it is only in the last few years/seconds that I am coming round to an understanding of the circular nature of time and love. On Monday, I show up to hold online space, bare-faced and without make up. This gesture, a symbolic expression of my willingness to be naked in my vulnerability whilst sharing my process of avoiding the fear of emotional pain the previous week. I lay bare and speak from the heart in ways perhaps deeper or closer to myself than I usually do.
Some of the group express how my sharing touches their hearts, shifting and softening the portals of possibility within which readies them for what is to come. The innerdance is potent and I find myself hurtling forward through the cosmos whilst flying backward. As we integrate, someone shares how they felt deeply connected to the collective whilst another shares their sense of the loss of children in the world as they tune into the grief experienced within many lifetimes. Someone speaks of having also avoided the last session due to the theme of love and death and is struck by the synchronicity, how we journeyed with the exact soundscape they had turned away from. Grief is with us, pulsing, tangible, and our wee collective spins a loving web for all to be held and witnessed.
Later on someone shares with me memories of a time when one of their children was in mortal danger and how earlier that day, another son was picking roses in the garden, cutting himself deeply with a thorn; infection had begun to spread and she was worried about him. During the soundscape, she reconnected with all of her fears. Circles within circles. I am struck by the symbolic image of the rose as the heart, that through a gesture of love to pick roses for his mum, he also wounded himself with the rose's protective thorns and now there was infection circulating through his body; within the innerdance, she could face her fears, feel her grief in safety and process that which had frozen in time as it circled back towards her for healing only she could minister.
I watch the movie Spaceman, everyone should. it is as though an innerdance journey is being projected through the tv. One of the main characters is a spider called Hanush. With his many mirroring eyes, he can see all of time. He is a cosmic spider travelling towards the Beginning whilst dying. I am thrilled by Hanush's presence for I too know the medicine of Spider. A few linear years ago, I am studying my Masters in somatic movement education and we are commencing a module in Embodied Spirituality. I am excited to begin a process of transformation, that is until I close my eyes and my limbs begin to grow big and dark. My eyes snap open and my heart is bursting from my chest with adrenalin. I close my eyes again and the metamorphosis recommences. How could it be that I am turning into a Spider? They terrify me, I don't want this darkness.
I avoid moving in process for a few weeks until the ticking clock of university deadlines grows louder. I have to do this. I ask a friend to bear witness as I move so she can be my loving anchor. My ritual is to welcome the past, the present, the future as I step into sacred space, close my eyes and wait for a movement impulse to arise. My arms and legs move with the qualities of Spider, my movements quicken as I spin and I begin to weave a web around myself. My friend shares that she sees a purple spider emerging, an ally with a smile on its face. Afterwards, I draw Spider, or rather Spider draws herself. As I sit with my paper and pastels, an energy moves me and an image is borne. This is the first time I have ever channelled in such a way. It is an experience I hold in time.
A year or three later, I am part of a workshop where we are to collage images of our soul. I print out a picture of Spider and notice details I had previously not seen. Within the image is a face of Grandmother Spider. My body stills in shock. She had drawn herself into being and she had been there this whole time.
I accept Spider as my process and surrender in cooperation to what is already arising. For the next 6 weeks Spider is everything and everywhere. With every authentic movement practice, Spider energy takes hold of my moving body. Strangers approach me in the street to speak of stories about spiders and clients talk about them too. One day, I am sitting on the bus and I overhear the person behind me exclaim with surprise that there is a spider on the back of my chair and it is moving up to my hair. I smile with a glowing satisfaction of the unfolding synchronicities.
My research requires me to face my fears; I begin to trace my phobia to early childhood, to attitudes towards Spider in my own family, within our culture and I discover many stories of what Spider symbolises . In some parts of the world she is known as Grandmother Spider, in others, the devouring mother. She spun the primordial alphabet and she is key to my healing.
As part of my project, I spin a web with wool around pillars which are positioned around a large floorspace, it takes about an hour and all my energy. My heart thuds, I am sweating and exhilarated as I make this enormous web; I muse that no wonder Spider needs 8 legs to do this work! It takes another day or two to receive memories which have laid dormant in my legs and I realise her medicine was to bring me to consciously embody my legs and the stories and secrets they hold.
Watching Hanush and his infinite wisdom brings me tenderly round to Spider medicine and I feel my process re-animate, as if each cell is dancing rhythmically, inviting me to join them on the cosmic dancefloor so we can re-sync, falling into step as the medicine of earlier times begins to radiate through me to where it is most needed. I am also lovingly reminded that the shape of our healing can unfold and form in ways which spike our adrenalin and evoke deeply held fears. Spider was not my preference yet she was exactly who and what I needed. It took courage to turn towards her and the wisdom she was inviting me to connect with.
The circularity of time and love is a gift and one which I receive whilst watching Spaceman. As I watch my own process with Spider projected from the tv screen into my internal world, this time, I know how to bear witness with love and freedom from fear.
Grandmother Spider is here. I am also wearing a ring I bought the night of my very first innerdance! Circles with circles...