The web

I’m tired of superficiality and everything that surrounds me. I am wrapped up in it. It feels like I’m caught in a spider’s web of material entanglement, binding me. My true self, my soul, is crying out for something greater, beyond this web that has trapped me. That is where my pain lies. I know if I follow the threads of this web, this tapestry of lines, it would lead me to an entrance, a way out.

It’s almost as if I have to enter it with mindfulness to be released from it. But most of us are trapped, fighting within the web, getting even more entangled. Yet, if we use the energy of the web, if we follow the lines with awareness without getting caught, we might find our release.

Have you ever watched an insect get caught in a spider’s web? It’s fascinating. At first, it struggles, wriggling and fighting to break free—fight or flight is all it knows. But eventually, there comes a point where the insect becomes still. I have witnessed insects slowly, though not always, detangling themselves from the web. Similarly, if I find stillness, I might slowly untangle myself from the web of life. Yet, sometimes, I feel the spider of time closing in on me, spinning its threads of karma that bind me.

Perhaps death is the necessary response to being bound. From the death of something, there comes rebirth. The webbing of karma doesn’t end in one life, but just as death may free an insect trapped in a web, the dying of an attachment can happen in this life. However, this may only occur once we are so entangled and caught up in the web of action and reaction that we finally surrender or relinquish the ego. This dying can take place while we are still living. Something within us dies. As Divinity says in the Gita, “I am time, the destroyer of everything.” Ultimately, time’s web will destroy our material identities.