[A beautiful share from last Wednesday's Awakin Circle in Santa Clara. --Anuj]

Hi, my name is Jo. I'm a barefoot gal, as well. This is my first time here, at an Awakin Circle. Listening to all of you and the space here, I felt inspired to just share a little moment that happened this morning -- with a client in a professional capacity.

I was sitting with this man who was suffering from anxiety and suddenly he looked behind me and he said, "Do you realize there's a spider behind you?" At first, I thought he was talking in a metaphor or something. But then he said, "No, really there's a big spider behind you." Very carefully, I looked behind me and indeed there was a spider.

It was just this very beautiful, intimate moment between this gentleman and myself.

I asked, "Well, what do you think we should do?" He said, "Usually, I would just kill it." To which I responded, "I don't really like killing spiders." We just had this semi-awkward shared moment of "not-sure-what-to-do".



All of sudden, he got up, took the spider, and put it on a pillow. Then, he walked out of this wellness center, and in fact, had to walk it all the way out of this building -- with this pillow that had a spider on top of it! And then he walked back with the pillow.

I naturally just said to him, "That was a really sweet moment. It kind of told me a little bit about you." For him to take this little spider all the way out and liberate it and put it on the grass and come back ... to not worry about looking silly walking with a pillow ... it just touched me.

Through that simple gesture, his anxiety naturally reduced, I was touched, and the space between us organically deepened. Perhaps it's true, as they say, it is in serving others (even spiders!) that we reconnect with ourselves.