center myself. I've been this route many times. I know that if I'm not experiencing harmony in my daily round, I'm not participating in the process. 


So I start again. Begin at the beginning. I honor the moments of being rather than doing. When I do resume living by my own lights, I usually discover that I am able to move on. But even if I can't change my outside circumstances, it enables me to change how I react to them. 


"The Life we want is not merely the one we have chosen and made," poet Wendell Berry tells us, "It is  the one we must be choosing and making." 


Brightest of Blessings,
Lory