When you woke up this morning, you started a day that may have appeared like any other. As you sit or stand or lie and read or listen to these words, this too may seem like any other ordinary thing. But today is new either way, and these words did not exist to you days, hours or moments before.

As we operate throughout the world, it may appear that the world is limitless, yet it is limited. You may recognize that the Earth is riddled with paths both literal and otherwise. We may see ourselves walk upon them, whether that is as we land our feet on them, or gaze our mind’s eye in that direction.

When we speak about our paths in life or in a broadened existential context, we are most likely talking about metaphorical paths which serve to represent the passage of time and individual progression. It is not so much about travel, but about transformation. It may be difficult to imagine our movement along these metaphorical paths when some, if not most, of the path is abstract and untraceable. There is no map for the unfolding of our lives. Our stories and experiences are only partly topographical.

Paths are a metaphor for stories at any scale. From the way we follow a train of thought toward revelation to the directions we follow from birth to cessation, our paths are simply the unique unfoldings of experiences and choices which bring us from Point A to Point B; even if those points aren’t geographically distinct. As I was reflecting on our unique unfoldings, that is, the way we live and breathe and learn from our time on earth, it was obvious to me why we have adopted the symbol of the labyrinth to represent the human experience.

Let’s talk about life for a second. Throughout our seemingly linear experience of life, we can view our journey from Point A (birth) to Point B (death) quite easily. Within the scope of our perceivable life, we can still widen and narrow the scope.

First, to widen, we can expand beyond our corporeal understanding and welcome the natural recycling program of biodegradability and recognize exactly what Walt Whitman was getting at in part 6 of a Song of Myself. In the poem by Mr. Whitman, the child asks, ‘What is the grass?’ and the answer is that it is all of us and all of things. Decomposition is the evidence of our role in feeding the Earth, which spent its time feeding us. Where do Point A and Point B lie now?

Now, to narrow our scope, we can go back into our perceivable corporal life because that’s what we understand best, and we can pull out distinct paths or stories in which our lives perhaps took a turn or where certain choices led to certain results. Though we can equally acknowledge that our lives are the result of endlessly interconnected factors, so too can we isolate smaller paths for the sake of processing our experiences and recognize perhaps stronger cases of causation or correlation. We might call these stories, and we may tell them to our friends or families or write a memoir about them. We might tell others of our paths, and they will find their way in the structure of the flexible template known as the Hero’s Journey. A call, an answer, a transformation.

Back to the labyrinth. If you don’t already know, a labyrinth is a winding path that occurs cross-culturally in multiple variations. In practice, most labyrinths are unicursal, meaning they are singular paths which guide the user from outside to the centre of the labyrinth and back out again. These unicursal labyrinths are a metaphor for the journey to the centre of your deepest self and back into the world with a broadened understanding of who you are.

In a practical sense, unicursal labyrinths are really just tools for meditation and follow behaviours similar to those of contemplative religions (predominantly of the East), which practice circumambulation or the process of walking in a circle around something. Much like circumambulation, the walking of the unicursal labyrinth is a process of reverence for the natural order of things. That is, the walking of the singular-pathed labyrinth is not meant to puzzle or confuse the traveller but to bring about stillness of the mind despite the dynamism of the path.

Despite the more common manifestation of labyrinths being unicursal, the collective imagination tends to envision labyrinths as multicursal, more maze-like. These are the labyrinths that feature dead ends, confusing turns, and blind paths. Multicursal labyrinths, to me, seem like better examples of the process of unfolding our lives and experiences as humans, as they involve multiple paths, confusion, imperfection, unknowns and recalibration. The assumption for completing a multicursal labyrinth is that there is some kind of insider knowledge necessary to solve the puzzle and make it to the centre.

The centre of the labyrinth represents the goal, the spiritual destination, the final stage of the path, but perhaps not the end as we know it. It is the cessation of the living, the beginning of the ending, the revelation, the release, the recollection. Due to the famous Greek myth of the Minotaur, the labyrinth as a whole has also come to represent the confinement of our experiences. If life is anything, it is the path of the labyrinth; we are limited by the experiences of humanness set out by the maze. We can walk each path for as long as we want, but the maze is still the maze. We just get to know it better.

So the very act of knowing then becomes central to the process of encountering and carrying on through life. Each confusing turn or misstep is made easier by the process of learning the rules of the labyrinth; the centre becomes easier to discover as we adapt and condition ourselves.

To medieval communities, the labyrinth was a representation of the path to God, the centre of which is the attunement to the holy spirit and its offerings. Perhaps the centre is enlightenment, the release from samsara or the sufferings of the human condition. Perhaps it is an idea, perhaps it is death. Whatever it is, it calls to us. Whatever it is, we walk towards it.

Still, it is of note that knowledge is pertinent to the survival of the centre, and the very act of sharing knowledge is not prohibited by the labyrinth itself. It is a challenge, not an unsolvable puzzle. The labyrinth is paradoxical in that it excludes particular difficulties by and through its inclusion of opportunities to learn the nature of the maze. Similarly, it is paradoxical in that it ensures the entry to the centre of the labyrinth is made difficult, but not impossible, though it may certainly seem that way from time to time.

Much like ourselves, life and the labyrinth operate in a constant process of revealing oneself. The older we get, the more difficult it becomes to deny the realities of our (in)consistencies. So too is the labyrinth telling on itself, becoming no more honest, but simply more obvious in its honesty. We become better at filtering illusions; our projections onto the process of living and unfolding into our lives are disillusioned by the realities of the maze. Over and over, our wrong turns and dead ends remind us to remember the path, the compassion necessary for completion and the necessity of stamina, both spiritual and otherwise, in completing our journey.

If life is the labyrinth, we’ll bring our fingertips to flesh and dig deep until we reach the core of cessation, that is, the end of one journey and the beginning of another, which somehow holds both the same. This has never been about the story of descent or a completed mission for the sake of glory and memory, but a return to our own middle. Life is a reminder of that which has sunken deep in our fabric, the inside of the spiral, the seed and stump combined. The answering and questioning and answering again. Our being is the endless initiation, the struggle of humanness and the steadfastness of our curiosity in the arena. It is the travel along the path, even if we ourselves appear still.

It is not so complicated, but it is this understanding of life and transformation as movement, even with an abstract distance that is being traversed. It is the comings and goings of all things, and still, rooted in our process of learning from life as life offers its lessons to us so generously. The path and the obstacle are the labyrinth, totality, time, consciousness and life, all the same. We make a wrong turn, and that is our process of learning; we get closer, and we attune our senses to the signs of this truth. There is no way out of the maze, only deeper, more intimate within it. Still, it is not a prison; it is a path.

When you woke up this morning, you started a day that may have appeared like any other. As you sit or stand or lie and read or listen to these words, this too may seem like any other ordinary thing. But today is new either way, and these words did not exist to you days, hours or moments before. The labyrinth is better understood now, and life is explored for at least one more day. You are on your way to something, even if it feels the same. You’re on your way.