When the caterpillar builds its chrysalis, it hangs itself upside down from a branch, becoming still after weeks of relentless hunger and obsessive consumption.  Instinctively it knows it must turn its world on its head, to stop what only moments before it was driven to continue.

The caterpillar builds this chrysalis around itself, from itself.  It creates a safe haven, and then turns to goo–literally, it becomes caterpillar soup.  Only when the structure and organization of the caterpillar’s body and consciousness has fully dissolved can the imaginal cells arise.

Imaginal refers to the realm of soul, to the place between how we imagine the concreteness of matter and the transcendence of spirit to exist.  When we work with symbols, dreams, imagery, archetypes, and visualizations, we are working with and inside of the imaginal realm.

The new cells that will form the butterfly–they can only come out of the muck of letting go of every single way the caterpillar knows itself and how it is used to interacting with the world. The caterpillar builds itself a sacred, fiercely protected home to allow this dissolution–if it just went to goo on top of a branch or on the ground, some other creature would eat it, or it would be composted back into the earth.  So, the dissolution is not unanticipated; it is precise, contained, a deep act of alchemy.

At first only a few imaginal cells at a time will arise out of the muck, and they will be consumed back into the soup–we lift our heads at moments, seeing possibility, something transcendent, radiant, of greater essence.  But like Rumi’s chickpea, simmering in the pot, we are not done cooking and we must relax into the discomfort, the not knowing, the mystery.

The imaginal cells continue to birth themselves.  Eventually they will reach a critical mass, beyond what the old muck can consume, and begin to organize into a butterfly–cells magnetized, organizing along ley lines of the emergent body, arising from the individual soul’s longing to take its place in the great mandala of the World Soul, Sophia, the Anima Mundi.  

We have been taught to mistrust not just death, but messiness, desire, the sacred fluids of the body.  We suffer greatly because we seek to keep ourselves apart from the beautiful mystery of our nature–the inherent radiance of blood and flesh, which is simultaneously terrible and ecstatic.  What pain, and loneliness, we inflict upon ourselves.

Who would you be if you were no longer anchored by the structures that keep you in “safe” but restrictive territory?  

What greater longing has always whispered, shouted, tugged at you, no matter how you sought to run away?

What do you know, from inside your bones, about the ferocity of love, the tenderness of courage, the potential to keep awakening?

There comes a day when the butterfly has fully formed.  Held tight in the arms of its own making, a sanctuary that made it safe to transform every single bit of its being, wet wings, folded tight against its body, push against walls that are too small now.  If you cut a butterfly out of its chrysalis, it will not survive.  It requires the struggle, the squeeze through the cracks it must make on its own home, to stimulate the flow of blood through its body, its wings.

I imagine the Buddha holding a chrysalis in his hand, patient, observing with great tenderness and trust the necessary suffering of the butterfly to know itself beyond the confines of its own protection.  There is a risk in the dance of wings and sky–being eaten, crushed, wounded.  But if we could rely on Death, make it our trusted friend, how might we know ourselves, know that we truly belong to Life, and not simply stay frozen in the pretense of safety, of the preservation of the small self: unseen, unknown, unloved.  

I was born to be shredded alive in that dance.  I cannot stay away, there is a fiery arrow that keeps pointing the way, I am repeatedly drawn by the Pied Piper’s wild tune no matter how many times I forget and sit dumb inside my narrow home.

We are in a great turning.  There is true loss and grief, injustice and terror.  There is also a kind of necessary stillness, a cessation of the grand cogs of how we have known our world, what seemed unstoppable even if it was unthinkable.  Whether we are isolated or inescapably in company, whether we have lost all income, are working from home or still must work out in the world, whether we are frustrated, terrified, grief stricken, grateful, peaceful, confused or in awe (and really, we are each a complex mix), we are in a collective chrysalis.

How can you expand the story of your life to let this hold you?  

What needs to be tended, what needs to be released?  

Together and alone we will be failing, exploring, weeping, raging, questioning, longing.  We are grieving, wondering, reaching out and reaching in.  Growing.  Dissolving.  Do not allow anyone to take this from you.  Do not imagine you know what we will look like on the “other side”.  But feed your heart that longs for your beloveds.  Offer nothing but compassion for your years, your anger, your messy outbursts.  Learn to repair connection–with yourself, your loves, Life itself.  Let yourself rest, and see what emerges.