I would always like to leave aside religious matters, however, sometimes I find myself with topics that I must dabble in it since it has a very close relationship with walking, as is this case of the KAABA Mosque.
I would not wish to touch the subject of religions in an abstract way, much less talk about the Mohammedan religion, Muslim, Islam, when referring to the KAABA. However, I consider that I must ask myself the following very specific question: Why walk around a sacred center?
KAABA
Answering this question invited me to investigate everything related to this millenary practice of Islam.
Let’s see how far I have been able to investigate, trying to circumscribe myself to the aspects of walking.
The KAABA is a Mosque located in Mecca, where Muslims (Mohammedans, followers of Islam) walk 7 times around the religious center of KAABA. Both men and women walk together, giving those 7 laps to the center of the KAABA.
Let’s go in parts. Let’s look at walking around. To make laps, in a certain way to a central point, either psychologically or physically, is with the purpose of centering the spirit or thought and to be able to channel the will towards a transformation of the consciousness (Future Post WALKING AND CIRCUMAMBULATION). Not necessarily the turns must be performed in a physical way, but can also be carried out in a mentalized way, that is, keeping the contemplation on an image, preferably concentric and symmetrical, such as the yantras. The yantra is used in tantric yoga practices, being a mechanism where images are used for meditation, contemplation and transformation of consciousness. (Post WALK AND READ IN LOUD VOICE). The yantra uses the mandala that the unconscious manifests the spiritual state of the individual, and is not necessarily a religious representation or a specific divinity. Mandala in Sanskrit means Circle. The mandala represents the unity of the personality of the individual. These images that are generated in the unconscious are always referred to the most essential parts of the being and their expression is always manifested around a center, and all the other figures that conform it have a significant central correspondence.
These configurations that are generated around a center and that are all arranged concentrically in a radial and symmetrical way, make up the totality of the mandala, which should be the subject of a deep analysis for the people who generate them. Their function and knowledge, in this case of the KAABA, can serve us as a representation of these unconscious images that during the 7 turns that are made around the sacred center has its interpretation within Islam as a meditation (inner search and inquiry of the divinity that we all have inside), a contemplation (to perceive our mystical inclinations in order to seek contact with divinity, and thus, to seek reconciliation of our contradictions in the self – as mentioned by C. G. Jung – and to have contact with our archaic origins), and a transformation (the mandala itself is the symbol that results from the practice that during millennia periodic and habitual actions were carried out and recorded in the unconscious and that make contact with the archetypes, for the transformation of the personality of the individual that evokes them).
MANDALA
As far as I can see, the geometric center of the mandala corresponds to the sacred center of the KAABA. The configuration of the image of the mandala responds to the process of walking the 7 laps around the sacred center of the KAABA. (I have not yet been able to elucidate why the number of laps around the KAABA is 7).
The mandala is an unconscious spiritual construction, it is the confession made by the unconscious of each individual looking for a communication with his conscious. An expression towards the conscience but also looking for a response-reaction from it. The effects sought by the unconscious through this manifestation are diverse: reconciliation, renewal, resignation, submission (subordination), restraint, exaltation, care, lamentation, satisfaction, displeasure, punishment, etc.
All mandalas are an irrefutable sign of the unity – harmony or disharmony – of the spiritual unity of the human being. The personality – or the human soul, according to C. G. Jung – is the entity that the mandala seeks to protect.
In each mandala there is a spiritual figure at the center -not necessarily of a religious type- that is supposed to be valued or at least contemplated with admiration and devotion. Abstract images can also be observed centrally. The person who perceives a mandala feels included within it and must seek -consciously or unconsciously- the conjunction of his individual unconscious with his consciousness; that is to say, to transcend his disordered or spiritually unbalanced situation.
In the Sacred Mosque, the walkers themselves voluntarily generate their mandala and thus perform the 3 previous invocations (meditation, contemplation and transformation), achieving a confession of the unconscious, automatically, creating a natural mystical spiritual state through which they reach communication with their divinity. The mandala is the symbolic regeneration of archaic practices and ceremonies that in ancient times were habitual actions of the human being. In a practical way we could say that the Mohammedans have renounced to the “voluntary waiting” of the work of the unconscious to obtain their mandalic messages, creating and constructing their mandalas, using their own bodies by voluntarily putting them to walk, for their tracing, but at the same time, using them as connections and mechanisms for meditation, contemplation and transformation of the personality, and communication with their divinity. We pointed out in Post WALKING AND ITS SYMBOLISM that “Walking is the symbolic mechanism that has the meaning of reconforming and integrating the character and personality of the individual.”
The three activities of meditation, contemplation and transformation, together with the communication with the divinity, that are developed during this Islamic practice, at the same time that its believers walk around the KAABA, have a similarity with the activities of walking, reading, writing and drawing of the WALK-RWD System. I am not saying that the System is an analogy of this millenary practice, or anything like that, but simply that there is a similarity in terms of certain mental and spiritual effects and results.
What are these functional relationships with our WALK-RWD System?
In principle, the fundamental activity is walking and this places us in a determinant positive attitude, which makes us think that this exercise, as we have already mentioned, opens the mind, the soul and the spirit towards other dimensions of the human being that cannot be achieved if we are in a stationary (static) position. Future Post WALKING: KING OF EXERCISES.
Of course there is not a strict correspondence between the other three activities that are developed, however, in a general way the functional results of our System oscillate towards introspection, reflection, thought, imagination, as well as abstraction, concentration, recollection, observation, and also towards harmonious communication with the interiority of being, contacting with other diverse mental and spiritual strata, as well as making emotional and empathic contact with other entities and individuals of the society and environment that surrounds us.
In this analogical scenario I would like to underline other aspects that I have already mentioned in several Posts that reinforce this similarity of the WALK-RWD System precisely with the mental and spiritual effects.
In post LISTENING TO OUR BODY WHILE WALKING we asked ourselves: For what causes and reasons does our body communicate? Apart from its direct and expressive physical language, our body has a symbolic body language, which we must know and understand, being always ready to “listen” to what it is communicating to us.
In general, we can say that body language is universal, however, each person has some features that differentiate them in a particular way.
This symbolic language through which the human body communicates is a reliable interpreter of our interiority, our feelings, emotions, thoughts and how we feel at certain moments, both physically and mentally.
The different forms, postures and movements that our body performs are a direct response and translation of who we are, how we feel, think and why we behave in front of other people and the physical and social environment that has surrounded us. It communicates with us through its “cryptosomatic” language, so let us try to understand this symbolic language.
We have also pointed out that the individual unconscious is a user of the physical body. In that way I underlined that: The healthy, acceptable and balanced expression of our organism, both physical and mental, is generated when our conscious part is equanimous; tranquility is fundamental. Our unconscious is a permanent user of the body; it communicates through it -and other means- using it to send its messages -more or less encrypted- so that they are captured and attended by the conscience. Both positive and negative messages.
Most probably, this form of communication are the mandalas that are gestated by the walking of the physical body, programmed by the individual unconscious.
Likewise, in Post THE SYMMETRY OF THE BODY, ITS BALANCE AND WALKING, I mention the following: “…we can differentiate the physical-anatomical axes from the almathic or hermetic ones, such as those we observe in the conceptualization of the CHAKRAS. The latter irrigate the spiritual body along an axis that is also vertical, but of the almathic, not somatic, type. The CHAKRAS are maintained on the same symmetrical anatomical-physiological (organic, somatic) axis. Each of the symmetrical and proportionate parts, which make up the human body can capture the reality of the world in a specific and different way to its corresponding symmetrical one, and the joint work of the couple, by the simultaneous harmonic perception and its dynamic-energetic assimilation, allows us to have a better complete and unique representation of the external reality”. The axis of the CHAKRAS is of the hermetic-somatic type (esoteric, sibylline), which orients us to move in an unconscious way but which has a symbolic configuration that should be translated, by bringing together these constitutive aspects of the human being.
Also in Post HARMONY OF THE BODY WITH THE MIND we commented this form of unconscious construction, because the WALK-RWD System looks for and achieves a harmony in general (mind, body, spirit and soul), situation that can be extrapolated to the consolidation of the personality and the conscience. This is part of the communication that the unconscious achieves with the consciousness to harmonize the displacement of the body with the mental and spiritual function of the human being.
Finally, in Post WALKING AND ITS SYMBOLISM, we have pointed out that walking in itself has a symbolism that can be equated with mandalas; that is, the walking of the being can be performed and surely is performed -unconsciously- by tracing mandalas. I repeat: “Walking is the symbolic mechanism whose meaning is to reconform and integrate the character and personality of the individual”.
Let’s put our body to walk to let it freely build its mandala, in a similar way to the circumambulation performed in the KAABA.