Butterflies have always fascinated me. How can a fury legged creature crawl off, hang upside down, hide itself from view, and then emerge a seemingly different being altogether? One that is able to soar through the air and gently land on a fragile flower petal. How do they know it is time to transform? What compels them to stop eating and start hanging?
I am discovering the ordinary, extraordinary details of this transformation from the inside of my own finely woven cocoon. I am immersed in a two-year process to become a Spiritual Guide/Director. I spent time this past weekend with my group, learning from two of our great Spanish mystics, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Each provide a wealth of insight and wisdom to help me understand the metamorphose process taking place within me, and also to articulate the "why" behind the transformation in the first place. Saint Teresa uses the metaphor of a silkworm in describing the soul's journey toward the Divine, "a metamorphosis of the soul from autonomous self-determination to self-giving willingness to be led." I don't know how, but like the caterpillar, something within me told me it was time to go off for a while and allow myself the needed time and space to transform into a seemingly different role than the one I have played so far. When I completed a 4-year consulting contract, and started this program, it seemed a bit, well let's just say for lack of a better word, "crazy", even to me. At first, I thought I was enhancing and expanding my skill set as executive/life coach to be more proficient in "coaching" the spiritual component of the self. What I am discovering, two months into year two of this program is that a complete inner transformation is occurring. I will not be "certified" as a Spiritual Guide, but will truly emerge from my cocoon, having become one. In his book, The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth, Gerald May provides insight from Saints John and Teresa that help me understand the "why" behind my interior changes. He states, "...it is all designed for the recovery of innocence, the reestablishment of perceptiveness and sensitivity, the rebirth of profound peace and exquisite joy, and finally, the fullness of love for God, others, and the world...in that love we find an ever increasing freedom to be who we really are in an identity that is continually emerging and never defined. We are freed to join the dance of life in fullness without having a clue about what the steps are."
At times, I grow impatient with this transformation, wondering if I am in fact "growing". I walked along a path through the woods over the weekend, and came across a frozen creek. I stood on top of a walking bridge staring at the ice covered stream, willing myself to see beyond the surface, to the flowing life still moving below. I could sense the life, but could not see it.
Gerald May states, "What looks like stagnation ... may well be the surface appearance of a secret willingness, a yes for God to do what God will in one's heart." Okay, I am convinced, the metamorphose is real. I am changing, but why? The butterfly's emergence offers the former caterpillar wings to soar, but is the change merely for its own benefit? In addition to offering new beauty to the world, its ability to flutter from flower to flower also offers new life to other species in the pollination process. I am still at the beginning stages of my own transformation, but I am getting a glimpse into the beauty I will emerge with, and hope to spread to offer new life to others I encounter. May writes, "It is not that [Teresa and John] are unconcerned with social liberation and justice, but that they are convinced such transformation will happen only through the changing of individual hearts. The Dalai Lama put it starkly in 1991: "Although attempting to bring about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals is difficult, it is the only way."" When the time comes to shed my intricate cocoon, I sense my newly transformed wings will in fact soar and bring new life to my home, as well as the other social, political, and environmental systems I "flutter to" and function in each day.
