I’ve been in love with labyrinths since I was 14. My sister and I got to travel to the Chartres cathedral (this pic) and I learned of ole’ french monks who would sometimes crawl it in their spiritual searching.
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Perhaps I loved them because they allowed my high-energy self to move while I pray, or because the picture of crawling monks was highly amusing. Regardless, when I walked my first as a teen, I was hooked. You ever been on one?
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They’ve been around in various cultures since before 430BC and have meant different things over time.
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Greek mythology used to confuse and trap monsters, demons and imps with them. (Really.)
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Then, like many things, other religions borrowed from Greek mythology, and in parts of Crete, priests would dance the labyrinth’s path ‘til they reached an ‘ecstatic state’ by the divine center.
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To no surprise, after all this time, the labyrinth is now giving me a new message .
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At its center, I see the source of divine connection and inspiration AND it also has held the most harmful, the lowest of low energies (you know, like imps, demons and monsters).
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This is the same for writers when we are tapping into the Divine within. In that same space where we find our ability to be deeply creative, we can find past pain that has been locked away.
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As we release the words that want to come through us, something else seems to also find its way out. Something else also WANTS to come out.
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Just as the book idea finally felt safe and heard to come out of us…. so does our pain, our grudges, and our wounds.
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Our book doesn’t even have to be related to the subject of our pain, but it seems time and time again, that they’re both being held in the same space…the same divine center.
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The writers who dare to go deep in order to write well, always seem to find AND heal a wound through the book creation process.
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I’ve had writing clients who’ve left unfulfilling jobs, unhealthy marriages, committed to a move they’d been putting off for years, had sweaty-palm conversations with loved ones that were decades overdue because the book-writing process led them to truly go within and listen.
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Both of my books led me to feel and heal things that I “forgot” to heal decades ago. Releasing the book within permeates and enhances every part of our lives
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….even parts that we thought would never be enhanced. It’s as if our power to create beauty and meaning, resides in the same space as our deepest wounds.
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A writing client recently told me that before we began working together, she had been (metaphorically) flatlining for 20 years and just thought that that was how life was meant to be.
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She thought that that was all there was.
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She shared that since she had been accomplishing her writing goals with me, she is finally living the challenging, and fulfilling life that she was meant to.
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When you choose to release the book within you, get ready.
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For if you’re willing to stay the path through all the turns, at times dancing like a Cretan priest, other times crawling like a French Monk, and instead of running from the monstrous pain that you find in the Divine center, you sit with it, you will find that you do not sit alone.
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God sits with you…perhaps God even holds you.
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Being cradled by God, you sit with the demons and the imps of your pain and feel it at its depths.
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You feel it through cries, through cussing, through pounding your fists on the cold, cathedral floor. And by you letting yourself feel the negative energy, you move it. Emotions are energy in motion that needs to be moved….needs to be released.
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In our not running from the monstrous pain and allowing God to cradle us as we sincerely feel it, divine alchemy takes place. The matter of our pain is transmuted into wisdom, love and power for good. Not only for our good but for the good of others too.
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In our cradling in the divine center….we see darkness turned into light.
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In the divine center, we see that God is always at work for good.
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In the divine center…we see that what broke our heart to pieces then,
Might bring us to wholeness now.
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In the divine center….we begin to see that there could possibly even be a gift from our pain.
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In the divine center….we feel that not only can we handle staring the monstrous pain in its face, but one day,
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We could be grateful for it.
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In the labyrinth of your book-writing journey, you won’t only return with a completed book, you’ll also return from a breakthrough.
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Write bravely, friend. You are beyond capable and worthy to co-create the life to which you’ve been called. ✌️⚔️✍️