What a spider taught me about myself. [Wise Wednesdays]

What actually happens when you’re afraid?

Years ago, before I took a career leap in 2016, I came home to find a large spider just outside my room. I was meditating and engaged in a lot of inner-work and coaching at the time which enhanced perception. The 5 seconds that followed showed me as much about the workings of my mind-body as ten meditation retreats.

 In life, under pressure, we often move from one thing to the next and live in a continuous stream of thought. We never notice the gaps, the blips, and what experience is made of.

In a flash, the spider appeared in my mind as an image followed by a perception of something dark that felt menacing. Then a very quick succession of thoughts reassuring me it was all fine and how I would deal with it with a jam jar. Then a wave of energy moved up my body mobilising my muscles and culminating in a thrust from my throat - a scream. All in less than 5 seconds. 

I was also aware of being aware of this. A quiet, stable background knowing - wide, steady, and free of turbulence.

The wave passed, the scream released the tension, the spider was moved gently (something I couldn’t have dreamt of earlier in my life) and I got on with my evening. No analysis paralysis, no gripping anxiety, no frantic activity.

This experience confronted me with how everything I experience - including my “self” - is constructed moment-to-moment from other elements. In Buddhism, it’s described as a chain reaction made of 5 elements - sensory input, perception, feeling, volitional reaction and awareness. Whatever reality or ‘self’ we experience is like a mental trick that helps us move through the world and not break down or reboot every minute. It’s useful for survival as a ‘controlled hallucination’. Cognitive science and philosophy increasingly support this view. 

What is the voice whispering in your head? Photo outside Emirates Stadium, London.

And why is this relevant to anything?

Imagine how much time we spend avoiding the flash of fear - dancing around it, procrastinating for days and years of stuckness. How it translates into overanalysing and excessive planning, when most of it is just an attempt to control fear - an endless froth of thinking and frozen tension on top of a living ocean that wants to move and breathe. 

Now imagine what it’s like for your mind to be free of the proliferation of thought (not all thinking, just its proliferation) and for your body to be free of tension (the stuck waves of fear that could move in a flash but that get stuck from our attempt to control it). You get a glimpse of this freedom when you meditate, see a sunset, or focus on something with loving attention. There’s infinite openness in every moment if we infuse experience with awareness.

This marriage of awareness and experience is what the spider encounter gifted - and the steady, open awareness available in any experience of life. Not long after, my career changed dramatically and fear waves came and went without stopping the change or getting trapped in my body.

This is what stayed:

• Fear is a perception-reaction loop with a particular flavour. It doesn’t last. Seeing it clearly shortens the waves and let’s them move through.

• Who you think you are is a useful tool but it’s not what you really are - that’s more stable, deeper, and wider.

• The clear, open awareness that sees the nature of experience is the ultimate stable ground in life and the most reliable resource.

When I write, create group spaces or coach, I’m not trying to teach. I’m pointing and looking together at what daily life and past history cover up but is essential to living and leading well. It’s not spiritual but it touches what’s beyond the surface.

Poet John Fuller asks this week in The Spectator - a UK political magazine: “Where was the I when nature thought me up?” 

Don’t get stuck in tense thinking waves. Look at how you are operating - as the ocean.

Have a great week,

Amina

P.S. I’m co-creating a relational awareness session for coaches with Renee Ryerson — details below if you're an Integral Coaching Canada graduate.

Here's Renee's description, of the event which I think is useful in itself if you're a coach or someone who supports others and needs to maintain presence and boundaries. Her artwork in the poster below also feels raw and real but held in steady awareness, like the event's intention.

================

Amina Aitsi-Selmi and I are excited to offer a 90-minute Relateful for Coaches session on Friday, June 19, 1pm Eastern / 7pm Central Europe, as part of the Coaches Corner offerings. We’d love to have you join us!

As coaches, we can sometimes feel pressure for our clients to have breakthroughs, transformations, or big shifts. In that pressure, it can become easy to subtly move away from the relationship itself and lean toward strategy, fixing, or trying to create an outcome.

Relateful has helped us slow down and rediscover the transformational power of authentic connection. The practice cultivates the ability to notice what is happening internally and relationally in real time so we can bring that awareness into conversation with honesty, care, and curiosity.

For coaches, this can open up a different quality of coaching relationship: deeper trust, greater attunement, clearer intuition, and questions that emerge naturally from genuine presence.

Rather than relying solely on frameworks or techniques, coaches learn to include themselves more fully in the relational field while staying grounded and responsive to the client.

Join us for a 90-minute experiential introduction to Relateful. We’ll share a brief orientation to the practice and invite you to explore Relateful directly.

This is experiential. Come prepared to participate.