Moons Over Sedona Part IV: Labyrinth

Albuquerque, New Mexico

May 6, 2011

1:05 p.m.

Moons Over Sedona Part IV:

The Labyrinth

Do you know the difference between a labyrinth and a maze?

At the moment we are parked in the lot at “Fast Action Auto Repair” in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Having left Sedona on May 5 we were headed East on highway 40 to fulfill our intention to be in Santa Fe by Mother’s Day (May 8) placing us back on schedule and on course with the original Sole2Soul Walk design.  

But this morning our venerable and somewhat elderly RV, whom we affectionately call “Lindy-girl”, has refused to start.  Since I am convinced that there are no accidents and absolutely everything and everyone are connected in a benign pattern of Divine Order, I am asking the obvious question:  “What is this about?”

It didn’t take me long to realize that energetically we could not possibly move on to a new adventure -- which Santa Fe promises to be -- until I had closed the chapter on Sedona by completing the fourth and final episode. So here goes. 

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We had spent so many blissful days in Sedona, we were beginning to feel so comfortable, had made so many friends, and were so happy logging our miles up and down on the red trails which led through countless spectacular vistas, that I was beginning to feel uneasy about possibly having lost our way in a kind of lotus land; possibly being out of integrity with the original design of the Sole2Soul Walk. We began looking for an appropriate -- and auspicious -- way to declare our adventure complete and move on.  

First, we declared, we will stay until after my 73rd birthday on Thursday, April 28.  Great idea.  We gave a campfire dinner party for 9 at the medicine wheel, and had a ceremony in which we asked those present to share their passion.  “What  would you be willing to make your walk about?”  The sharing was inspiring.  I was clearly in the presence of a group of adepts.  It felt complete to me.  Now, surely we can move on.

But somehow it didn’t seem “auspicious” to just leave on a Friday, so we decided to stay through the weekend and leave on the following Monday.  

The Sunday service at the Unity Church of Sedona put us in touch with an extraordinary teacher, Dr. Michael Mirdad http://www.grailproductions.com/ whom we felt we needed to interview in a private session on the following day.  The interview was captured on camera, and will no doubt be part of our “Gathering WOmentum” documentary film, but I wasn’t expecting to be touched so deeply and personally by Michael’s sensitive and astute observations on the need for healing and balancing of the masculine and feminine energies in each of us.

That powerful session coincided with the new moon.  Never in my life had I been particularly aware of moon cycles, but it is becoming clearer to me that this is part of the total awareness of feminine energies.  A new moon ceremony would certainly complete the cycle begun two weeks earlier on the full moon with Uqualla and Kaeylarae.  Accordingly, we did a sunset ceremony of gratitude and completion at the medicine wheel.  It did feel complete. . .  “Perhaps we can leave early the following morning, Tuesday,” we thought.

But Tuesday, we had to do mundane things like laundry and shopping to  get the RV ready for our exit -- plus our walking.  We also took in a movie and treated Kaeylarae to dinner -- it was the least we could do for all of her ministrations to us over the weeks, especially driving us all over town.  Also, I should note, Kaeylarae has become our first official “virtual walker.”  (Someone who is walking her talk with intention, and logging her miles as though she were walking beside us.)  

But Wednesday, surely Wednesday, we could leave?  

Not so fast!  The following morning we pulled the “labyrinth” card from the “sacred geometry” deck I had bought for myself for my birthday, and remembered the labyrinth that Kaeylarae had told us about right in the middle of town.  We knew we had to walk it with her for one last hurrah.  Once again, like the character Michael Corleone played by Al Pacino in “The Godfather,” we kept getting pulled back in.  By now we simply had learned to surrender to the Sedona Vortex.  Like matrix and creatrix, the word has a feminine ring to it!  Could it be that “she”was playing with us?  Sedona, after all was named after a woman.

While walking the labyrinth I was meditating once more on gratitude and completion.  It had all been so perfect, but I truly wanted a sign of release -- that not only were we complete with Sedona, which we had felt several times, but that Sedona was complete with us.  After all, a relationship is a two-way street, and one cannot just leave without proper good-byes.

We made our way out of town to have a good-bye brunch with a friend, in the Village of Oak Creek, only to realize that I had left my credit card in a restaurant back in Sedona the night before!

Oh, no!  Once more back into town.  Next to the restaurant where I retrieved my card was a boutique whose name had amused Viveka and me each time we passed it: “Dahling, It’s You!”  I had not planned to buy anything -- never do -- but did find an enchanting purple jacket that had my name on it written in so many dimensions.  Michael had told me that I just, sometimes, needed to enjoy being a girl!

All right, already.  Now can we go?  Once more heading out of town through the Village of Oak Creek on Highway 17 towards Flagstaff I remembered that we had entered Sedona on May 16 via that same highway and so it seemed significant that that very morning I had learned the difference between a labyrinth and a maze.  In a labyrinth the way in is also the way out.  There are no decisions you have to make, once you make the decision to play the game.  Our experience in Sedona had been very much like that.  We just had to learn to go along for the ride until we came back to the starting point, made new.

The whole 20-day Sedona experience from March 16 through April 5, 2011 had followed exactly 40 days of “wandering in the wilderness.”  (See blogs on Amboy and Yuma) The Sedona period took us through the familiar cultural rites of Spring: Palm Sunday, Passover, Earth Day, Easter and Cinco de Mayo.  Through it all we were aware that we are on a mission to have conversations about the return of the Divine Feminine in culture, communication, community and consciousness, and that our steps were guided in a channel of peacefulness and joy.

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From this point on, as the memories begin to fade and as we create new experiences on the journey I will always smile as I look down at my dusty sneakers permanently tinged with Sedona’s rouge.