Brushing my teeth in the downstairs bathroom I notice something odd in the mirror over the sink. At first I think it is a floater in my eye but since it is on the left side of the mirror near the wall I turn left out of curiosity. To my surprise and delight a jumping spider, black with two thin white stripes on its back, is hanging down on a silken thread from the door frame. I watch as the spider climbs back up the thread a few inches. I say “hello little one, thank you for joining me this morning”. I feel the something new its presence brings in the moment. I turn back to finish brushing my teeth. Looking back a moment later to check on the spider’s progress it has disappeared. A little voice in me asks “how could it move so fast?” I grab the towel off the rack on my left. As I start to dry the sink I see something black in the sink. I look closer, a spider leg. Damn. I lift the towel and there is the lifeless body of the spider. I begin to feel pain in my heart at my thoughtless unconscious act. An accident yes but my tiny inner voice had warned me. I wash the spider down the drain. “What are you doing now?” the inner voice says. My heart feels my mistakes. I hold my hands to my chest in prayer for this tiny being which didn’t need to die at my hands. Two days later I continue to feel sad and heartsick over what happened. Yes, over a spider.
I want the reader to know why this experience touches me so much. This particular spider had been attempting to make contact with me for over a week, hanging down on a thread from the wall over the small round table I work on with my computer, going up and down the thread in front of me, hovering at eye level, it couldn’t be missed. Sometimes it would jump around on the floor around my feet. I ignored its dance, smiling at its antics but not taking the movements seriously. Still it persisted. While this was going on at night I was dreaming new and different dreams, new patterns, water in many, I felt different somehow. I was also attempting to make deeper connection with an old man, a steward or green man of the earth, water and air who had been in my dreams. But I missed the connection between the two streams.
So I have turned to write about this death, the missed weaving of threads and how gathering them now brings me to something new.
Surfing the internet one comes across numerous videos of animals saving other animals, humans saving animals and animals saving or helping humans. Are these stories anomalous, a figment of my or our wishful imagination in a time of ecological degradation of the Earth, maybe something that makes one feel better about accelerating animal deaths. Yet we have video evidence and a lot anecdotal stories from friends and others of these kinds of events. Should I dismiss all of this as nonsense?
Rather it’s my sense we are witnessing, like my experiences with the spider and these videos, a change in how I and others filter information. Let me explain.
The information (sensory and intellectual) a human being allows as “real” is largely based on the prevailing belief system/story of the society one lives in. From ancient Greece and Rome, to Christian medievalism, the Renaissance and finally in our Enlightenment based scientific modernism, each of these civilizations had a set of beliefs with filters determining what information was acceptable and what wasn’t, what was fact and truth and what was “fake”, a lie or just not to be believed. It is also obvious from the historical record that we have changed our beliefs over time, but how? For the most part these beliefs and the associated filters are lived mainly unconsciously by the society’s participants allowing and promoting collective behavior. It is only when the problems faced by a society cannot be solved by the existing belief system that its biases and filters become visible. Because the belief system isn’t able to solve its problems faith in the truth of the story or stories underpinning the society’s beliefs starts to wane. This leads to a crisis of meaning as the accepted beliefs provided the narrative with which to live a meaningful life at least in a collective sense.
Our civilization is using more and more money, technology and planning in attempts to solve the growing number of issues our society faces. And yet despite our efforts we have growing social inequality, the sixth great extinction of animals and plants, destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems and potentially catastrophic climate change. Is it as some people say we simply haven’t had the right application of reason, money and technology to fix the problems? I would suggest it is becoming clearer day by day the “right” solutions make the problems worse and as faith is lost why we have soaring rates of depression, anxiety and suicide. Our own souls do get what is happening to us and the world even if many of those affected do not understand what is at the root of their despair.
As meaning is lost human beings struggle to find something else, something new to give them some sense of why they are alive, of how to live. This experience brings me back full circle to the animals, to the natural world and our relationship to it, to the filters we have had in place in our modern world. As they fall away or are discarded by loss an individual is more able to begin to experiencing new ways of seeing the world, internalize them and discover something previously rejected as real.
Rather than seeing the natural world as a clockwork machine, soulless, and strictly instinctive as our present beliefs suggest one begins to find the natural world has a soul, is alive, vibrant and responds to our gestures. We start seeing videos, hear or read stories that express a different way of relating to the Earth and its abundant, beautiful and complex life.
However, some people perhaps more fearful than others harden their beliefs seeing the old belief system as the way through impending collapse. They have faith in old solutions like technology, war, and economic growth, even as collapse continues. My soul is not drawn to the old solutions but to life based on a deeper relationship to the natural world. How does one open to something new, to new ways of seeing, how do we remove or at least start to change the filters of our previous ways of seeing life? Here’s a short story of how this happened to me.
The day after I killed the spider in the sink I’m riding my bike on some trails in the river valley. I’m still feeling the resonance of my actions. After about 30 minutes I stop to drink water on a pedestrian walkway over an Edmonton freeway. Taking my water bottle out of the pannier I notice a reddish brown beetle resting on the lip of the pannier opening. My intuition says this little insect has been travelling with me for a while. A long time ago I would have blown or brushed the beetle off of my pannier. Remembering the spider experience I recognize this little beetle might have a desire to be where it is, being more conscious and aware of its own needs than I could ever be. As I look at the beetle I notice warm love in my heart, a valuing of its life, its being, then my heart says being with is enough. I drink my water and we cycle on. I don’t know when the beetle left me.
Having this experience left me open to other happenings around me. Riding towards home on the same trip I cycle out from under the Quesnel Bridge spanning the river here. I hear ravens calling in excited tones. Looking back over my right shoulder I see three ravens up on a steep grassy side hill beside the bridge on ramp. The wind is strong, side-by-side they are leaping up in the air gradually floating down to the ground. I slow down to watch. Over and over they leap up. I have seen crows do this very thing in strong wind near the river on a few occasions. My intuition and what I see (different filter) tells me they are having fun playing with the wind. I finish the ride home feeling different, more settled, excited too. Yes, more alive.
I killed a spider that wanted my attention, I let a beetle be, maybe to rest or take a ride, who knows for sure, and I see ravens playing in the wind. Is this anthropomorphism? Or by taking off my filters, maybe wrenched off by killing the spider, being observant, open hearted, seeing clearly, noticing and relating to inner resonances, I experience something new, find deeper meaning and soulful relationship with the natural world. New experiences of truth, beauty and love.
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