A Wandering Spiral

I’ve been contemplating the spiral more than usual lately.

In the past when I’d hear the term spiraling, chaos would typically come to mind. Now I see the spiral as inherent to nature, a building block to creation itself. It is the embodiment of contraction and expansion, to the cyclical nature of life and death.

And life and death can be found everywhere at all stages of existence from year to year, month to month, day to day, and second by second. Spiraling is a visceral awareness to this process.

So much of the time when we think of death we imagine that final moment where our body and spirit detach, and we are laid to rest. As if we only meet death once. But, it has always been here.

Death follows as we shed old identities, leave relationships, jobs, homes. As we shed belief systems, stories, and realities that we’ve held for so long.

I like to believe life and death are lovers, best friends, one and the same. For as we become, we also end. To invite in the new we must actively shed.

We all have different paces, some of us like to wade in slowly, some like to ease into the deep end, and some like to dive straight in. Regardless of our pace our nature calls to the spiral. Its intensity is directly connected to our speed and/or or resistance to the body and spirit’s inherent nature.

Many are familiar with the idea of depression. I like to see it as compression, as being called back to the center of the spiral. As a tree’s branches grow up, its roots must also grow down and out.

Compression is a call inward, an opportunity to recover pieces of ourselves lost to the shadows buried in our shame.

When we release our judgment to this process we can see this more clearly. When we sit with the lost pieces of ourselves in compassion, they become fertilizer to the soil that supports our growth.

Friction follows as our old and new identities rub against one another and there begins the spark that relights the embers of our vitality.

^A passage from my recently published book, Cosmos Lost Her Head. If you’d like a copy you can find it here: Order Your Book