Just moments ago I noticed a fluttering on the desk as I was checking up on our profile on LinkedIn (a website offering networking services to professionals) and saw a spider crawling from monitor to keyboard. Now while preservation of life is a goal of mine being a healer and a bit of a pacifist, I detest spiders (and certain other creepy crawlies, like centipedes, you know the poisonous kind...)
My general rule used to be "live and let live", that was until I woke one day with a nasty bite on my side and couldn't figure out what it was and only a week and a half later figured out it was a spider bite (including a fang still stuck in my skin). After that point I re-hashed my theories on what to do when such things invade my home. Now it goes along the mindset that if they are not bothering me and won't (too far away), or if I can shoo them carefully outside I will. But they are not overly welcome in my home. It may not be very nice, but in the interest of my health and not getting bitten again I find it's necessary.
While I squashed the little thing, it did cause me to reflect on the messages of Spider (and also means that a reference to it will be entered into the Guild's Book of Shadows today as well!) So all in all Spider served it's purpose I believe, even if it resulted in an untimely demise. Spiders in general are weavers, they spin their own silk and build homes, nests, and even traps from it. They have many offspring (which symbolizes a proliferance of their influence), have 8 legs (alluding to numerological references including industriousness, and "getting things done", connection, networking, etc) among other things. The message of course that stands out most to me is that of connections. With their webs they are able to provide homes and hunting grounds, and while to us they may seem frail and fragile proportionally speaking the webs are very strong. But day in and day out at times they must rebuild or repair these webs, they are ever constantly reviving and keeping their connections and there is something to be learned from that I say.
In this technological day and age we too can form connections (and need to) but ours are somewhat removed from the personal structure of that of Spider. While the internet, phones, and other electronic technology allow us to communicate easily and quickly over large distances with people all over the world - there is a certain level of impersonal-ness to the communication. We don't necessarily view the voice over the phone or text from the email as coming from a "real, live person" so much as an entity that we are acquainted with in some fashion. I have commented on the joys and banes of technology before and thusly I feel they are this: (joy) while they allow greater communication with people one otherwise would likely not have come across if you were restricted to merely in person meetings, (bane) they take out the "personal" factor in those connections many times. They also cause us to be lazy about dealing with people. It's that much easy to put off a phone call or an email since either will take seconds or mere moments to complete, whereas an in person meeting takes more orchestration and time. While the benefits and ease of communication are absolutely wonderful, the quality of it is at times lacking.
So what does this all mean? Why am I sitting here going on about it? Perhaps it's time to take a step back or perhaps forward, and re-evaluate your connections. Who are you connected with? Why? Can you strengthen this connection? Should you? Re-ascertain those connections that you do not want or that may not be good for you and release them. Take the time to put effort into those connections that you do want to keep, perhaps even spend a bit more time getting to know or working with them.
In other news...
- We'll be resuming the management of our Alchemy Reiki course - finalizing some written information about them and re-vamping the distance course some.
- We've set our business hours for both healing work & intuitive consultation on LivePerson.
- And we'll be putting in more work to our 2 charity projects - the Pink Pride Project & our Multi-Faith Prayer Shawl Circle!