If you’re lucky, the universe offers you signs to guide your highest path. When we can listen to the synchronicities around us, our natural path opens before us.
Sometimes these lessons are so perfectly direct and profound, it’s beyond belief. A case is point is the Tale of the Two Enlightened Spiders, who brilliantly and generously gave their lives for my benefit, and perhaps even for yours.
A few years ago, I became deeply exhausted and was diagnosed with total adrenal failure. My home business was so successful that I could hardly carry on to manage its many intricate parts. I was stressed all the time, and to make matters worse I was in the middle of menopause. One morning I hurriedly slipped on my shoes and dashed into my garage shop where 12 employees were already at work. As I stepped up into the workshop I felt an intense and sharp pain on the bottom of my foot. Nothing to worry about. But soon, the ache spread out, and within an hour it was so swollen I couldn’t walk. I did my due diligence, went to see my doctor, and it was crystal clear that I had plantar fasciitis. Since I was over 50, she suggested this was the first sign of aging. Resigned to my fate, I called a friend for help. We both took the day off to go a show store to buy me the BEST quality special corrective shoes to wear for the rest of my life. The throbbing was so intense I had to get around on crutches. It was a pathetic and PAINFUL!
The entire following week I was still in terrible agony. I hobbled over to see my brilliant Five-Elements acupuncturist, who was treating me for adrenal fatigue. As she reached down to needle my foot, she suddenly stopped. She said “You know, this looks suspiciously like a spider bite right on your Kidney-1 (K1) point. Are you sure it’s plantar fasciitis?”
Huh? I was amazed, but I saw it there clear as day, a tiny, inflamed point. A wee hole on the bottom of my foot where a spider had left its last mark as I smashed my foot into it inside my shoe. My acupuncturist changed her session plan and instead treated me for a severe allergic reaction to a spider bite on the K-1 point.
I did not know at the time that the Kidney-1 point is located in the center of the bottom of the foot, a slight depression at the metatarsal. It turns out K-1 is the most important energy point to bring life force from Earth into the body. It unifies the Earth-Mother to Father-Sky through the spinal column of the body. K-1 unifies the primary polarities of Life, Yin and Yang, Water and Fire. This is the critical point that grounds and integrates the body to Source. It connects a human being to the Earth energy, through the energetic column that connects Earth to the Galactic center of the Milky Way.
Chinese medicine, as I learned later, holds that treating K-1 calms the spirit, bringing excesses from the head down to nourish the “Jing”, the primordial ancestral energy of life.
After the acupuncture session, suddenly I could walk normally! Surprise! I gave back my crutches, thanked my lucky stars, and plantar fasciitis became a distant memory.
During that period of time, I had rented a tiny, isolated cabin in the woods in order to find calm, to relax, and find my deeper self on weekends. It was helping and my meditation practice of over 30 years had served me well. I just wanted to be alone in the forest to reharmonize.
One Sunday morning I was sitting alone quietly in my cabin in a very deep and peaceful meditation. When it was finished I opened my eyes, and out of the corner of my eyes I saw a slight movement on the carpet. At that very moment, a tiny spider instantly stopped as if my attention had met its own awareness. I knew we were connected.
At that time, I was still very afraid of spiders due to my recent experience of a painful spider bite and suffering for weeks. What was a spider doing in MY HOME?
I rose from my meditation with the clear intention to eliminate the spider from my home. This spider was a tiny, cute thing, and he understood. He started to run, tearing across the carpet with all its might, flailing eight legs desperately toward the edge of the floor by the wall, where it might find safety. But it was very small, and its little legs could not carry it fast enough. I approached the spider in a few quick steps. We both felt the connection as I lifted my foot to crush it.
But what happened next remains etched in my memory forever. As I lifted my foot to smash the spider, I suddenly felt the wish to hesitate, but it was too late to stop the force. In that split second as my foot was coming down, I saw the spider give up, legs spread out, and collapse with exhaustion, knowing that death was imminent. As he collapsed, I saw a tiny spark of light shoot up about three feet above the floor, and then disappear. Oh dear! I wanted to stop my huge curmudgeon foot from coming down, but it was too late, and BANG! The spider’s body was smashed to bits. His remains lay dead and lifeless. And the real spider had escaped in the flash!
I was surprised, shocked, dismayed beyond words. I pondered over the spark of light. Did I really see that? What was it? I still wonder about it. That young spider was so wise. He knew life was good, and life was worth protecting. But when it was time to give it up to join the universal oneness, he did so willingly, beautifully.
As he jumped into the infinite, he taught me a huge lesson. In that one milli-second the spider showed me he was smarter than I. He possessed within him the wisdom of nature, the oneness of the entire universe. And he was willing to give up the dimension of the body when it was his time. As a human I felt cruel, stupid. We are thick creatures, selfish, and unconnected. We study intellectual philosophies for years, yet we still have no idea how to die, let alone how to live in harmony. Yet this tiny creature did all this effortlessly with no training.
Now, many years later whenever I see a spider, I naturally assume it is a close relative of one of the two spiders that gave their lives for my teaching. So, we have conversations. I talk to them and reassure them they are safe in my home. And since that day I have not killed a living creature (Well, almost).
How could it be a coincidence that a spider could find the K-1 acupuncture point to activate my connection to Earth, to heal my adrenal failure, balance menopause, and to bring me in harmony with Source, at the perfect time in my life?
Eventually, I went on to study Chinese medicine, Qigong, and Taichi. I sold my stressful business in order to do healing work that I love. Spiders don’t need to study all these things. They embody the wisdom naturally.
Maybe these two spiders gave their lives so that I could wake up. The moral of the story is:
“Never underestimate the power of synchronicities in Nature and everyday life. The more we recognize these particular moments as guides, the more wondrous and precious our life becomes.”
Thanks for listening!
Srijana
Srijana, aka Jane Barthelemy is a medical intuitive, author, and healer. She has practiced Tibetan Buddhist meditation for over five decades, residing in the Rudrananda Ashram in the USA for 35 years. She practices craniosacral therapy, Acunect, and BodyTalk – an infusion of Chinese, and Ayurvedic wisdom. She is trained in Qigong, Taichi, Daoist sexuality, and Kundalini activation. Her medical Qigong training is with Mantak Chia, Khamto Lee, Daniel Villasenor, Zhongxian Wu, Dr. Ka’imi Pilipovich, Franco Mescola, Richard Leirer, and Lam Kam Chueng. She has her BS in Italian Opera and MBA in financial management. Her two paradigm-changing cookbooks show how to build health with unprocessed foods. Her upcoming books include: “Heal Your Past Lives”, and “Buddha Speaks – Channeled Passages from the Master”. She is on the faculty of NewEarth University and LearnDesk. Her websites are FiveSeasonsMedicine.com and JanesHealthyKitchen.com. Srijana lives in Bali with her Bhutanese husband, Lama D.