The Temple can appear as a grand open space full of light or it can appear as an intimate room appointed for personal contemplation and prayer. In reality it is both and more. It is a spiritual place for seekers to reconnect with the All That Is. To do so it is a welcoming place of warm stone that is open in the center, but with colonnades down the sides creating individual areas for study. Each person, as they enter the Temple, are guided by a combination of factors including mind-set, personal need, perception skills and personal relationship with the Temple to enter it in such a way as to have the most advantageous experience. Therefore your first few trips to the Temple may lead you to an intimate experience or you may be lead to walk down its middle experiencing its grandeur and expansiveness without focusing on any one detail. Each of these experiences is magnificent and wonderful in its own way and something to be explored as you become more familiar and comfortable with the Temple. For example, each area or niche has carvings, wall paintings, glyphs, and symbols depicting a portion of the Universe. The floors may have mosaics, bas-relief carvings, or inlay depicting the main theme of the niche or how these items interrelate. The ceiling maintains ancient inscriptions of the beginnings of all things which in themselves are sentient and move from writing to pictures to subtle shades of light in their own rhythm.
One thing to note here is that the Temple of Life is not exclusive of death. I have heard it said that death is the opposite of life, but I believe this to be a misunderstanding. If one believes in opposites, then death is the opposite of birth. There is no opposite of life. Therefore extinction and invention, endings and beginnings are all depicted in the Temple of Life. In fact, how they are interwoven and interrelated is shown there in all their intricacy. This is an integral part of the Temple. Life is a cooperative process that requires everything to be in it wholeheartedly for the entire process, from birth to death to birth again. Something’s ending provides life for something else, and their ending makes space and resources for another to be born. In Native American cultures we see life-like Grandmother Spider’s web. Each strand is interwoven and necessary and each of us is a strand in the complexity of this life. Each of us adds to the web and life would be poorer without us. But the web serves a purpose of its own and is constantly changing unraveling, being rewoven, becoming. Therefore trying to stop change, keep things from becoming or force things back into old ways only causes struggle and hardship on possibly all levels of being. Remember what has been but don’t allow it to prevent you from living in your now or becoming all that you can be. Death is a part of the process. It is impossible for us to know all the possibilities of life so enjoy the unfolding wonder.