Butterflies are Free

“How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” ~ Trina Paulus

I always thought that if you opened up a chrysalis, you would find – depending on when in the process you peeked – something that was a little more caterpillar on the way to being a butterfly or a little more butterfly on the way from being a caterpillar.

Turns out that what really happens is that the caterpillar, once inside the cocoon, actually disintegrates – just breaks down into DNA soup, a puddle of glop– from which it reconstitutes itself as a butterfly.

The caterpillar actually has to cease to exist in order for the butterfly to even begin to form… the butterfly is the afterlife of the caterpillar.

Then, after having gone through the whole transformative process, having died to what it was to become what it must be, the butterfly has to break out of the shell that has sheltered it… and it’s not an easy process.  The butterfly must fight to free itself from the very walls which have protected it through its metamorphoses

But… if you were to come along and release the butterfly, you would cripple it.

Without the work it must do to free itself, a butterfly’s wings won’t open fully and will dry without unfolding, leaving it misshapen and forever grounded.  The butterfly needs the birthing struggle in order to be capable of flight.

Every growth process has its own struggles and time frame… we plant seeds in the spring so that we can harvest in the fall; babies conceived in November are born in August…

And no one would consider rushing these processes; no one would consider skipping steps in order to get to the end result more quickly…

Ok, big industry does ALL KINDS of things to ripen fruits and veggies faster, but have you TASTED that stuff????  UCK!!

Which is my point – transformation takes as much time as it takes, and, unfortunately, there is no standard time line for spiritual growth.  It’s a messy proposition, and it often feels worse before it feels better.

And it’s so very hard to sit in the glop when you have no idea when it’s going to end.

So the butterfly becomes a totem – a reminder that :

The glop is actually a necessary step on the way to winged-ness

and

Transformation alone is not enough; the struggle to leave the cocoon is necessary

and

That at the end of the struggles, there is beauty, and grace, and FLIGHT.

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” ~Maya Angelou