Labyrinths have only one way.
Mazes are to get lost in them, and consequently, to live in them.
The problem is, as long as you just stand outside some black hole labeled ENTER HERE you haven't got any way to guess what type of thing is waiting for you. You may come for a meditative walk through a nice and regular labyrinth, and oops!, you're lost in a maze. Or, conversely, you may guess it's just the same ole thing all over inside, you've seen it all before, so you turn away and for years you'll wonder if you missed some real turning point in your life.
But the confusion is quite common - there's plenty of languages that make no distiction at all. So the original labyrinth, the Cretan one the Minotaur was kept in, was really a maze (and of course, it must have been amazing, too). A short recounting of the myth may be helpful here:
The Layrinth was built to keep a monster in - the monster Pasiphae had born in consequence of an extramarital affair with a bull. (Perhaps it is interesting here that she was the daughter in law of Europa, who is also famous for her sexual encounter with a bull - during the recent bullishness on Europe we may be surprised what monsters are being fathered.) Nevertheless there seems to have been some obligation recognized towards the monster, the Minotaur (uh, why?) - therefore, once a year, a group of young people from Athens (which had lost a war with Crete) was sent in, supposedly to be eaten by the Minotaur. We know the rest of the story, how Ariadne gave away the trick how to find one's way around in the labyrinth (joining the other impressively clever young woman who turned against her native country, Medea, and being just as badly rewarded for her courage in the end), and how Theseus slew the Minotaur, etc.
Looks like labyrinths, or rather mazes, were places no one in his or her right mind would go - unless there'd be an urgent necessity, a hidden treasure, or the like to be found inside the maze.
The later kind of labyrinths obviously has another purpose and function. There's no way one can get lost in it - one may, however, lose one's patience, or even lose one's mind in the constant turnabouts they present. They are designed to turn a short way, the way to the center, into a long one - one way, no aberrations, no alternatives.
One way? Well, we seem to have some kind of misgivings about that image, having heard so many proposals for The One Way in the past... - Seems like the Pythagoreans were the first who said "Two ways!" to each other, instead of "Good morning!" or anything like that, and of course they were extra sure they knew the truth and all of it, forever. For them it was all in numbers, lush green whole numbers, dark green rational numbers, and that was all there was to it. When one of them produced proof that the square root of two could by no means be a rational number (could not be expressed as a fraction of p/q - remember, they told you about this in school), they killed him forthwith for heresy.
But maybe there is something like 'one way', predestined for each and every one of us? Of course, it would hold plenty of surprises while we run our course. We haven't got a bird's eye view, no map, no thread. We're prone to run against walls (no decent lighting, I'd say), get hopeless and desperate, perhaps sulk for extended periods when we'd just have to follow the turn that way takes. Have we got an idea where it leads? Uh, huh, it's leading downward, warm air's coming up from below, and what's all that foul smell from? Could we then turn back? Basically, there's nothing to keep us from turning back, from rushing outside into the daylight... yes, but.
On the other hand, if we picture ourselves on the way to a desirable center, we might take some comfort from understanding our way set in a labyrinth. It's got to be full of surprises, full of sharp turns, it's just the way it was designed ... Well, why? To wean us from simplistic notions and preconceived ideas? To get us full circle several times, until we can say of almost every point in the labyrinth 'we've been here, too'?
