A Labyrinth is not a Maze and a Maze is not a Labyrinth. That took me years to work out. A Maze is a puzzle to be solved, it is designed to confuse you and get you lost.A Labyrinth has a single continuous path that leads to the centre and the same path leading back out again. A Maze has multiple paths that branch off and will not necessarily lead to the centre. A Labyrinth looks like a Maze, but it is not, A Labyrinth has no dead ends, there is only one path and, while it does have twists and turns, you cannot get lost. As long as you keep going, you will get to the centre eventually and back out again.

At Talliston, the Labyrinth is a key feature. The photo above is of a 20,000 year old standing stone in the front garden of Talliston and the Labyrinth is etched upon the stone. It’s message here is about magic and the pursuit of dreams and adventures. In the book of Talliston, the story is of 13 year old Joe who travels through portals in the Labyrinth, journeying to times and places where magic is disappearing from the world. There is also a strong environmental message here in that magical places really are disappearing from our world and quite fast it would seem. The story is of an ordinary boy on an extraordinary journey and Talliston is an ordinary house turned into something quite extraordinary. John has taken what life was presenting him with and turned it on his head. John has walked the path of the labyrinth within this house and invites others to walk their own path here too.

Labyrinths are thousands of years old. They are not religious but they are used by many religions as a tool to connect with God or whoever you might wish to connect with, they can be used as a form of pilgrimage if you like. The labyrinth is designed to release your state of stress and also to receive the wisdom along the path, the idea being that you return with new knowledge. Along the journey of the labyrinth, we arrive at seemingly random moments that serve to form our story and as we travel further inwards towards the centre of the Labyrinth, our worlds become infinitely more humble. Along the route we can connect with ourselves in a transformational way, explore a sense of wonder and connect with whatever you perceive might be the divine. Pretty cool and you can see why people have been doing this for millennia.

There is a strong thing within the Labyrinth about finding your own path, getting some clarity and sorting out intentions, finding peace. You know, all of the biggies. As an archetype, a Labyrinth is something that transcends, it is where two worlds can flow together. There is the visible and the invisible world. The finite and the infinite and, as there is a clear path, there is no guesswork involved. It is like life but much safer. It is a shape that is found abundantly in nature and it is a design that is often used to symbolise change, movement and growth. I have always wondered about the similarity between the labyrinth and the fingerprint. I guess, as a crossover, as with our fingerprints being unique, so are our hopes, dreams and fears that we bring to our individual journey within the Labyrinth of our lives. The rings of a tree look like our fingerprints, which look like a Labyrinth, which looks like our brains. Well, the photos I have seen of brains look like Labyrinths anyway. I have never seen an actual brain. I don’t know whether that has some deep and meaningful meaning but, visually, it is a thing at least. I guess, as with a Labyrinth, we only have one brain, it is our own unique brain and you can always be certain of being on the right path as it is the only path to be on. There is a whole thing about there being a bony labyrinth within our temporal bone and that contains loads of dna but I only have the fascination of that subject, rather than actual knowledge, to back that up. You can see how quickly you can disappear down the rabbit hole in this house…

Staying at Talliston becomes its very own Labyrinth, a surreal, extraordinary but safe space to question and wait to see the sort of answers that come up. It has made me wonder about how the quality of our lives can be directly connected to the quality of the questions and curiosity that we might be asking of the world that surrounds us. It can be so easy to focus on that which we see, which really is a very fraction of that which is actually there. It can be easy to get caught up in the daily humdrum (which is actually quite extraordinary) and also focusing on that which we do not have rather than what we do have. The journey around the Labyrinth is also about letting go, about not having attachment to unnecessary ‘stuff’. We have all been, at some point in our lives, in that place of ‘when I get a house/car/llama/computer/decent haircut I will be able to do X, Y and Z…’ but having an attachment to something that may, or may not, be on its way to us, only serves to perpetuate that feeling of not having it. Does that make sense?

There is also a large element of release being that of being able to let go of what might be expected of us. We are all categorised in one way or another. There is a huge stratification of worth going on in human behaviour on so many levels that I don’t even know where to begin with that one. It is not just one blog’s worth of writing but several lifetimes of musing to get your head around the stratification of worth – monetary, class, gender, race, age etc etc – and we all end up internalising that on some level or other, it is practically unavoidable. The story of Talliston and of Joe, the 13 year old boy, bravely finding his way through his own Labyrinth of stories, talks of the courage in being yourself and how the portals open when you find your own shoes to walk in. Joe learns of shedding the narrative that has been painted on him from the outside, the ‘rules’ that he has been taught to live by and of letting go of expectations of being anyone other than himself.

Being true to yourself can feel like a lonely old journey but trying to please others is lonelier still. And empty. There is huge benefit to walking our own Labyrinth and becoming tolerant of ourselves and, as such, freeing ourselves up to become tolerant of others. Accepting that we are all different is the price that we pay to be unique. Over the past year, being stuck with our own thoughts, has been a bit of a Labyrinth journey and, personally, I have regularly encountered the beast of the Minotaur kept below ground in the Labyrinth. I am hoping that Talliston is the path back out again, holding the chalice of hope aloft in the fresh, spring air. Joe, (in the book), meets some extraordinary people along his Labyrinth journey and I shall be forever grateful for the amazing people who pop up along my Labyrinth journey too. Some right proper special folk in there and more than a little sprinkling of magic.

In the words of Laozi (very wise, very ancient) – “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”