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David Epstein: Welcome to Growing Wisdom. I am here today with Colin Garland and Colin, you are the designer of this, what you were telling me is there a traditional labyrinth here in Westwood or at the Center at Westwood, Massachusetts. Unbelievable, I have never seen one of these I confess. First, tell me a little bit about the history of one of these.

Garland Colin: They go back sometimes couple of 3000 years. They became very popular in the 15-1600’s. Christian churches kind of use them. This labyrinth particular design is based on the Chartres’ Cathedral in France. I also wanted to combine the philosophies. So we have Tibetan Chortens behind me with prayer wheels. We also have a Native American setups of each of the walls that you find in the four directions are different colors representing the four directions of the earth and it is not a maze.

There is only one path to get to the middle. It is used mostly as a meditation. It has a very large crystal in the center that I brought back from Tibet in 1989. I was actually smuggling some monks at the Tibet were going to be executed and came across this cave with these beautiful crystals. I want back in the fall and brought one back.

If you were to follow this entire pathway, it takes some time. It is almost a half of kilometer to go in and back out again or within a 100 foot circle. It will take you maybe half an hour to one hour depending on how slow you want to go. For all fact to purposes today I think we need to just…

David Epstein: We will just kind of walk over this…

Garland Colin: Over this amount and we can go check out the center so you got to see what it looks like.

David Epstein: All right, great!

Garland Colin: So here we have a piece of granite that I brought from an old town in Central Massachusetts. This was harvested in the 1700’s and then around on the ground here, we have a kind of a lotus style thing with white stone from New Hunter and black stone from India. And then we have the crystal that I brought back from Tibet.

David Epstein: How long did it take you to do this whole thing?

Garland Colin: It took us, I had myself and then three other helpers and it took us almost a year.

David Epstein: Well Colin, I appreciate you letting us be a part of this. It is absolutely fantastic from the prayer wheels to the labyrinth itself. The crystal that you brought back and beautiful work, I am definitely ode. I appreciate. Thank you very much.

Garland Colin: Sure thank you.

David Epstein: So come back every week for growing wisdom and our videos. You will never know who you are going to meet here at growingwisdom.com.

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