IIn a previous blog I have suggested that the best description of the movement of our spiritual lives is that of a spiral, which combines linear and circular movement. We go around and around, nt in a mysterious way the Spirit keeps us in the line that leads to our salvation.
But there are many modes in which the Spirit can lead us through our spirals, They will differ in mode and experience, will adapt to different periods of our lives, and be combined in unique ways. The Spirit is unpredictable.
The standard and traditional spiral image is of an upward progression towards God: indeed in biblical times heaven was pictured as above, hell as below. This leads to the traditional image of the helix, or in more imaged terms, that of the mountain climb: not a direct, linear journey, but one in which as we gradually inch towards the top we must go around many directly impassable obstacles.