I Dream Of Spiders

Last night, I had “one of those” dreams.  It wasn’t a recurring dream, but the visual and emotional tones were familiar.  It had an ‘epic’ feel about it – stretched out in time and storyline.  There was a certain greyness about it, something macabre even, a bit reminiscent of the movie The Mist.

Firstly, there were spiders.  Lots of them.  I am fearful of spiders.  I was standing in a kind of courtyard in a house.  From where I was, I could see the top of the trees in front of the house, beyond the roof.  Somebody was talking to me.  This person was what I call The Wise One in one of these dreams – usually faceless, gender undefinable, a voice of wisdom imparting a deep and often cryptic message.  I am going to refer to a ‘he’.  He said, “Take a close look at the trees,” although I received it as a fully-formed concept, not in words.

As my vision zoomed into one of the trees, I saw that there were thousands of spiders leaping out of it in all directions.  I shuddered and uttered something like, “Ooooohhhh…..,” feeling a dread growing in me as I understood the path I had to go through.  This was a shamanic initiation dream.

Many years ago, a psychic psychotherapist (yes, they do exist) told me that dreaming of spiders is a sign of an impending spiritual awakening.  The spider symbolises spiritual power.  They tend to invoke fear and repulse in us because we are ultimately fearful of our own power.

I’ve had a phobia of spiders for as long as I can remember.  In recent years, I have worked through many aspects of this fear and now the intensity of that fear has lessened a lot, though I’m still more fearful of them than the average person.

In the dream, my test was to go out the front door and walk (run!) between the trees until I got to a safe ground.  I felt unusually brave and willing in the dream as I did not even argue with The Wise One.  As I stepped out the front door, I manifested a green umbrella for protection.  “No,” he said, and the umbrella disappeared.  I tried again.  Stepping out the door, I manifested a silver raincoat.  “Take it off,” he said, and the coat disappeared.  I wondered how many chances I had left.

From the side, two sets of hands reached out to me and dragged me out of the house.  Just as I started to panic, I saw that while it was raining big brown spiders all around me, none of them actually touched me.  They seemed to fall onto me and then disappeared at about six inches from contact with me, as if I was wearing an invisible spider-vaporising suit.

I had never seen or come so close to so many spiders before.  Yet I began to feel less and less fearful.  My gait began to slow to a relaxed stroll.  Raining spiders?  No big deal.  My face relaxed into a smile, and I felt myself expanding.  Eventually, the hands that had been gripping my arms pulled away.

I turned back to see that the house was now way behind me, with the trees of leaping spiders dotting along the front of it.  From where I stood, the house looked like a prison guarded by the spiders.  I was out of the prison, and a cooling sensation breezed through me, like a sigh of relief.

The ground seemed softer yet firmer without the harshness on my soles.  My feet sprang from every step, making me feel lighter and more mobile.  It didn’t register in me that I had passed the test until I woke up from the dream.

After my daily movement and meditation practice, I applied the principle of presence, power and passion to decipher my dream.

Presence

With my energetic presence firmly anchored in my body, I took stock of what my truth was around the dream.

The house represented my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies – the place where I resided.  I was trapped in a body programmed with fear – it had become my prison.  I had ventured out of my prison of fear into freedom.

The trees represented my foundation, which drew sustenance from a centralised source, the earth.  I had failed to spot the spiders at first, suggesting that I was unaware of my true spiritual power.

The leaping movement of the spiders suggested aliveness, the ripeness for action.  That my foundation was churning out more and more spiders indicated an abundant supply of whatever powers were behind my fears.

Power

What aspects of my power did I tap into to deal with the task?

Manifesting a green umbrella.  Putting something green over my head signified an attempt to neutralise my spiritual power – blocking the flow of energy from my crown chakra (spiritual energy center) with a grounding energy (green).  This suggests a strong connection to what grounds me but that I might have been too focused on the physical plane.  A willingness to open up more spiritually seems to be called for.

Manifesting a silver raincoat.  Attempting to protect myself by putting up a strong auric shield.  This demonstrated that I am skilled at protecting myself psychically from my environment but because I was told that this action was redundant, perhaps I might have been too protective of myself.

Changing the outcome of an expected fear.  I had expected to be horrified when the spiders hit me but they ‘vaporised’ before touching me.  I was prepared to face my fear full-on when I stepped out the door.  That willingness and trust of the unknown had saved me from a horrifying experience which was no longer necessary in my learning.

Passion

What movement of energies could I relate to in myself?

The most active movement was the leaping spiders.  I am fearful of spiders, so there’s a lot of movement in my fear – i.e. my fear is ripe to burst to reveal its power.  When we break down our fears, we can extract from them our power.  My power is waiting to burst forth to be reclaimed.

As I made my journey from the courtyard to outside the house, my fear transformed into exhiliration.  I held this exhiliration until my being expanded.  This seems to be the great lesson – transforming fear into exhiliration and in the process changing my perception of fear.

The springiness/bounciness of my steps symbolised mobility.  Movements in my outer reality mirroring movements within me.  I am to reinforce this mirroring of outer-inner movements to create movement in general – the more movements within and without, the more I open up to living with Passion running through me.