All About Spirals

Before a spiral can be born, a few ingredients must be gathered: a pile of river rocks, a guide rope, the hands of community, and a pristine place in nature. Stones speak of the care and the labor of seasons, of the elements and natural cycles. The guide rope is a magical instrument that brings the formless idea of a spiral into physical form (that can be walked, experienced, traveled through). The hands of community, also magical instruments, touch every stone, infusing them with emotion, memory, and intention. The river rocks are placed along the guide rope. From the back of the line, each stone is passed carefully forward, a highly coherent efforts hands and feet, infusing the stones, the land, the forming spiral with an act of transformational togetherness. 

Afterward, the spiral is walked by each individual, into the center and back out again. It is a simple gesture and also an archetypal evocation. Entering the spiral, we stretch ourselves through space and time, each step a meditative present moment, unsheathing a version of ourselves that reaches the center. A deep breath. A prayer. Stillness. Then the return, gathering our previous steps along the way. Exiting, we realize something has changed along our journey, something about us has transformed.  

Spirals are circles, round and unending. They're also straight lines, bending back and forth between two points. They also rise and fall along curving helixes, with expanding width, depth, and height. In four dimensions, a spiral becomes a toroidal field, a coherent intelligence that journeys through time.

People can learn from spirals, remembering that they too live in four dimensions. Our human journey is personal, interpersonal, intrapersonal and transpersonal. We walk alone, we walk with others, we walk collectively as one, and we walk with as an interconnected cosmos.

A Damanhurian spiral building ritual is only one of countless ways to get in touch with the magic of transformational togetherness. Spirals are everywhere. Nautilus shells and our DNA helix, medieval labyrinths and crimson petroglyphs, jet engines and prosthetic robot arms, the whirling dervish and the fingerprint all speak of something even a child can draw, yet our vast Milky Way obeys upon its axis, orbiting its Great Attractor. We are spirals living in a spiral universe!

I feel the spiral-presence of order, connection, and evolution when people gather together with a shared sense of direction. Aligned with life-affirming ambition, we can evoke this positive, primordial power that neutralizes illness, violence, selfishness, discord and miscommunication. Spirals are syntropic systems, in which entropy is no longer possible. Patanjali's famous second yoga sutra, Yoga Chitta Vritti Nirodha , defines the essence of yoga, but also testifies to the power of spirals to neutralize the forces of karma, trauma, and chaos. Spiral ease pain, whether it lives in our body, relationships, society, or out in the cosmos. 

Spirals are present where there is a sense of humanity. At the dinner table where strangers are fed and welcome, in little acts of kindness, in the spaciousness of meditation and the innovation of the solitary wayfinder. Spirals live in dreams and in silent gratitude. In each breath, in birth and death, in the pain of loss and in the joy of finding one's way again, we repeat the gesture, walking into the center and back out again.

These are just some of the thoughts and conversations one can find at a spiral build. A simple shape, a ritual journey, a day spent in the warmth and good company of new and old friends. Spirals are primordial emissaries, but also describe the journey of dandelion fluff, blown a child's lips up into the atmosphere, over oceans and into undiscovered lands. Spirals bring us home to ourselves, but also dare us on our next great adventure.