The other week I had a pretty fateful experience involving myself and a praying mantis. Being 26 years old and a year from completing my undergraduate degree, I have been antsy over the past few years seeing very close high school friends graduate and have high levels of success in their given fields of work. I have a tremendous amount of respect for all of my successful friends and one day I wish to join them in the overall realm of successfulness.
I had a pretty rough few weeks last month with a lot of self doubt; asking myself a lot of questions about whether or not I would ever make it as a full time musician. Practicing four or more hours a day is good but it eventually got to a point where I was expecting to see an immediate pay off, which is never the case. It is a scary thought on how hard it is to make it in the world of music today and this eventually got to me.
Some time during that week, my lovely girlfriend asked me if I wanted to go hike and get out of the city on a mutual day off. We decided to go to Eldorado Canyon right of highway 93 here in Colorado. We kicked around a bunch of ideas about where we could go hiking and eventually ended up going to Eldorado Springs. I find it interesting that we could of chosen anywhere in the state and we chose a place where we would eventually come across my spirit animal the praying mantis. .
About a mile onto the path, a praying mantis landed on my shirt. I was wearing a white shirt and she jumped right onto my chest where she was very clearly visible. I had never even seen one of these creatures, and to be honest with you I didn’t even know these critters existed in the US, let alone a state like Colorado. I guess I always thought of them as a mythical creatures that don’t reside on this continent.
As she sat on my shirt she eventually put her hands together in a praying position. I actually ended up trying to get her off of me because I felt the power that she possessed and felt like I wasn’t ready to accept her message.
My girlfriend and I began to kick around ideas about what this all meant and what the spiritual meaning of this was. We did some research on the way home and here is what we found.
“Praying Mantis landing on your body is a sure sign Mantis is and always has been your animal spirit guide. Recognize her, acknowledge her message and power.”
I found this notion interesting because I have always wondered what my spirit animal is and what kind of meaning that spirit will carry. Some people think this kind of thing is cheesy but I fully believe that we are all connected to all beings in this world no matter how big or how small.
“Accordingly, the praying mantis symbol chooses to present itself to individuals when they have allowed their busy schedules to overrun their intuition, silencing their internal voice and throwing their equilibrium out of balance. The praying mantis always comes to us when we are internally craving peace, quiet, and calm in our lives,” (Bostwick, pg. 2).
Susan made a very good point to me after we researched all of this that, everything happens for a reason. Here’s to that praying mantis, my new praying mantis pendant, fate on that day for us to cross paths, patience, and to finding my own inner peace.
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