I have a slightly fragile morning meditation habit — reignited thanks to daily TT routine which I’ve tried to continue with. This morning was threatened with derailment of a mundane kind — Hubby being noisily up and about and an impending grocery delivery to the house to fit around… Not to mention me feeling tired and a little reluctant.

But I got up, made myself a hot lemon and padded into the still dark lounge, where I lit a candle and settled down under a blanket. It was pretty nice sitting there for 20 minutes. I can’t glorify it as meditation. “Sitting practice”, as my first teacher had it, sounds contrived but is closer the truth. Is this like the yoga teacher who describes us as “making shapes”, I wonder? I always thought he was just using accessible language, but it’s also a salutary reminder that being in an āsana is a whole different mind-body game than just making a physical shape!

Anyway, I digress. As my brain did over and over during my sitting practice.

Afterwards once the chimes from my timer had gone off, I enjoyed sitting in the half light, sipping my now perfect-temperature hot lemon, soaking in the comforting light from the candle. Feeling peaceful, more whole, more ready for the day. No grand heights of blissful samādhi, just a simple tranquility. And that’s enough.

And then something made me look round the room.

And through the twilight I saw a huge spider on the wall beside me. Horror! And what’s worse once I’d jumped away from it with a lightning physical reflex that woke up my morning body in an instant, I looked up and saw a second spider on the ceiling right above me. Presumably they’d been there the whole time I’d been sitting. Aargh!

What to do? I am so arachnophobic, it’s embarrassing! But Hubby’s left for work already. Could I possibly ask the grocery delivery man to come in and despatch them for me? They won’t fit under a glass. They are too huge. And I am too afraid to get that close…

Oh, ahiṃsā, you have complicated my life! I can’t just squish them now and be done with it. I actually don’t even want to now for, reasons I can’t begin to explain. So I’ll have to leave them there and hope Hubby can deal with them nicely when he gets home. And pray that they don’t wander off into the bedroom or somewhere worse…

Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if the morning meditation routine has any use. All I know is that if I hadn’t meditated today, my spider-related freak-out would have been much greater and violence would have been done. As it is I’m feeling almost OK with sharing my space with these 8-legged beasties. So that’s something. Samādhi can come another day. Or not.