Contemplation for Solstice

Last year, before setting aside my spiritual interests into this blog, I posted on my "personal blog" about the Winter Solstice HERE, as well as Newgrange Ireland.

I want to add just a bit more about the triple spirals, which I've copied into a finger labyrinth, a form which is in clay ready to be "walked" with one's fingers, or a pencil or toothpick, around the path of 3 spirals.  I've only created a few of these in permanent ceramic shapes, which serve interestingly as trivets or coasters when not in more spiritual use!

The other labyrinths are the design used in the Chartres Cathedral in France...which also can be meditative as you travel it with a small implement between the grooves.

How do these meditations work?  Like all meditations, be sure to set aside some time in which you won't be interrupted.

One popular way is to have a question in mind when starting...or perhaps an intention.  Whenever you meet a turning place, where you have to stop from advancing in the direction you are going, remember that question or intention.  Then move on slowly to the next turning.  By the time you've turned all those directions, even with just a pencil or toothpick, you've repeated your question/intention many times.  Stop at the center.  Reflect.  Do you know more than when you began?  Have you a change to consider?  Spend this time wisely, and don't hurry back out.  As you move back from center to the outside, again take a moment at each turning.

If you are like me, you may have many ideas that you didn't have to start with.  You may want to repeat these at the turns, so as to remember them.  When you finish the labyrinth, you indeed will have traveled to another place with your spirit.  Take time in quietness to record what you experienced.

And munch on something that gives energy, either protein like nuts, or sweets like chocolate, because the body has been serving the higher good of your spirit for the last little while, even if just by sitting and concentrating, rather than walking a full size labyrinth.

I have no idea if the original creators of the triple spiral had this in mind, but it's become a ritual that I find very fulfilling.  What else do you think it might mean?