The butterfly is SUPPOSED to struggle. In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. As you go through school, and life, keep in mind that struggling is an important part of any growth experience. In fact, it is the struggle that causes you to develop your ability to fly.”
From Caterpillar to Butterfly
Think about the caterpillar morphing into the butterfly, a beautiful analogy for change in the spiritual sense. We all feel like a caterpillar at times, an ugly, undeveloped self (I personally don’t think caterpillars are ugly, I think they’re kinda cute in their pudgy way!). We all want to be the butterfly, the gorgeous finished product, flying about in grace and beauty, experiencing bliss everywhere we go. We all want to be seen as beautiful, respectable, and lovely. How do we get to that? It isn’t so easy, some would say.
We see people who have become the finished product, a successful, beautiful, powerful human being who has it all together. We all see people who we respect, admire and wish we were like, right? However, those people did not come into it without a lot of work on themselves spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically.
We all want to be the butterfly, but do we really want to go through the process that it takes to become that? There is a molting period, a liquification of self that is part of that process of going from the form of caterpillar to butterfly. It doesn’t necessarily look like a pleasant process, morphing into another form. Literally there has to be a breakdown of the first form, a dissecting or dissolution process, and then there is room in reality for the new form to be born.
It is a death and birth process, and both of those processes tend to be messy, dramatic, and difficult in their own respects. When you do both together, it gets even messier and more difficult! Death and rebirth at the same time are a superb event indeed.
Think about what you see in yourself as the caterpillar, the undeveloped and “first form” type of self. You might be all caterpillar in your opinion, or some percentage of caterpillar versus a percentage of butterfly. Perhaps you’ve been working on yourself for quite a while and you already transformed some parts of yourself that were “ugly” or undeveloped before now. Perhaps you feel like you might even be getting close to being a butterfly. Just examine where you think you are in the morphing process of the death of the old self and the birth of the new self.
Truly, the new self was always there, just as the butterfly was always there in the caterpillar. It isn’t visible before the transformation, but the blueprint and the potential was always there and present. I think of the new self as the eternal, deeper self, the You that was always present, even as the idea of yourself as a human seemed to take precedence for a while in the first part of your life.
The eternal self that you are is the butterfly, and it was always there. It isn’t born or created, it is only the idea of being a human version of self as the sole identity, the caterpillar, that needed to be liquefied and disintegrated. Then the already present butterfly underneath the illusion can emerge from the cocoon of change.
What is your version of the cocoon? What is your version of the cauldron or catalyst for change? How is it that you are disintegrating the idea that you are just a human, mortal self with a specific name and identity? How are you molting into the new form, seeing yourself as immortal and eternal self? How are you becoming aware that you are consciousness dreaming itself to be a specific human with a certain collection of experiences? Your cocoon of change is unique to you, and you are inside it, searching, seeking, and spiritually growing.
I would encourage you to simply stop and be the butterfly that you already are. Stop all the figuring, strategizing, fixing of yourself, and all the searching. You are already what you want to become. All you have to do is literally “drop” the old form, the old ideas of self and step out of who you think you are for just a moment. It is only a matter of readjusting your perceptions of who you think you are in the journey between caterpillar to butterfly.
It doesn’t actually take work or effort on your part to become the new self. The caterpillar does not “work” to become the butterfly. It doesn’t “do” anything! It simply waits for the old form to drop away, being patient while the discomfort of dissolution happens, if it is uncomfortable at all. Maybe it’s not.
Maybe it is us who makes the morphing process so difficult. We are so mind focused as a species and it might well be ourselves who are interfering with how easy the process of letting go of the old form. We can simply let it fall away, but in our own minds we find that hard to be at ease with. We have to make it hard and uncomfortable, for some reason.
Discomfort and difficulty might not be the nature of the process of transformation at all. Perhaps the period of transition from caterpillar to butterfly is not that difficult. Perhaps it is a state of bliss and relaxation for the caterpillar as it becomes the butterfly.
I encourage you to look at how you might be interfering with your own process of transformation from the old self to the new self. Perhaps it would be so much easier if you just rest your mind, don’t try to fix anything, and simply be present in the moment in a relaxed state of mind, patient with the process of the old falling away and the new showing up. It doesn’t have to happen overnight, and perhaps that is where much of your dissatisfaction with the process is coming from. You want the butterfly to be in full flight already, but there is a period of dissolution and resolution still happening. You can’t rush that process.
Be patient. The butterfly-you is present and already perfect, already formed. All you have to do is relax, drop the old stories and identities, and simply let your eternal nature emerge. It is actually very simple. Sure, some of your old caterpillar ways might reappear and assert themselves now and then, but you can always redirect your awareness back into the butterfly-you at any and all times.
You could think of the human condition as the caterpillar, and the eternal self that you are as the butterfly. Both exist, both have form in the same lifetime, and you are able to switch back and forth between both of those forms. The goal is to rest in the butterfly version of self more often than you might now, but that comes. It is a lifelong goal, a lifelong period of readjustment.
Be at peace. You do not have to fix everything in your personality. That all becomes “fixed” automatically when you shift your point of view into that of the eternal self rather than that of the struggling human. You do not have to find anything that you don’t know about already, it is all there inside you. It is innate knowing within you. All you must do is relax and let the butterfly come forth. It is already here, present and completely whole. Simply drop the old forms and ideas, the old ways of being, and the new you is already here, fully functional and present.
