Grandmother Spider & the Web of Addiction

I’ve been scared of spiders most of my life.

What’s your relationship like with the 8-legged ones?

One day I heard a story that let me see them from a new perspective. Stories are like portals, openings to a new reality within ourselves. When we listen to a story we use our own imagination as the portal. When we have the story projected to us by a screen, like a Hollywood movie does, our own imagination is hijacked and disabled. The ability to image-in becomes weakened.

The nomadic people of Turtle Island (aka America) called spider “Grandmother” and said that she wove our universe together through her web. She was a symbol of an aspect of the Creator. The creature-teachers share qualities that remind us humans of our humanity – because with “all our brains” getting in the way, we have the tendency to forget the simplest and most beautiful things about ourselves.

Spider reminds us how we were born to create and in doing that, the beautiful strands of our creations will help build connections between us all. Whether it’s art or music or woodwork or cooking – I’m sure we can all relate to the uniting power of creativity. When we repeat a pattern of behaviour over and over, just like knitting grandmothers, we can master a skill and create something beautiful to share – just like a web!

This part of mind, with the ability to remember, repeat and eventually master, the pattern-maker, has unfortunately got lost and confused in the world psyche. It has applied its incredible skill to unhelpful habits and in doing so we cause ourselves and often those we love the most, untold harm. We call it ‘addiction’. It is just a behaviour that got attached to the wrong story. I will undoubtedly write more deeply on this at another time, for this issue compels me.

There is another web, one that we all know well – the one that is allowing you and I to share a connection right now. My hope is that the silvery strands of this part of the web will enrich your life in some way, remind you of your humanity if it has been forgotten, reconnect you to the power of your beating heart to create good in the world and that you will find something here that will nourish you.

Please don’t be as the fly stuck in someone else’s web. Move freely along the strands and then leave and be grateful to spider for this mirror creation of her magnificent talent – scary as she may seem to many of us – thank her for reminding you of what you may have forgotten and who you really are. Then get out there and do as she does.

After all you are a powerful, creative one-of-a-kind force for good.

What creation will you share with your world today?