If fortune favors the brave, then the universe protects the truth.
We’ve all heard of the Path of Least Resistance, but my personal power is buried in the path I resist most. Writing (would rather scrub a toilet first!). Difficult conversations (there’s no intimacy without them). Taxes and laundry (Muggling grounds my romantic, delusional nature).
It’s that time of the month where I nerd out over a beloved myth.
I read Theseus and the Minotaur. The story goes like this: As payment for the death of his son, King Minos of Crete demands Athens pay tribute by sacrificing seven young men and women every nine years.
He feeds them to the Minotaur, a man with the head of a bull, who resides in the center of a perilous Labyrinth that would rack up your therapy bills for how nightmarish it is.
In comes our young hero Theseus. He volunteers to brave the Labyrinth and slay the Minotaur. His courage catches the eye of Princess Ariadne. She gifts him a ball of string, so he can follow the thread back and find his way home.
Long story short—he slays the Minotaur, follows the thread out of the Labyrinth, and liberates Athens. We all have a Minotaur within. A little monster buried in a dark Labyrinth, who wreaks havoc and suffering in our lives the more we ignore him.
Life rewards courage. When we choose to enter the Labyrinth of our own darkness willingly, rather than Ostriching until we are ambushed by the universe, we are gifted helpers.
Theseus survived through the cleverness of Ariadne—a feminine, nurturing force that protected him. Sometimes that force is our own anima, and sometimes it is a friend or mentor.
My theory is the ball of thread is our willingness to be truthful with ourselves. Facing reality, however ugly it may be, doesn’t shatter us—it offers a path back home after we face our monster.
What is intuition, if not the practice of following a thread to our soul’s truth?
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end with Theseus’s heroics. He ditches Ariadne on an island right after she saves his life. To Athens, he is a hero, to Ariadne, he is her villain.
Wholeness doesn’t derive from slaying one Minotaur, but continually conversing with each monster that enters our Labyrinth.
Modern courage is not picking up a sword, but facing our internal monsters, and returning home on the thread of our own self-honesty, so we don’t contribute to the cycle of suffering in the world.
Xx,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Scribe
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