the butterfly and the cocoon

I wake up. Gray light from the heavy sky is peeking through my window. I turn around. I close my eyes again. I roll around in pain and agony, I try to get away from it. Not another day, not another emotion to face, not another part to heal, not another medication to take. Not another one.

Resisting life itself, I get up. My stomach is rumbling but I do not want to eat. Blood again. Seeing blood is both the confirmation I’m alive and that there is something wrong with me. Sometimes it starts to feel like one and the same. Wherever I turn my attention to in my internal world everything is bleeding. There are sharks guarding emotional hellscapes, babies crying, parts withering away and drowning, parts on fire, parts in pain. Everywhere. I feel the doom settle in. I lay back down and I close my eyes again.

I put on a guided meditation. I am taken to a clearing in the woods. I am asked to lay down. The earth is so strong and gentle, I feel the calm trickle into me. I feel my breath flow out of me, letting out a little of the gray heavy sky I carry within, and I begin to listen. The quiet buzzing of the earth is cradling my eardrums, calming me so that I can hear. Absorbed in pain I can never truly hear, I can only make noise.

In this clearing in the woods, a butterfly presents itself to me. I love butterflies. They represent transformation, and because I am usually in pain, I love the idea of transformation. I love the promise of a new me, it’s exhilarating and gives me hope. A bigger me, a freer me. Free from the shackles of pain and shame, grief and depression. I always invite the butterflies. However, real transformation tends to be very painful itself. It’s a weird concept, I invite pain if it means I will experience a fuller, freer life, in other words - a less painful one. Ironic, isn’t it.

But this butterfly is not here to transform me, it’s here to connect me to the animal world. I feel the animals of the forest, the foxes, the deers, the mice and the bears. I am transported inside them, I see through their eyes. Whether hunting, resting, building nests or walking around, they are not resisting it. They are not trying to escape life. They are not deeming resting “bad” and hunting “good”, nor the other way around. To them they are simply different experiences. They are not rushing to hunt so they can go back home and rest. They are now hunting. They are now resting. This is what they whisper to me. I am again shown the butterfly. The caterpillar in the cocoon is not ashamed to be in the cocoon, nor is it rushing to hatch. It doesn’t think “if I could just get out of this cocoon I would be acceptable, life would be bearable then”. It doesn’t see being in the cocoon as “bad” and being a butterfly as “good”. It is simply experiencing cocooning.

The human mind is very rapid. It’s a fast moving energy. This is why we’ve accelerated our consciousness in the way we have, so quickly. We judge, we are not satisfied, we thirst for more. More knowledge, more experiences, more expansion. It is in some ways a very useful thing, and in some ways very detrimental. The animals are reminding me to experience and to not deem what I am experiencing as good or bad. Being a butterfly is not “better” than being a caterpillar, they are different experiences along the same journey.

I thank them and I go deeper into the layers of the earth. I become aware of the moss I am laying on. Next, it wants to speak to me. I see the moss on a rock, growing ever so slowly, a state of experiencing even deeper and calmer than the animals experience. Here there is no judgment and no rush. Day by day, ever so slowly, it grows a little taller and a little fuller, up towards the light, feeling the rock and the other pieces of moss around it. It’s showing me, that when younger moss finds it’s way to the surface, it is welcomed and celebrated. The older moss isn’t condescending to the newer moss, it isn’t prideful of the longer life it has had. It is there for comfort. For support. One strand of moss isn’t moss, they are moss together. And the newer moss isn’t cocky that it’s newer, it embraces the support of the older moss, letting the older moss carry and guide it towards the light, because they know the way. Young or old, neither is better. Even if you rush to grow up, you will still find yourself connecting with the younger aspects of you, because they are all around you and still live within you as well. The moss is whispering I don’t have to feel inferior. We are all stages at the same time, we support each other in them. And it is our joy to do so, I felt the joy of the moss, growing forever interconnected to each other and everything around them. We let the moss that’s come before us guide us, and we guide the moss that is newer than us. That is the connection. I don’t have to learn everything before I can guide, because we are always in the stream of knowledge. We guide each other in different ways, all needed and all helpful. No hierarchy.

Relieved by this reminder I am pulled even deeper. I am being pulled into the rock. Here there are no words, just a quiet humming sound. The pace is so slow now, the vibrations of a base. I am ancient. I am untouchable because I am ancient. I house the plants, the water, the animals and the humans. I hold space for them, I am space. I too am being held by the earth, but there are no concepts of separateness here. Whatever unfolds, let it happen. Because as this deep essence, you are untouchable. Being a human is the fastest spinning experience for you now, the quickest ripple on the surface of a deep ocean. You are also the ocean, even when your eyes are looking at the surface waves. How long doesn’t it take for a crystal to form? Nothing needs to change. You are not in a hurry to becoming perfect. The human mind will always propel you forward at an incredible speed. Don’t fear. And don’t fear connecting back through the layers of the earth to this base stillness. It is not better. It’s not better than experiencing humanness, in fact it’s a part of it. But when your mind starts to deem you bad or wrong for being somewhere, it is never so. You are simply experiencing the cocoon, and it is an experience as important as any other. The time will come when you experience being a butterfly, and you will look back at this time, not deeming it as bad or wrong. You will see it was a necessary stage to grow the wings that you now have. And even more than that, just like being a butterfly is, it was just an experience.

I guess I am in the cocoon right now. I fight and I fight to become a butterfly but I am in the cocoon. It doesn’t mean that I am one, it means I am experiencing the cocoon phase. And what the earth is helping me with today is not transforming me into a butterfly, nor is it taking my pain away. It is making me aware of the cocoon. It’s dark, I can’t see, I am scared. But with the knowledge that I am in fact in a cocoon, I can more easily breathe again. It’s not about becoming a butterfly right now. Right now, it’s about being in the cocoon, and fully experiencing what that is like, as painful as it may be sometimes. And as painful as it may be, today, I honor the cocoon.