The (severed) dedalus-mind and the (relational) labyrinth-body
First of all we need to breathe. Long and deep.
And again. No rush, just breathing here.
We can not relate to this article exclusively with a dedalus-mind, but we all have a very active one. We’ve been told to brew it in isolation for to be accepted we need to compete and always win. So, we get lost inside our thoughts and needs. We get caught in the paradox of being “logical,” forever imprisoned inside barriers that sever us from deep relating and connecting, surrendering in responsibility.
Dedalus was a Greek architect who built the Minotaur enclosure. The mythic Minotaur, half-man/half-beast, symbolizes our wild mind, the potent instinctual cognition that fires us up. The feral root of primal connection. Raw and savage; accordingly, it does not respond to reason or logic. Therefore, an ordered and civilized society, such as the Greek one, had to lock him up. Because of his ravaging strength, just four walls wouldn’t do it, so Dedalus planned and built an impossible escape. Unclimbable high walls, full of corners, blocks, and obstacles, paths that go nowhere. A frustrating experience, to say the least, a place full of dead-end possibilities where life extinguishes itself. Civilization was now safe from the wild, primal energy, as the Minotaur would be forever lost in this prison. But then again, so would we.
In incarcerating our instinctual self, we lost part of who we are; we forgot the body, tragically neglecting life itself. The relatively unknown and ancient complement of the dedalus-mind, is the labyrinth-body — a deep-rooted and radical nucleus of being: the one tethered to place and time. The primal body of response and dialogue, the one that relates and feels. The bones of imagination and the blood of belonging.
Archeological findings took notice of old labyrinth rock carvings — sacred peregrinations to and from the center. The labyrinth is a ceremonial path made not to imprison, but to release, relate, remember, and find. The whole body-self can recover redemption in awareness of its diverse cognition, instinctual, intuition, or logic. It may appear to be a linear route to a severed dedalus-mind, but it is a multidimensional way-finding, redeeming the subtleties and the many voices embracing us, integrating and activating life.
When feeling lost or disconnected, enter a labyrinth, for it will show you the way(s), not by severing and imprisoning you in a hall of logical mirrors, but by opening the sored body again in essential connection.
Now let all the air you’ve been holding out. Gently.
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[Disclaimer: all these words and weaved concepts are birthed through my lived, biased, and always limited perception of things, not supposing to bring any absolute truth.]
By Sofia Batalha
Mammal, author, woman-mother, question weaver and dismantling global-colonial-technological-capitalism one day at a time. Awkward prose-poet with no grammatical knowledge. Pilgrim through inner and outer landscapes, remembering ancient earth practices, in radical presence, active listening, ecopsychology, art, ecstasy, and writing. Author of seven books, editor of the free online magazine, Wind and Water, Re-member the Bones Podcast, and Beyond the Sea Conversations — all in Portuguese.
More information: sofiabatalha.com
