There is a shape that keeps revealing itself to me in different ways: the spiral.
It shows up in nature in both obvious and subtle forms. The cochlea in the inner ear is spiral in form, translating sound into something we can perceive. Seashells hold a spiral shape as they grow and expand over time. Hurricanes move in spirals as they gather and release energy. Even the way certain plants unfurl and the growth of galaxies carry this same pattern. It appears again and again, not as a coincidence, but as a kind of underlying language of life.
In my Shamanic Reiki Master Teacher apprenticeship, the spiral is a central teaching. Each unit of study is named for an element: the earth spiral, the air spiral, the water spiral, and the fire spiral. Shamanic Reiki energy itself is understood to move in a spiral shape; not in a straight line, not in a fixed direction, but in a continuous, swirling unfolding.
What has been interesting is how this same shape also showed up in my Change Coach training with Dr. Amy Johnson. There, the spiral is not physical, but experiential. It is a way of describing the movement of insight and awareness.
There are moments when experience feels very clear. There is a sense of lightness and ease, and things are seen with a kind of simplicity. Thought is present, but it does not feel like it is running the show. There is a sense of spaciousness, and life feels open and direct.
And then, as the spiral continues to move, there are other moments where that clarity seems to fade. Experience feels heavier. Thought becomes more sticky and convincing. There is a stronger sense of being a separate “me” inside of experience, navigating something that feels more dense or uncertain. It can feel like something has been lost, like a previous insight is no longer accessible in the same way.
But nothing has actually been lost.
The spiral continues to move.
There is a return to clarity, and then a return to density. There is lightness and there is heaviness. There is seeing and there is forgetting. Instead of being a linear path where progress is measured by constant upward movement, the spiral offers a different understanding.
Nothing stays the same. Everything moves.
What feels grounding about this is not the idea that we are always ascending or improving, but the recognition that all of it belongs. The clearer moments and the more clouded moments are both part of the same movement. There is no need to get rid of one in order to experience the other. The spiral includes both.
When I look at my own life through this lens, it changes how I relate to my experience. It becomes less about trying to hold onto clarity and more about recognizing that clarity will come and go, just as the denser moments will come and go. There is something steady beneath the movement, something that is not dependent on the current phase of the spiral.
In that way, the spiral is not something to master or control. It is something to notice. Something to trust.
There is a quiet reassurance in seeing this pattern everywhere. In the natural world, in the body, in energy, and in human experience. It suggests that life is not chaotic in the way it can sometimes appear. There is a rhythm to it, a shape, a kind of intelligence in how things unfold.
The spiral does not require us to stay in one state. It does not ask for constant clarity or constant ease. It simply continues to move.
And perhaps the invitation is to notice where we are within that movement, without needing to make it mean something about who we are. To recognize that whether we are in a moment of clarity or a moment of confusion, we are still within the same spiral, still within the same life, still within the same movement.
There is something very simple and very grounding in that.
Isn't there?