Tag Archives: praying mantis

The Killer Inside Me

I am about nine years old. It’s summertime. I go outside to ride my bike, which is parked in the front yard of our house in the bucolic, rural area in New York State where I live. Just as I reach out to the handlebars I pull back in utter disgust and fear. Some unknown green creature with long legs and wings and a fiercesome looking face is perched on the right handlebar. I almost touched it! What is that!

The strangest creature I had ever seen!
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

It looks prehistoric, something I’ve never seen before in my life. I am overcome with fear and nausea. I whack it to the ground and step on it. Shaking, I stand there and look at its crushed body lying on the ground, oozing out disgusting slime, more sickening to look at than when it was alive. I can only feel that I had just saved my life!

At the same time that I feel this I also know that I have just killed a fellow creature and I feel really bad about that. I tell myself I was frightened by it. It looked prehistoric, like a scary small dinosaur, and I couldn’t help myself, which is true, I just reacted and killed it. Instinctual fear drove me to kill.

Years later I read about the praying mantis being an endangered species. It was then that I realized what I had killed that day. To my nine-year-old eyes what I saw was much larger and more frightening to behold than a real praying mantis ever was. At the time I had never seen such a thing and so I could not place it. It frightened me so much that I had to kill it. This was a reaction to the unknown. Sometimes an instinctual reaction crushes the harmless and the innocent in a primitive instinctual projection based on unfamiliarity.

A few years after this incident, when I was about fourteen, I was out with friends. We had come upon some wild grapes. Reaching into the tangle of vines to pick a nice bunch I suddenly felt something clinging to my face. I could not pull it off. I thought is was just a grape vine caught in my hair or something. I asked my friends to help get it off me. They pulled back in horror and screamed!

None of them came to the rescue so I grabbed hold of it, a sticky something clinging tightly, and pulled it off my face with all my might. I held it up and found myself staring at the weirdest creature I had ever seen, even weirder than that praying mantis—a walking stick! It was big enough to cover my entire face. It had straddled my nose and mouth and eyes, stretching from forehead to chin. It must have looked like I was wearing some kind of strange mask.

This time I held the strange creature in my hands long enough to get a good look at it. I’d heard of walking sticks before but had never actually seen a live one. This was huge! I stared at it, freaky though it was, and then placed it carefully back onto the grape vine. Now every time I see a walking stick I am reminded of this experience and I once again remember how I held in my fear and disgust and just looked at this curious creature who shares the world with us. He got to live because I did not let my fear kill him.

In the first scenario I encountered my killer instinct in an automatic reaction to the unknown in the guise of the praying mantis. In the second scenario, although I was equally terrified, I did not react instinctively but instead paused long enough to allow consciousness to work with instinct to mediate and calm my fear, saying, “take a look at what this is and then decide the proper action/reaction.”

I do not judge my nine-year-old self for killing the praying mantis, it’s just where I was at the time. Now I try to live with consciousness as much as possible, pausing, like my fourteen-year-old self did with the walking stick, asking myself pertinent questions: What is the right thing to do in this situation? What is the right thing to feel? What is the right action to take?

We all have killed something at some point in our lives. How many mosquitoes, flies, and pesky bugs I’ve swatted at over my 65 years I don’t know, but I have certainly whacked quite a number of them to death out of sheer annoyance.

At the same time that I admit to that kind of killing, there is another part of me that would never knowingly harm another living thing, but sometimes she’s just not available when I need her. Sometimes the fearful me still steps in and just takes care of business.

A blog by J. E. Ketchel, author of The Recapitulation Diaries.

Chuck’s Place: Gaia-dence For Early Pregnancy

Waiting for the sun to rise... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
Waiting for the sun to rise…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We are in the changing times. Mother Nature, Gaia, is in her element, leading us forward. I call to Gaia for true guidance, as we are indeed in her grasp. We are completely encased in her womb, at the early stages of her pregnancy, leading eventually to our salvation and ultimate deliverance. Though we cry out for deliverance now, that is not nature’s way. For now, we must stay contained and face the darkness of this pregnant time, this time of transformation.

Pregnancy is largely a hidden process where the mysterious forces of nature gather and coagulate the materials needed to eventually usher forth new life. Now these materials are being drawn from our changing environment and transformed, like frozen waters melting into rising tides. Mentally frozen attitudes are being broken down to allow for broader acceptance. Heightened emotions are the fiery energies of change. Naturally, the tensions created by all these energies contained within the womb cry out for relief.

And yes, we are drawn to the early release of this tension. We turn to the security of a “Trumpism” as the solution, but like all isms this simple solution is a miscarriage, not the needed rebirth Gaia now prepares us for. The truth is, we must bear the extreme tension of this time of darkness, this time of unknowing, as our world is being reshaped and reformed into its most fitting and natural next stage.

Every evening we dip into the darkness of sleep and the phases of the moon, with their own mysterious growth and healing processes. We cannot force a solution to new wholeness but must patiently allow the pregnancy to proceed, largely in the darkness too. We must participate with care and caution, responding as needed to the growing changes slowly and naturally taking place.

Just as the moon eventually becomes full, at the right time, so does Gaia ask us to bear this time of tension for, eventually, it will lead to right action. Rather than simply reacting and taking things too far in the wrong direction, Gaia teaches us to patiently evolve. When the time is right, right action will be born into a new balance, ready to sustain us as we embark on the next evolutionary journey, into infinity.

What, Gaia, should we be doing at this stage?” I ask. Through Jan’s dream, recounted below, Gaia spoke. We pass it on.

From the debris and the dung a new world is forming... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
From the debris and the dung a new world is forming…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Jan’s Dream: Chuck and I are at home. He is a Master Plumber, teaching a class in plumbing. The pipes inside a wall are exposed and he is busy making repairs and explaining to his students what he is doing. “Don’t do this at home, ” he warns them. I stand on the side watching. I am worried about something.

Suddenly a giant praying mantis, the size of a hat, flies into the room and lands on my head. I feel it walking around, digging its claws into my scalp. I call out. Chuck turns to me and says: “Just get still, stay still. It will go away when it’s the right time, but for now just go into stillness.”

I stand as still as possible, bearing the tension of the praying mantis’s sharp claws digging into my scalp, squeezing my head. It starts to poop and I stand perfectly still while black shit runs down my face. The students want to clean it off me, but I tell them to leave it, that I will clean it off after the praying mantis leaves.

Then a gigantic yellow butterfly flies into the room. It circles around me where I stand in stillness with the giant praying mantis on my head and alights on my right arm. I try to shake it off, but it molds itself to my arm, encircling it like a giant tattoo. I stand there like that, in stillness, with the praying mantis on my head and the butterfly on my arm, waiting for what comes next. -End of dream.

Chuck’s Interpretation: Gaia sends the praying mantis to demonstrate utter stillness, while she clutches us in her grasp. This is the time of pregnancy after all, and we cannot undo what is already in motion. We must bear the muddied earthiness from the dung of the mantis as life is transformed. These are the dark energies of destruction we see and experience all around us. We must bear them, without taking action, in utter stillness. No matter how intense the pain or fear, we must remain still. It’s not personal. Gaia is gathering her materials. We are all part of that.

Gaia also sends us a butterfly, assuring us that transformation is happening. The process is underway, but it’s nothing we can force. Nature works in nature’s own time. The moon eventually gets full, the sun eventually rises again, the seasons unfold.

And finally, the Master Plumber points out: don’t interfere with nature unless you truly know what you are doing, which can only be from a place knowledge and right action. All of nature practices stillness, all of nature knows how to hold back until the time is right.

A new world is forming... - Photo by Jan Ketchel
A new world is forming…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

Gaia’s new world is in utero, and we are all in it with her. Rather than worry or fear, let nature do it’s part, but stay with the practice of love. All those around you are part of the same whole new world—my neighbor, myself.

Gaia is speaking to all of us now, in our world and in our dreams,

Chuck and Jan