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Was recently asked the question: what is the goal of your spiritual path? My pat answer is 'enlightenment'. Which is wholly unsatisfying to me these days. It is like a sound byte I've regurgitated from some Saturday morning talk show. What does it mean? When I thought about it a bit more I refined it into more practical terms. I want to heal the old pains I still hold onto. I want to be more open and loving and aware. I want to release those things that hinder loving kindness and inhibit greater awareness. Awareness is the most tangible thing I could point to in my pursuit of a spiritual path. I want to expand my awareness and simultaneously pinpoint and anchor it deep within. And then a strong mental image blared in my head. A spiral path along a toroidal sphere. As above, so below I've always been obsessed with spirals. When viewed from above, or head on, they look like a circle. When viewed from outside, they are ascending or descending, depending on the perspective. In my new understanding, I see my path as this spiral along a toroidal sphere. The sphere represents my awareness and as I transverse it, it expands and contracts in a natural cycle. Oscillating energy outward and upward, then inward and down. Like waves, as they grow when they arrive at the point of highest extension/yang, then duality is expressed and the weight of the wave, the force of its excessive yang tumbles into its opposite/yin and the wave softens and yields to the conditions around it striking balance. A drawn bow settles in balance, this is one expression of the energy of Tao. My own path follows a natural cycle. Periods of growth (learning, seeking), upward and outward and then a natural retreat, into solitude and introspection. Discovery, adaption and synthesis leading to greater awareness, which triggers in me a desire to reach out again with this new awareness to look at all I saw before with new eyes and before I know it, I'm back, expanding outward, reaching out and exploring again. Although it can appear to be redundant and repetitive, I have not found this to be the case. Each trip around the sphere results in another aspect of awareness. The work is cumulative. One analogy I like is the ball. If I experience a ping pong size awareness and I read a book or have a conversation, I will have a ping pong ball sized understanding. If I experience a planet sized awareness... Much like working through emotional problems, it can feel like we are repeating the same cycles over again and simply reliving the past. But I have found similarly, that this is also cumulative, at least in the context of actual spiritual introspection and work. If you are really pursuing to experience the source of your suffering, you will peel layers of the built up injury over time. Much like an onion is peeled. It will often feel like you've done this so many times before, why am I still here? Am I making no progress? etc... In my experience I have found that I was not simply spinning in place, but peeling the many layers that built up over time. I have experienced in a couple areas of my life, peeling the onion to its core and finding nothing. The story I was carrying, I realized after peeling enough away, was a story that no longer applied to me. Dropping that emotional baggage was then as easy as dropping a heavy bag at the airport. My path is beautifully spiraled. Cyclical and cumulative, leading to a more natural, open and loving awareness of life. Think it might be time for me to ask my teacher to introduce me to Bagua. edit: add pics