Have you ever stood at the bottom of one of those old city buildings that has, at its center, a spiral staircase that goes all the way from the lobby up to the top floor?

Well, those buildings look a lot like our lives. With each step we climb, we gain greater and greater perspective. But buildings have a finite number of steps and floors. In the case of life, the staircase is infinite. The staircase never ends.

When we discover a pattern, a repetitive cycle in our lives, our first impulse is to try to break it. But our patterns are there for a reason. They’re meant to teach us something important. Eventually, what we really want is to get to a place of appreciating our patterns — because regardless of how we perceive it in the moment, everything that happens in our life is a catalyst for change and growth. When you feel as if you’ve tripped and fallen on the same exact step over and over again — whether that step is financial turmoil, or heartbreak, or disappointment, or lust — you are, in fact, on a new and different step, on a higher flight of stairs, each and every time.

With every breath, you are making your way up that infinite staircase. With each step, we are able to recognize and appreciate that we are never passing through the same moment twice. So within a few breaths of where you fell over, you are already fresh and new. You’re constantly in a new place of awareness and experience.

You’ll never meet the same step twice.

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“According to ancient philosophy life is not a cycle  but a spiral. Every life lesson that has ever been presented to you will come back again, until you learn it. And the stakes each time will be higher. Whatever you have learned will bear greater fruit. Whatever you failed to learn will bear harsher consequences.”  Marianne Williamson

From Bernard Corrigan: “Life is a Spiral”:

Life is linear. We are born, we grow, and we die. We think sequentially, with logical reasoning: one-two-three-four. This is masculine, straight line (think penis), linear thinking. We move ahead or we have a setback. Two steps forward, one step back, as the saying goes.

Life is circular. The seasons of the earth go around and around. We think intuitively, knowing something “for no reason”. This is feminine, circular (think womb), global thinking. What goes around comes around, as the saying goes.

Life Is A Spiral: Linear and Circular

We live sequentially and intuitively. We are masculine (“I’ll think about it.”) and feminine (“What’s my sense of it?”). The spiral moves linearly through time – masculine, and around through cycles – feminine. The spiral model incorporates both the straight line forward movement of the masculine energy with the circular, all encompassing stillness of the feminine energy.

So What Does This Mean For Us?

+  “As above, so below.” From the largest to the smallest, we are a spiral. Macrocosmically the galaxy in which we live and are a part of, our Milky Way, is a spiral. Microcosmically we are a spiral on the most fundamental level of our existence: our DNA, a double helix spiral.

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