When you meet the world through the inside, even the scary things can be glorious.
Letter Excerpt [Spider Deva] from 1996, re: September, 1995
I moved into an apt in Seattle. I was alone (my husband in Canada) and had no furniture moved in yet. The first night I walked into the living room and the largest black spider I have ever seen in my life was on the wall. Another inch, it would have been a tarantula. I stood against the opposite wall and hyperventilated.
Now, I used to have a genuine phobia of them. Even the word ‘spider’ spoken, when I knew it was coming, nearly stopped my heart. I conditioned myself out of this at age 18 as part of my determination to not be afraid of anything. Still, that didn’t mean I wanted to be around them, and I’d never seen one so huge. For all I knew it was deadly, I was not from that region. And I was sleeping on the floor!
I edged backward around the corner to the hall, to my room, and tucked a blanket under the door hoping it wouldn’t get me in there, and went to bed. I was too scared to go anywhere near it.
I woke up in the dark and had to pee REALLY bad. I got up and walked across the hall to the bathroom, turned on the light and walked in — and this gigantic spider was right in the middle of the bathroom floor! I almost fell backward out the door avoiding stepping on it. But I really had to go. 🙂 Right on the counter, I had a medium- sized, clear plastic food storage bowl. It was empty, but I’d had soapy water in it earlier while cleaning. I had to go SO bad, I grabbed the bowl, dropped it inverted over the spider (imprisoned it), and then just took a flying leap over it. 🙂 And I hopped over the bowl going back to bed.
It was the next morning sometime when I had the strangest, subtle sense. It kept going on “underneath” my regular level of consciousness, and I would ‘almost’ catch it. Then finally, after consciously noticing it, the next time it came, I understood it. I felt that I was SO frustrated. I was so hungry! I was so trapped! This horrible prison, I couldn’t escape! I was starting to feel desperate. Now this was just as the ‘Bewilderness’ years were ending for me, so perceptions of other lives, other realities, were not real unusual, but this didn’t feel like that. It felt… ‘small’. I don’t know how to describe it. If a small mouse whispered, it would ‘sound small’ compared to a person whispering; somehow, the senses had that equivalent, psychically.
Then I abruptly realized: It’s the spider! I “knew” it inside me.
I went into the bathroom and stared at it under its bowl. It was so damned … big. I squatted down next to the bowl, and for some reason, just poured out my heart to it. Told it how frightened I was of it, and just didn’t want spiders in my house. How its size so frightened me that I hadn’t even had the courage to just put it out. How sorry I was that my own stupid fear had caused me to behave so badly toward it. How I would put it outside and I hoped it would find food and survive okay.
I went and got a paper plate and slid it under the bowl, and carried it down three flights of stairs, and gently put it into the neighbor’s bushes.
The next day, I sat down for my morning meditation, and the minute I cleared my mind, WOW!! This amazing image “hit” me — incredibly visual — incredibly conceptual. It was one of these spiders, but the concept was clear: this was the ULTIMATE of its species. The “God- model,” like a spiritual blueprint.
It was a ‘she’ in concept. It was gigantic to my sense. And it pinged in my head on a white background, so its blackness was incredibly black. Its legs were glossy to the point of nearly blue. I could sense every single “hinge” of how its legs were made. And I felt a profound sense I had only felt associated with ‘God’ at that point — of GLORY. I sensed that it was the most amazing, perfect, well-designed, creation-of-god-consciousness imaginable. I was literally in AWE.
And the clear sense that came with that was, “Thank You.”
I came out of that abruptly, going, WHOA! That must have been a Deva! I’ve heard of them, but never met one!
I lived there for a year and a half. My neighbors complained of spiders; we were surrounded on 3 sides by trees that touched the buildings often. But I never saw another spider of any kind in that apartment. —
— Until not long before I moved out. I was sitting in my room (which was also my office) one night, and I was thinking about when I moved in, and that incident. I thought how novel a coincidence it was that I had never seen a spider in my house since. And I thought to myself, with an almost affection, “It would be okay now. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if there was a small spider somewhere in here. No big deal.”
The next morning, a spider crawled its way across the ceiling of my room while I worked. I eyed it curiously. It built a little web in each corner of the room. I was thinking how curious it was, it had showed up right after I’d consciously ‘given permission’.
Crawling around, it got close to over me on the ceiling, and it had some kind of pattern. I thought mildly, “I wish I could see it closer.” It DROPPED from the ceiling on a thread to right in front of my face in an instant — I fell over backward in my chair and yelped! I mean, INSTANT response to my thought! Scared the crap outta me! I was really amazed then. I looked at as it just hung there, spinning slowly around. It was yellow and black, striped. And I had to admit, that if one didn’t have a prejudice, you’d have to say it was beautiful, a very cool design.
Finally I thought, “Er, OK. I’ve seen it now!” And it instantly began crawling up its thread. I watched it with my eyes wide — it honestly seemed as if the spider world was responding to my every thought or something.
It went around to its webs regularly, looking for food. I felt a sense of affection about it that I know sounds weird, but I really did. When you remove all feeling of ‘threat/fear’ you find that you tend to feel affectionate about most everything, that is my experience.
One night, not long later, I had that subtle sense again.
Hungry. So hungry. …so hungry, so long. [A feeling we might translate like a sigh.] I’m going to die. [A feeling we might translate like, “Darn. Well, I guess it is inevitable, so I will accept it. Still, wish it weren’t so. Oh well.”] I knew the “translation” was my own. A sort of anthropomorphism you might say. But that didn’t make it any less legitimate.
The “small psychic whisper” felt exactly like the spider had when I moved in, I recognized the feel. I looked up at the spider in the corner — and knew I was picking up and “translating to my human concepts” its “small feelings”.
I realized, the room is screened, the door is often closed, there are no bugs in here — it has been starving since it arrived. I watched it for awhile.
I felt such…. COMPASSION for it, it is difficult to describe.
Those who’ve read my ‘Rainbow of Soul’ chapter in Bewilderness know that I consider myself to be a “conglomerate” of energy — identity is a very complex subject.
I had a thought and inclination I’d never had before. All at once, I understood the concept of you are what you eat, and I understood why I often felt that eating peppers (which I think are wonderful and beautiful) was ‘honoring’ them.
I looked at the spider and I whispered, “Come with me. Be part of me. Be part of a human, experience life with me. I’d be honored to have your energy join me.” I sincerely meant it. And I went to bed.
The next morning when I woke up, as I got up, I saw the spider was dead. Its body was curled up in the web where it had been the night before.
I understood.
I never figured anybody else would, though.