Sometimes our worries can spin around in our brains like spider webs. Except that spider webs are much more methodically produced by the small creatures who spin them. In this episode you'll hear how meditation can help us transform our anxious thoughts into images of beauty.
How can meditation help us transform the worries that spin in our minds into images of beauty?
How do we transform our worries into more peaceful abiding?
How do spiders build their webs?
What are sundogs?
Hello and welcome to Uplifted. My name is Meg Luther Lindholm. And I welcome you on this journey from adversity towards new insights for a better life. Today’s step on the journey is called Spider webs.
Some mornings I wake up very early and I just can’t fall back asleep. Lying awake I feel consumed by worries that spin and spiral in my brain. It feels like I’m spinning a big spider web with each worry a different strand. How is my friend near London coping with her illness? How will I find the parts I need to rebuild my daughter’s bed? Will I make any kind of decent money this year? And how is my aging father who I haven’t seen in over a year? These thoughts feel more like sharp rocks flying through my mind rather than strands of a spider web.
In fact, my worries are really nothing like a spider web. A spider web is a methodically created structure. Built by tiny creatures that seem endowed by nature with physics degrees. They hang upside down and let air and gravity guide their way from one hitching post to the next. Their majestic constructions are traps for prey, homes and works of art. What odd and utterly fascinating talents have evolved within spiders that allow them to live and work in this way.
Although, many of us see spider webs as a nuisance. We knock them off attic beams and closet doors with brooms when we find them. Yet when light shimmers through their gossamer threads their webs can appear magical. It’s interesting how we can view something as a nuisance – something to be gotten rid of like an unpleasant thought or a worry. Or we can view the same thing as a work of art. Wouldn’t it be nice to see life’s messy tangle of thoughts more like the process of creating a work of art? How nice it would be if we could view our worries as building blocks towards something sturdy, positive useful and perhaps even beautiful like a spider web.
But now returning to the early morning situation with me lying in bed with my worries. I finally get up - and in that simple act the strength of my worries begins to subside. I wash my face and put water on for coffee. Then I sit down to meditate. I feel my breath going in and out. Gentle. I feel my heart beating very faintly and my brain begins to transition from stress and worry to a more peaceful feeling.
I travel within my mind takes to a recent walk when I had the pleasure of seeing Sundogs in the early morning frozen light. A sundog, if you don’t haven’t seen one is like a crystalized rainbow that extends out from the side of the sun in very cold weather. The colors of the Sundog I saw were brilliant hues of red, orange and magenta.
While meditating I begin to see my worries in these different colors, each worry turning into a radiant hue of orange, blue, yellow or red. The colors swirl together into a beautiful mix, like paints coming together in a finger painting or like colors that fly together when dropped onto paper that spins on a wheel.
Now my worries are transformed into a work of beauty. Like the spider web which is a death trap for prey but also a work of art when its gossamer threads are lit up by the sun at a low angle. Transformation doesn’t take away our problems. But there are different ways to see what is there. Like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Take wing. Take heart. Take part in this effort to diminish life’s pain in whatever ways work for you. Like meditation. Or talking with a good friend. Try to do more of whatever gives you joy and brings you from the dark of night into the light of day.
Thank you for joining me on this step of the Uplifted journey. I’m Meg Luther Lindholm. You can find this podcast at Upliftedpodcast.com or wherever you find your podcasts. You can also subscribe to my blog on Substack. You’ll find a link on the Uplifted website. And if you like what you hear I would so appreciate your sharing it. Until next time, take care of yourself and each other.