{"id":11448,"date":"2015-08-01T01:10:54","date_gmt":"2015-08-01T06:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=12017"},"modified":"2015-07-26T22:51:59","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T03:51:59","slug":"spiralled-edges-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2015\/08\/01\/spiralled-edges-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Spiralled Edges"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Spiralled Edges \u2013 The Narrow\u00a0Life Path<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Think about being on your life path for a moment. What does it look like?<\/p>\n

\"slinky\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I thought about my own life path, for some reason I always pictured myself on a tight rope, carefully balancing my life on that thin rope and avoiding the extremes of leaning too far either direction. I didn\u2019t want to fall off my path!<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been working on changing this narrow view of my own life path over the past few years. I had a first clue that perhaps I wasn\u2019t seeing things as they were when I did a shamanic journey for the purpose of discovering what I was supposed to be doing on this life path I was trying so hard to stay on.<\/p>\n

I found myself on a spiralling walkway, and soon discovered where I was going \u201cwrong\u201d. When I blundered in trying to walk a straight and narrow line, I kept falling off. It was only when I followed each spiral around that I was able to remain on my own path.<\/p>\n

Oh, maybe I had things wrong. Maybe life paths aren\u2019t straight Roman roads efficiently taking us from Point A (birth) to Point B (death). Maybe, just maybe, they\u2019re spiraling roads that lead us through experiences and events.<\/p>\n

Just as important for me was the realisation that this path I was on was not a slender, narrow precipitous trail, but a wide road with plenty of room on either side for wandering. I didn\u2019t have to worry about falling off the side as there were no edges.<\/p>\n

But even this view doesn\u2019t feel quite right to me anymore. As I have pondered the idea of walking a spiralled path, I can see now that my life path isn\u2019t like the pristine and curved spirals of a brand new slinky.<\/p>\n

No, mine is more like the slinky that has been taken out of the box and used a few years. There are kinks and twists, tangled areas, places that have been untangled but not quite gone back into the original pattern. Each of those twists and tangles and bends represents an event in my life, or a place of learning. All of the evidence that I am a person who has lived!<\/p>\n

So this gets me to thinking, is a life path laid out in front of us, predetermined as to its destination and route before we were born. Or, as is more and more looking to be the case, does our path unfold before us as we go, with each twist, each turn, each step into the future determined by our actions and words right now in the present.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t fall off my path because now is the only part that exists. Each detour, each opportunity missed or taken, each decision, each learning experience has led me to where I am right now.<\/p>\n

So for those who come to me asking, \u201cHow can I find out my life purpose?\u201d I can say to them in all sincerity, \u201cYou find it by living your life now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Image credit:<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/span>“2006-02-04 Metal spiral” by Roger McLassus – Picture taken and uploaded by Roger McLassus.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons –<\/span> https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:2006-02-04_Metal_spiral.jpg#\/media\/File:2006-02-04_Metal_spiral.jpg<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Spiralled Edges \u2013 The Narrow\u00a0Life Path Think about being on your life path for a moment. What does it look like? When I thought about my own life path, for some reason I always pictured myself on a tight rope, carefully balancing my life on that thin rope and avoiding the extremes of leaning too far either direction. I didn\u2019t want to fall off my path! I\u2019ve been working on changing this narrow view of my own life path over the past few years. I had a first clue that perhaps I wasn\u2019t seeing things as they were when I did a shamanic journey for the purpose of discovering what I was supposed to be doing on this life path I was trying so hard to stay on. I found myself on a spiralling walkway, and soon discovered where I was going \u201cwrong\u201d. When I blundered in trying to walk a straight and narrow line, I kept falling off. It was only when I followed each spiral around that I was able to remain on my own path. Oh, maybe I had things wrong. Maybe life paths aren\u2019t straight Roman roads efficiently taking us from Point A (birth) to Point B (death). Maybe, just maybe, they\u2019re spiraling roads that lead us through experiences and events. Just as important for me was the realisation that this path I was on was not a slender, narrow precipitous trail, but a wide road with plenty of room on either side for wandering. I didn\u2019t have to worry about falling off the side as there were no edges. But even this view doesn\u2019t feel quite right to me anymore. As I have pondered the idea of walking a spiralled path, I can see now that my life path isn\u2019t like the pristine and curved spirals of a brand new slinky. No, mine is more like the slinky that has been taken out of the box and used a few years. There are kinks and twists, tangled areas, places that have been untangled but not quite gone back into the original pattern. Each of those twists and tangles and bends represents an event in my life, or a place of learning. All of the evidence that I am a person who has lived! So this gets me to thinking, is a life path laid out in front of us, predetermined as to its destination and route before we were born. Or, as is more and more looking to be the case, does our path unfold before us as we go, with each twist, each turn, each step into the future determined by our actions and words right now in the present. I can\u2019t fall off my path because now is the only part that exists. Each detour, each opportunity missed or taken, each decision, each learning experience has led me to where I am right now. So for those who come to me asking, \u201cHow can I find out my life purpose?\u201d I can say to them in all sincerity, \u201cYou find it by living your life now.\u201d Image credit:\u00a0“2006-02-04 Metal spiral” by Roger McLassus – Picture taken and uploaded by Roger McLassus.. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:2006-02-04_Metal_spiral.jpg#\/media\/File:2006-02-04_Metal_spiral.jpg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}