The Lessons of the Labyrinth
Nobody likes to experience pain, fear or abandonment. We want to feel joyful, uplifted and full of energy, we want our lives to make sense and our path to be straight before us. We don’t want darkness.
But there is a danger that our fear of darkness and negativity may lead to spiritual bypassing.
The path of spiritual development is not the path of wallowing in grief and anxiety. But it is not a straight line. Rather, it is a spiral, where, just before we are propelled to the next level, we often meet darkness and obstacles.
And we can only go as high as we have been low.
If we have the tools and knowledge, we will know how to embrace the temporary “low,” and allow it to refine us, without sinking into despair. Whether it is an experience of ego death, external obstacles, having to heal the effects of trauma on a deeper level, crippling grief or abandonment — in every negative experience we have a choice. To allow it to purify us, or to give up and give in.
But the ancient knowledge that many of us seem to have lost is that the purification process is the beginning of an upward spiral, and the less resistance we put up, the more authentic joy we are able to experience.
Many of us may believe this intellectually, but how does it work in practice? I would like to share a story of one of the tools for measuring vibration rates, and what it tells us about a very ancient and sacred practice of walking a labyrinth — and how it can help us in our own process,
In the years preceding the Second World War, the French researcher Andre Bovis was involved in food quality inspection. These inspections were very labor intensive. Bovis was therefore looking for a method for determining the vitality and freshness of products more quickly.
He assumed that all matter emits radiation. He thought that he could measure it in units of angstrom, a measure for the wavelength of light. Bovis made a measuring scale that was divided into angstrom. By moving his pendulum up or down this scale, he could read the angstrom value of the product. He called this instrument the biometer.
The biometer was a great success. It was much easier for Bovis to quickly determine the quality of wine, cheese or bread with this tool than with any other method. Bovis was appointed special inspector with the French government where he worked until his death in 1947.
After the Second World War, a student of Bovis, engineer Andre Simoneton, came to realize that the units of the scale were not angstrom. Rather, the scale measured the vibrational frequency of a product, and could be similarly used to measure the vibrational frequency of a place, or a being. Simoneton called the units Bovis values.
The value of 6,500 on the Bovis scale is the neutral value, meaning that the values that measure below it are negative and harmful to human health, whereas the values above 6,500 are positive and healthy. In geobiology, readings below 6,500 show the presence of underground water veins, geological cracks or negative memories, which are harmful to human beings, animals and plants.
Recently, several practitioners have reported that the neutral value has shifted to 8,500, which is likely connected to the shift in Earth’s own vibration rate.
Some vortexes and power places on Earth show extremely high results on the Bovis Scale. The maximum value that has been measured on Earth so far is 50,000 Bovis units on Mount Kailash, Tibet.
The eye of the labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral measured 18,000 Bovis units, one of the highest measurements of any man-made structure on Earth. However, when measuring the Bovis value of the labyrinth, one finds something interesting, a pattern of changing vibratory values that applies to all labyrinths.
The greater part of a labyrinth has Bovis values between 6,500 and 8,000. There are two exceptions. The center often measures over 11,000 units, whereas the last path leading up to it has Bovis decreasing to zero.
From a spiritual perspective, the labyrinth is a representation of the human path of spiritual development, and is a meditative tool that is not exclusive to Christianity. In basic terms, the path to the center of the labyrinth is a symbolic representation of the human journey to transformation and Union with the Divine.
But in order to transform, one must go through zero first. When walking the labyrinth, our Bovis value decreases rapidly, and from an energetic point of view, the path just before reaching the center is similar to the process of death.
This “dead point” in our spiritual development is also known as the transformation point, the last straw that finally breaks the old Self. At this moment, our system undergoes an energetic death process — after which there is a breakthrough, the point where new intersections open up. This breakthrough is followed by a transformation, a contact with a higher level. In labyrinth, this transformation is symbolized by the center.
The builders of old knew this wisdom. Today, many people walk the labyrinth as a meditative tool, to experience the process of death and rebirth in their own body.
It could be that such practice helps us to be better prepared for the “lows” of real life. Our bodies and minds learn to recognize that small deaths often precede rebirths. We may lack the intellectual understanding of what is happening, but we are training our body and nervous system to be ready for the real-life zero-points.
We may also do it through meditation, through learning to sit with our negative emotions. If we have the courage to deal with darkness and negativity within our own minds, we are actually able to release it. As we observe a negative emotion, it loses its power.
It is the emotion that is not acknowledged, that is not embraced that will scream for attention in what seems to be external obstructions and blocks. It will scream until the pain is unbearable and we have no choice but to address it.
So rather than “avoiding negativity,” we can learn the tools to face and address darkness in a safe manner, and to embrace it as part of the spiral of our development.
We can learn to walk the labyrinth.
