I believe in and have experienced the non-physical dimension of reality in which conscious presences exist—such as spirit guides, angels, ancestors, and nature spirits. It is a living cosmos that can communicate with humans through intuition, symbols, dreams, and ritual, helping orient human lives toward greater wholeness and alignment with a deeper order.
These presences do not come with klieg lights and blaring trumpets. Their messages arrive on soft cat feet, subtle and gentle. So, I say a prayer each morning as I begin my day that I may notice and attend to these gentle messages to help guide my actions.
Life feels like a long apprenticeship in how to pay attention well. There are days when the mind scatters and the heart closes, when everything becomes an object to get through. And then there are moments when I allow something to interrupt and reclaim my attention to the messages being sent. Reclaiming my attention from the busyness of life and allowing myself to notice the guidance that is an answer to my prayer and let it matter, and to respond in a way that adds even a small measure of aliveness to the world.
The kind of attention that is required has a particular quality that feels like a gift. It is not the quick scanning attention used to get through a crowded inbox, nor the restless attention that hovers while secretly waiting for my turn to speak. It is slower and more porous, as if the edges of the self soften just enough to let another presence in. There is a lightness to this kind of attention as it is embedded in the flow of life.
This kind of attention reminds me of how a tiny spider attaches its threads to a moving stream. Some years ago, I happened to read “Deadly Silk: The Spider’s Web” by Richard Conniff in the August 2001 issue of National Geographic Magazine. I was riveted to read about a spider of the Wendilgarda genus no bigger than a freckle. Conniff describes it: “[It] strings a sort of tightrope across a stream and ‘glues’ its web to running water. . . [there were] 13 separate [web]lines down to the surface, like the leaders on a fisherman’s trotline. The riffle of the stream kept the end of each line skating back and forth in search of water striders.” This tiny creature attaches its silk thread to running water.
I wonder at the correlation between this tiny arachnid’s life and my own. To be attached to water suggests being rootless, ungrounded, even dangerous. Yet this little spider thrives on it; her very life depends on it. How can I embrace the ceaseless flow of doings, commitments, engagements, and general undertakings—the stream of my life—without being washed away by its strong currents? How may I stay “webbed” in the fullness of life and to be like the spider who, through her connection with the stream, leads us into the future, feeding her creativity and inspiring the dance of our lives?
I believe we can be instructed by this tiny spider to hear the guidance from the invisible river flow of the cosmos, and, like the tiny spider, may we cast our strings to catch the “water striders’” response from our guides and ancestors.
