From the day we arrive on the planet
And blinking, step into the sun
There’s more to be seen than can ever be seen
More to do than can ever be done

 ~ Circle of Life, Elton John

On my 50th birthday last year, my head was spinning. 

The cards, gifts, jokes…but then 50 revolutions of the sun will put anyone’s head in a spin!

So I’m spinning on a spinning planet, spinning around the sun, spinning around our solar system, spinning around the Milky Way galaxy, which is itself spinning (in spiral fashion) around a cluster of galaxies which—yep—are spinning around other inter-weaving clusters of galaxies!

Here’s the thing: Isn’t there something about circles, spirals and spinning that seems almost endemic to the human species? We’re either “going around in circles,” “meeting ourselves coming back,” or writing songs about how love “makes the world go round.”

So what’s so magnetically attractive about circles and moving circumnavigationally? (Hey, there’s a cool new word!) And another question: Are animals and plants equally beguiled by the circle motif? Who knows—but pull up a stool and let’s consider this human propensity to the “circle” thing…and more importantly: can we and do we need to get off the whirligig?

I recall a lovely send off remark a friend of mine used once on my departure from Ireland en route back to the States: She said, “God bless all your journeys.”

It was a singular blessing of intuitive and mystical depth. Our lifetimes truly are journeys within journeys; they are “circles of energy” we embark upon and that emanate from us and expand; we immerse ourselves in them; we reach some kind of midway point and then we return to our original start line having learned and grown from these “circles of experience” and forays in human consciousness.

The rubs are:

1) not making it all the way back to the start line—getting stuck somewhere along the way and then starting out on a new circle of experience in a loop fashion; and

2) making it all the way back but with insufficient knowledge or expansion of consciousness to make very much progress the next time around. Does that make sense?

The karma thing:

Firstly, karma is not some kind of divine affliction from a God who wants you to learn your lessons. God simply wants each of us to return to our original angelic start point; get off the grinding treadmill… and stay off it! 

The problem is, most of us arrive on the other side, carrying spiritual baggage from the life just lived; we sort some of it—but not all of it—out on this heavenly side, and then return in another incarnation, setting out on a new journey with the previous life’s baggage still weighing us down, or coloring our experience, so to speak.

Therefore, karma is simply the dust on our sandals of previous journeys, nothing more. We’re just, to varying degrees, going around in circles.

But don’t lose heart.

We are amazing multi-dimensional beings! We have the ability (quite effortlessly) to immerse ourselves in divine wisdom and light on a daily basis. It just takes a moment of quiet, reflective communion with this divine light within, to transmute anything we are experiencing into a moment of joy, healing, and transformation.

Sound fluffy? Not so. Practice perceiving everything in your life as being a circle—emotional experiences, material experiences, hopes and expectations, physical cycles (of age and health), and addictions. These are all cycles of energy.

Now try immersing them (daily) in the warmth of divine healing light. This is prayer at its heart center. Circles of experience will then conclude more rapidly and we will complete our “circles of experience” in a more comprehensive and enlightened way. We’re shedding a little more dust from our sandals.

Past life regression:

Disclosure: I have never done this but am considering it. Why?  My humble take on past life regressions is that it is a useful tool that may help me see the patterns and “circles of experience” that I have, to varying degrees, repeated over many lifetimes. I get to see how dust on my sandals has spilled over into a number of lifetimes; and to reflect on how I might bring some of these incomplete circles to completion. Make sense? So, my recommendation here is this: if you go there, tread cautiously and don’t overindulge in this useful tool.

Until our next yarn…

Enjoy the ride on the merry-go-round; hop from horse to zebra to hippo—heck, the whole menagerie! But don’t forget to get off, because around the corner in another amusement park, just out of vision, is another more splendid carousel.

And guess what?

(Shhhhh…) There’s no-one on it!

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Apprentice Editor: Jamie Khoo/Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Arthur Seranno/Pixoto