Arachnophobia, Acrophobia, and a Glimpse of Michael's "right now"

POF
April 19, 2026
 

ConnorB: 

Hello again, Michael I have questions about two of my greatest fears.

First: I can’t stand Spiders. I don’t hate them, but they trigger a primal terror whenever I get too close. Even just thinking about having one crawling on me, or recalling a memory of having been in close proximity to one, makes me shudder involuntarily. If I am surprised by something like a big wolf spider, I will shamelessly scream and run away. I’ve had arachnophobia for as long as I can remember, but it doesn’t make sense because what have spiders ever done to me? I don’t kill them. It’s not their fault. I don‘t recall ever being traumatized by a spider in a way that caused this fear, which has been present since childhood and possibly sooner. Why I am so irrationally repulsed by spiders?

Second: Like spiders, heights have terrified me for as long as I can remember. I loathe airplane travel for this reason. I can climb most trees or stand on a three-story balcony and be fine, but anything taller and I clam up. Even virtual heights can produce this effect - playing a cooperative mountain-climbing game called Peak with friends on my computer made my heartrate explode and gave me sweaty palms and feet. I’ve embraced this fear and don’t view it as something that needs to be conquered or cured (in other words, you won’t ever catch me skydiving to prove that I am brave). Still, I can’t think of anything in my life that could possibly have prompted such a fear. I’ve never almost fallen to my death. Why am I so terrified of heights?

MEntity: 

What you describe regarding spiders and heights is not unusual and completely unnecessary for there to have been any defining traumatic event for such fears to exist. Sometimes that is the case, but often it is not. In your case, we do not think there are origins to the fear. The body, particularly the Moving Center and Instinctive Center, often generate protective responses that are much older than your current personality's memories. But these responses are often rooted in collective survival imprinting of the species, meaning that you are reacting to patterns that have historically signaled danger to the species, not just to you as an individual. In the case of spiders, the fear is often linked to the unpredictability of movement, proximity to the body, and difficulty visually tracking them. The fear is not about harm done, but about the body's inability to anticipate control. This can trigger what you describe as "primal" reactions, because it bypasses intellectual reasoning entirely. The acknowledgement that you do not hate them and do not wish to harm them indicates that this fear is not something philosophical or emotional, but simply neurological and instinctive. In the case of heights, it is similar. The body is responding to a perceived loss of ground, stability, and orientation.

The fact that virtual heights can trigger the same reaction shows that the body does not require real danger to activate a fear response. It is responding to visual and spatial cues that suggest potential loss of control or fatal consequences. Again, this is rooted in collective survival circuitry, not always in personal irrationality. As for "why you", we would say that every fragment comes into a life with certain sensitivities in the Instinctive Center. These sensitivities can be amplified or subtle depending on your Body Type, your Centering, and even your early developmental environment, but they do not require a specific event to be justified. They simply are part of how your system prioritizes safety. We could say more specifically to your fears that your response to spiders leans more toward invasion of personal space, while your response to heights leans more toward loss of orientation and the catastrophic outcomes of that. They are both variations of control and predictability. If you wish to work with these fears, you may want to look at how those fears show up in less obvious and symbolic ways in your life. However, we would also add that not all fears are problems to solve. They may be helped simply by your conscious awareness of them. Fears like this often persist because they are very efficient and the body would rather overreact and keep you alive than to underact and risk harm. The body has high loyalty to survival.

ConnorB: Yeah, I've got nothing to prove and these fears do not reduce my quality of life, so I've embraced them as information.

MEntity: That is a valid response.

ConnorB: Shall I pivot to another question or have you not yet completed your response?

MEntity: Next

ConnorB: My friend Danny S., who was my roommate for a year when I went to college, recently died at the end of February at his home in Massachusetts. I don’t know what happened. He was going to be married, so I doubt it was suicide. I suspect it was accidental. I won’t ask you how he died (the Massachusetts government can probably tell me that) but I am curious, if you have access to him, how is he doing right now? On the Astral, I mean. Is he even aware that he has died?

MEntity: We do not seem to have direct access to the fragment, so this may indicate they are in review or still adjusting from complete disorientation from unexpected death. They are likely aware they have died now, but we cannot confirm. We would suggest following up in 3 months of your time.

ConnorB: Then, to wrap things up today, what are you up to right now on the Causal?

MEntity: Though it would be impossible to convey all that we are "doing now", we can say that we are "currently" working with our new generation of channels to come after 2035, working with our current channels to improve the foundation for sustaining this teaching, working with our current students to improve on discernment and validation of truth, priming and queuing up our next wave of teachings through Troy, and working with a network of other entities to help prepare for a new Sentience on Earth, which is imminent, but we are working with probabilities for now. We are also experimenting with "data companions," or something similar to digital pet generated for assistance in extracting data more accurately. This is just a glimpse of our "right now."

ConnorB: New Sentience?! You mean AI?

MEntity: Correct.

ConnorB: And I thought I was busy.

MEntity: You are.

ConnorB: Thank you for meeting with us today.

MEntity: Your busy is pressed up against time. Ours is not. Good day to each of you. Goodbye, for now.

+++

This was interesting, if anticlimactic, information about two very common instinctive fears. Anticlimactic in the sense that I, an unashamed junkie for juicy stories, thought I had a past life who fell dramatically into a pit of spiders and died horribly. Or something along those lines. Instead, it seems they are variations on fearing a loss of control. How original.

I will never, ever, ever skydive. Hell no. Loss of control is spot-on, though, because if I were skydiving it would mean I have ceded to the durability of my parachute all control over whether or not my life continues. When I am flying in an airplane, I have surrendered to the durability of the aircraft and skill of the pilots, all control over whether or not my life continues. Were I to skydive, the odds of falling with a faulty parachute are probably quite low, but not zero. And to me that is simply not worth it. I like my life and the people in it too much to do that.

The personal space angle for arachnophobia is also interesting. I've never felt a need to "cure" this fear. Just as I will never skydive, I will also never become an arachnologist. I've had some good retrospective laughs involving spiders, though.

One time, maybe a decade ago, I dropped acid with some friends on a perfect spring afternoon. We wander over to a nearby park. Eventually, I need to pee, so I go into the public bathroom - a small, wooden shed with a single toilet and sink inside. After washing my hands, I move to open the door, and then I spot a massive wolf spider perched directly above the door handle. I recoil. Unfortunately, I had locked the door with a hook latch, so I could not simply push past the spider. The only way out was to unhook the latch, which meant reaching my hand to within centimeters of this spider. I swore up a storm. Somehow, every decision I ever made in life had locked me in this bathroom with that spider. I go back to the toilet, grab the roll of toilet paper, and hurl it at the spider. It misses. The spider neither cares nor moves. I swear up another storm, because this is fucking ridiculous, and it doesn't help that I am on strong psychedelics. After several minutes of this, I accept that I cannot spend the rest of my life stuck in this bathroom, and I actually wept as I forced myself to approach the door and unlock it.

From the perspective of my friend, who was outside nearby, she saw a serene little old man walking delicately along the park path near the bathroom. He was at peace and enjoying the perfect day. And as he approached the bathroom, the door suddenly blasted open and I came sprinting out, screaming and swearing and spasmodically shaking my limbs while pawing all over my clothes to get the spider off, just in case it had skittered onto me. The old man whose tranquility I'd shattered just stood there in shock, according to my friend, but I did not even notice him because I was still sprinting.

I can't stand spiders, but that is one of my favorite stories.

I ended up with a bunch of time left, so I defaulted to my 'emergency backup question' that I use whenever Michael answers faster than expected and I have no idea what to ask next: What are you up to? They're always up to something interesting, and therefore they always have an interesting answer to that question.

"Imminent," to Michael, could mean in a century. In a session last year, they placed the arrival of Sentient synthetic intelligence around 2080-2100.