METAMORPHOSIS - The Flight of the Butterfly

My life is about constant metamorphosis.  When I’m not undergoing a process of transformation, I feel stuck and unhappy.  I feel most alive when I am consciously moving through another metamorphosis of being.  I have been through many life transformations during the last decade… a severe illness and a path of holistic healing, a marriage and divorce, a car accident and Near Death Experience… meanwhile shifting from organized religion to atheism, and finally to a paradigm beyond belief and non-belief–into direct experience within the Oneness of all life, the essence connecting All That Is.  My dreams and studies during the last decade have taken me to far away places, then back full circle to the place of my birth, and outward once again.  I follow my heart and the winds of life itself, much as a butterfly seeks flower and nectar, light after light.

Where there is movement there is life.

Every nuance of life is simply awing.  How does a butterfly change from a slow moving crawler whose color merely blends into its surroundings, into a brilliantly colored flying creature who moves ever so swiftly through the air, capable of stopping an observer’s thoughts by her mere beauty?   It is still the same being, yet in a different state of transformation.

When I was a kid, I liked to capture caterpillars from a field nearby and put them in my bug box.  I gave them water as well as the branches and leaves where I found them.  I would watch them eagerly until they spun the cocoon around themselves.  I wondered what was going on inside, and awaited with anticipation for the day when they would bust out and become a gorgeous butterfly ready to take flight.  That day was met with both the joy of witnessing this miracle of life and also the sadness of letting go.  A butterfly must be set free!

And so is the nature of transformation.  In order to embrace the new, we must first let go of the old.  The caterpillar enters the cocoon, where the process of transformation unfolds–letting go of life as he once knew it, in order to embrace the great unknown.  And what an incredible gift are the wings bestowed upon the caterpillar who makes it through the transformation.  Observing my bug box, I learned that not every cocoon opens.

The metaphor of the butterfly seems to be the mythos of my life.  When I left my training in Peru, my teacher don Américo Yábar said to me, “When you write about our work, do it as though you were touching the dust on the wing of a butterfly.”

If there is one thing in life that I understand, it is transformation.  I find that people who are undergoing major life transformations are drawn to me, many times just as they are embarking upon their journey, and sometimes in the middle of the transformation when they find themselves in the darkness of the cocoon wondering if they’ll ever see the light again.  It is my life service to help others create transformation in their own lives, so that they too can find the light within, the inner force that is guiding them to follow their higher life path.  I am grateful to those who seek my help, as they continually remind me who I am.  By embracing our life challenges and moving through them, we are able to experience the radiance of being.

Meredith Marie Miller, CHt, C.A.M.T.
www.innerintegration.org
innerintegration@gmail.com
(510) 717.2177