LABYRINTH WALKS

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The next monthly walk will be at 9am on Sunday 7th December with Maja Skrlj. Come quiet your mind, listen to your heart and remember what it feels like to be in community in a peaceful, gentle way. Sydney Labyrinth events are free and open to all.  Directions are on the location page.

FRIDAY WALKS 
Elizabeth Lee is a Spiritual Director and Doctoral candidate at the University of Divinity in Melbourne. For the past four years she has been welcoming people into the labyrinth at 10am on the Fourth Friday of each month, offering a Gospel reading with a prompt for reflection or a question to ponder while walking. There’s a picnic morning tea afterwards where you’re invited to share as much or as little as you want. All welcome. If you’d like to be on her email list please send a message to elizabeth.lee@visionandaction.com.au

 

If you’re interested in the history of the Centennial Park Labyrinth, check out Emily’s Substack page telling the story of her journey to get it built. It’s called ‘Paving the Way’. There are weekly posts and subscription is free. https://emilysimpson.substack.com 

If you don’t feel up for group walks, the labyrinth is still there for you. A place of refuge and sanctuary in complicated times. Use it as a contemplative tool to walk your way into the bigger picture, releasing anxieties on the way in, aligning with what truly matters as you pause in the centre, like a tuning fork between the earth and the sky, then following the path back out into the world, weaving into your awareness any insights or metaphors you may have noticed along the way. Walking meditation helps us accept whatever is going on in our lives and that what’s in the way, usually is the way.

“Walking home to country is a connection our people have always had with Mother Earth.  Our culture is defined by the closeness of family circles and staying connected to the people within it. The labyrinth invites and welcomes people to walk the path together – it calls them to the land in oneness.”  (Aunty Ali Golding, Elder of the Biripi Nation)

FACILITATED MONTHLY WALKS 2025

  • Sun 5th January  with Maja Skrlj @ 9am
  • Sun 2nd February with Matthew Evans @ 9am
  • Sun 2nd March with Desiree DeKlerk @ 9am
  • Sun 6th April with Jennifer Keeler-Milne @ 9am
  • Sun 4th May with Desiree DeKlerk  @ 9am
  • Sun 1st June with Annalise Thomas @ 9am
  • Sun 6th July with Matt Evans @ 9am
  • Sun 3rd August with Kate Thornley @ 9am
  • Sun 7th Sept with Elizabeth Macgregor @ 9am
  • Sun 5th Oct with Erica Webber @ 9am
  • Sun 2nd Nov with Elizabeth Lee @ 9am
  • Sun 7th Dec with Maja Skrlj @ 9am
  • Sun 21st Dec – Summer Solstice @ 9am

LABYRINTH BLESSING

May you be well and happy.
May you walk in peace
and know yourself
to be beloved on the earth,
held and blessed by all that is.

Why the labyrinth is relevant today

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Buckminster Fuller wrote, ‘If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Give them a tool instead, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.’ The labyrinth is just such a tool with the capacity to show us a new way of being in the world. It is a gift for uncertain times because it is that rare and precious thing, a universal symbol within which all our perspectives can find a home. The labyrinth teaches acceptance, inclusion and flow. Acceptance of the path and its obstacles. Inclusion of the other, both within and without, and to be in flow with all that is. We are held by the structure of its winding path and received by its mystery.
Walking the labyrinth is often considered a threefold path: releasing on the way in, receiving in the middle and then returning. This idea blends well with Jungian analyst, Helen Luke’s principles of the Divine Feminine: ‘Receiving, Nourishing and Birthing’. If we synergise these concepts, then the path receives what we release on the way in, nourishes us with inspiration as we pause in the centre, then births us back out into the world, refreshed. It’s a symbolic integration of our capacity to give and receive, a true mystic path. Rather than merely a personal sense of activating the intuitive aspects of consciousness, it’s a much bigger idea of the Great Mother rising up to meet us, using the labyrinth as her portal.
As an archetype, the labyrinth has no opposite; but its shadow is the maze (which is ultimately just a very complicated labyrinth). The labyrinth welcomes and soothes with the ease of its step by step journey, whereas the walls and dead ends of the maze are designed to frustrate and confuse. The maze has been the dominant paradigm for so long, most of us barely notice we’re in it. To its detriment, Western culture has valued head over heart and thought over feeling. The rules and hierarchies are so deeply woven into our social fabric that it’s hard to imagine any other way of being.
The maze is a game with more barriers than freedoms, whose primary goal is power and control. In corporate life, an organisation which operates like a maze would be adversarial and competitive, a dog-eat-dog environment in which the end justifies the means, e.g. employees chasing individual agendas rather than working as a team. The labyrinth is a game with more freedoms than barriers, whose primary goal is flow and acceptance. An organisation which operates like a labyrinth would be more collaborative – an interdependent community of individuals.
The labyrinth is a form of ‘maze therapy’ offering us the opportunity to experience ourselves as vessels through which power flows, rather than seeing power as something external to self. It is a paradigm within which we can access real power. The power of our essential nature. Not power over, which is the obsession of the maze, but power with. A mutually expansive sharing of the destiny of our world.
So how do we know if we’re living in a labyrinth or a maze? It’s all a matter of perspective. When we feel lost and confused, we’ve probably turned our path into a maze. The signs of this are anxiety, comparison and a need to control things. The myth of the maze is that it is real, that there’s no alternative. When we surrender to fear we build walls and create dead ends. We can only be free when we accept our experience and see how it might be transformed into something useful; when we realise that what’s in the way, is the way. We are the alchemists of our own lives, and the lead with which that alchemist is working and we are the gold it becomes.
The coronavirus has highlighted many problems at the heart of our social and economic systems. It could be seen as the minotaur of our times, the hidden beast that must be confronted in the maze of modern life. The minotaur represents the shadow of our nature, the unconscious material we choose to ignore about ourselves. In the myth, Theseus slayed the Minotaur and managed to escape the maze, but he couldn’t do it alone; he needed the spool of thread given to him by Ariadne, to find his way back out. The hero aspect of our nature ventures into the dark of the subconscious mind to slay the monster of fear or shame but it needs to be guided back to the light by the intuitive heroine within. The great task of individuation involves slaying all the monsters we keep locked in the heart of our interior labyrinth. Not just once, but over and over again. 
Our cultural minotaurs are the aspects of modern life that are draped in shame. The choices made to serve the few at the expense of the many. The malignant delusion of endless growth on a planet with finite resources. The rape of the earth, the pollution of the seas, the enslavement of millions. These are truly monstrous realities which, when fully acknowledged can be overwhelming. The answer is to do what we can from where we are, one step at a time. To clean up our small patch of ground and support those who extend their reach beyond. The gift of these minotaurs is to wake us up to the interconnection of all things. To show us our power to destroy and to create. We have the power to change our minds and change the game; to honour and revere the immense blessing of the earth instead of claiming dominion over it. The labyrinth invites us to tune ourselves to what is possible. To reach down into the earth and up into the stratosphere, bridging spirit and matter within the vessel of our being. As a living metaphor, it helps us remember that we are held and blessed by all that is. Even this.
Emily Simpson, June 2020. 
Image by Kyle Murraya

Lauren Artress in Sydney

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The woman who kick started the global labyrinth movement 20 years ago, Rev Dr Lauren Artress was in Sydney to train 30 new labyrinth facilitators. On Sunday 1st Feb she was guest of honour at the Dedication of the Labyrinth which included the beautiful music of Corrina Bonshek which is now available online.

Lauren Artress

To find out more about Lauren’s work with labyrinths around the world go to  www.veriditas.org.  Her much loved book is called “Walking A Sacred Path – Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice” and is available on Amazon

Simple guide to walking the labyrinth:

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There’s really no right way or wrong way to walk a labyrinth, but generally speaking there are three phases:

1. Releasing on the way in – letting go of what no longer serves.
2. Receiving a sense of peace and calm as you pause in the centre.
3. Resolving to engage with the world in a new way as you follow the same path back out.

To prepare, you may want to sit quietly and reflect before walking the labyrinth. Some people come with questions, others just to slow down and take time out from a busy life. Some come to find the strength to take the next step during times of grief and loss. Its winding path becomes a metaphor for our journey and where we find ourselves on our path. If someone is walking more slowly than you, feel free to overtake (easier at the turns). The labyrinth is all about flow and acceptance. As Ram Dass says, “We are all really just walking each other home.”

Some find the strength to take the next step in times of grief and loss. Some men find here a way to get rid of the symptoms of erectile dysfunction. This can also be done with generic sildenafil, which can be purchased on this website.

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ABC Radio National Interview

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ABC Radio National program about the construction of the labyrinth in Centennial Park, featuring Emily Simpson, William Zuccon (Architect) and Darren Finlayson (Stonemason). It was broadcast on 1st November and is now available online: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/offtrack/it-is-solved-by-walking/5840076  or you can read a comprehensive article by Ann Jones:  http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/offtrack/walking-sydneys-parkland-labyrinth/5847518

Radio National

Lauren Artress in Sydney – Jan 2015

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Sydney Postcard_rev1

Want to learn more about the labyrinth? The woman who kick started the global labyrinth movement 20 years ago, Rev Dr Lauren Artress is coming to Sydney to speak and teach in January 2015. Whether you want to bring the labyrinth to your community or simply deepen your understanding of it, then this is a rare opportunity.

The lecture will be held at the Paddington Uniting Church, 395 Oxford St, Paddington and the workshop and Facilitator Training will be held at Moore Park Golf Club. Lauren will also be holding a special dedication of the Centennial Park labyrinth on the evening of Sunday 1st February. All welcome. To find out more about her work with labyrinths around the world go to www.veriditas.org.  Her book is called “Walking A Sacred Path – Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice” and is available on Amazon

If you need accommodation:

http://www.wotif.com/hotels/crown-hotel-surry-hills.html

http://www.wotif.com/hotels/rydges-sydney-central-formerly-sebel-surry-hills.html

http://www.wotif.com/hotels/city-crown-motel.html

 

and if you have any questions please contact Emily Simpson