For some years I have been facilitating retreat weekends in the Blue Mountains. This has been both a learning experience and an opportunity to engage with spirit. The learning has been so profound that any attempt to elucidate it contracts its breadth. We however live in a world of random symbols that take on self constructed meaning, and so pictorially and textually I offer the reader an opportunity to follow, see, read and engage in the holy space of imagining and enter the journey.
Participants gather on a Friday evening, mostly strangers to each other, often holding unconsciously the raw, insistent beat of the city they have just left behind. It takes time for the settling down of the pulse, the pauses between the excited and rapid judgments, the opening of the heart space to allow a new quality of perception to make itself felt. But it does, and within a contracted period that seems like forever, friendships are formed, silent appreciation of the beauty of each moment forges new pathways of connectedness. We become the love we seek.
Our activities over the weekend are underpinned by meditation. After a brief introduction to the ancient practice of labyrinth walking we proceed into its actual creation, all carried out in silence. We are invited to access our deep knowing, to information that we are not consciously holding. Thus, without instructions and discussion, the participants silently create the labyrinth by finding the twigs that guide the pathway and connect them with the ribbons and adornments provided. Yes, all this is done without words. A magic is stirring the air. And I observe enthralled by the beauty and wonder of it all.
After a few years of our self constructed labyrinths we moved to a more permanent construction in the heart of the bushland. A truck arrived with a load of donated boulders and on a hot and sticky day without too much preparation, another labyrinth emerged. It's not perfect. You could say the design is following the long tradition of pilgrimage, but it is unique to itself. Again, more lessons and insights emerge from this different structure. Frequently the participants hold questions which they carry into the labyrinth and frequently, on their homeward circulation, they return holding an insight that has been gifted to them. Occasionally, they leave little notes pushed into the rocks that remind us of the ernest prayers left by worshipers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. It seems that at times we need to be a little lost in order to be found. Perhaps we all need to let go and let G-d.
at times you need to be a little lost in order to be found
So, if your heart is seeking solace, spiritual upliftment and knowledge, a space to disengage from the daily bombardment that exhausts our spirit, this place is meant for you.
hedy sussmann 2017
Credits:
Hedy Sussmann