Keit,
I do not know if what I have to communicate will be of help, but your questions pose an intresting topic for meditation. I do not believe you can find what I am about to communicate in any popular book, and I have none to recommend. Since your question is actually fundamental to any alchemical esoteric transformation, however, it poses a worthwhile focus for me.
What is coming through in this message is, therefore, a result of toning the symbol of the web. Any true template of transformation is multidimensional. There is no one explanation, just as there is no one song that belongs to a musical instrument. The value of these symbols is in that we can play the songs of our being upon them and benefit from their vibrations. They always tell us what we need to know if we are sincere. Thus, they are never used up, but always useful no matter where you are on the "path" if there even is such a concept.
This is more than knowledge, it is a toning like a mantra, although more abstract, aalthough no less real. This is how I view esoteric symbols.
Let's take the symbol home and apply it to ourselves. We are the spider. The spider is grounded with eight legs. The spider is manifest. The web is invisible yet it is like a musical instrument. The human energy body is like a web in that its "strands" can be toned through will, desire and intent.
It is also like a web in that it responds to external vibrations and patterns, like the crashing of a small insect in a spider-web alerts the proverbial spider to its presence.
For toning to be balanced and coherent it must come from the core of our being, and all aspects of who we are must be in agreement. Then the "plucking" of the strings comes from the center and penetrates from our web to the environmental web without distortion and discontinuity.
This symbol does not just refer to choices in the sense of right or wrong, but in toning the web of our bio-psychic presence (body/soul) in a centered manner, without internal conflict, fragmentation or polarization. This means that we need to be present in the web so the web is present for us.
The web's form has two modes of conducting energy. One is through the strands and the other is through the vibration of the strands in the surrounding medium. What moves through the strands is life-force. What vibrates is life-pattern. The force gives us the power of pattern propagation and enhances the experience of being alive, and the pattern gives us the manifest form of our "choices".
This involves a communion between the inner self and the world self through the two webs, that of the body/soul and that of the environment. The paths must be, therefore, cleared in two directions, outside in and inside out. Clearing them amounts to establishing personal presence as a tangible sensation that is of you, but more to the point, is you.
This means feeling the heart as an energy of presence and being open enough to feel that presence around the body. It means feeling an extension of energy around the body and through the body, and an extension of the core presence, which is the FEELING of self-identification. The feeling and self identification are one and the same.
The symbol of the web is a map and key, which may through pondering it with full imagination (involving primarily inner vision and feeling sense) and willingness to feel all inner blockages and "objections" to self-acceptance, coax the knowlege out of our true cellular manual of operations as it were. Words cannot communicate it, but sometimes we stumble on the state of presence as if by accident. Other times, it seems we must work for it. In any case, it can never be forced. When we feel we are forced or are forcing ourselves we shut down.
How can you describe something that transcends both feeling and sensation, and yet is certainly not "mental". It is very very physical and organic. Because we are conditioned to feel within certain parameters, to sense within certain parameters and be conscious in those limits, the synaesthesic combination of awareness, sensation and feeling is often frustratingly out of reach.
To add insult to injury, the seeker often encouters what amounts to psychic taboos against such developments.
To repeat: The biopsychic web is a tangible presence that can be felt with a sense that combines sensation and emotion and a deepening of awareness in a three dimensional tactility that fills the body and extends beyond it. The web is a sensory organ of deeper layers of reality, which include its extension into the environmental web. The web strands are multidimensional structures, and each "side" of a "strand" toned can open a gate to a different world- which is a loaded concept, (but that is way beyond the scope of this message).
To fully activate the biospychic web, you need to be willing to vibrate, and that means ultimate receptivity, sincerity and honesty without guilt. All that can be summed up in the concept of self acceptance. Self acceptance means just that, what is there is there and we permit ourself to be in the experience of ourself. That does not mean we are stuck with any pattern that is not healthy and does not feel right. It can change, but never by force, because force breeds tension. On the other hand, sometimes strong emotional expression is necessary, and it all depends on being in tune with your own particular needs.
The strands of the web are strong, but they are also tender and soft and even "sticky" because they hold on to vibrations (often to the point of being unable to release them). They are as sensitive as raw nerves in the beginning because in most they have been ravaged. The web must be owned as one owns the body. Our defensiveness makes such an opening of self acceptance and being one's own best support as vulnerability. And sometimes when the web awakens it feels as if we have bared our nerves and pulled them out of our body, although as I said that is the result of psychic trauma we need to face and heal.
I will not say any more, and I hope I did not confuse you. The point is I have held out a thread, which may or may not be compatible with your way of understanding, but it is a thread nevertheless.
That is the meaning of the second part of your message (the quote about the correct thread). Alchemical transformation is about developing creative capacity, but not in the conventional sense or at least not exclusively. Alchemical transformation, among other things, activates the innate factors of "thy will be done".
The metaphore shifts so we become weavers of new patterns, although I prefer the image of musically toning the web to bring those patterns about. Sometimes, however, new strands need to be grown in the personal and collective web domains, were wounding is prevalent.
Why is the path perilous (although traditionals are usually overly dramatic in my view)? Consider this: To open the inner web you take on personal issues, blocks, imprints and conditionings that keep you from a state of unified presence. Let's say you attain that state. When you tone the inner web of yourself you send vibrations into the environmental web.
Consider the environemntal web combines the webs of every other person on the planet and nature. Can you imagine the karma that you would be facing on transpersonal scales that "dwarfs" our little egos to a speck of dust? What is more, the boundary between personal and environmental web is an illusion. We are always connected, and can filter things out of surface awareness, but deeper layers are always within the collective continuum. Thus, when you open up, you not only open to yourself, but to the collective field as well.
This is not so dire as it sounds, and in fact the state of the world today is presenting front and center all the collective perils that overly structured and codified traditions treated as things to avoid instead of areas in need of courageous resolution.
The symbol simply provides a potentially functional perspective of true human presence in living relationship with a living environment. It challenges to realize three dimensional presence first and take it from there. What is going on in the collective psychic field is a web activation on a grand scale. The forces behind this are benign, but unrelenting because what has been repressed cannot be held down any longer.
Be trusting and know that if it does not seem right in your deepest sense of what is meaningful then do not do it (and I mean the deepest sense). On the other hand, keep at it because being present in and of the web is nothing less than being alive.
Unfortunately, the true depth of the topic is beyond this and any message, (it would be worthless if it was), but even stray web strands coming our way may show us something. That is my view, and nothing more.
Take care, EQ.
