On Becoming a Butterfly

Life is Full of Surprises

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 through my own life’s journey. A few years ago, I immersed myself in a two-year process to become a Spiritual Guide/Director. Among so many other strong spiritual leaders, I was able to learn from two of our great Spanish mystics, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. Each provided a wealth of insight and wisdom to help me understand the metamorphose process that was 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 had played before. I started the training program shortly after completing a 4-year executive coaching and consulting contract. At the time, 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 discovered, two months into year two of the program was that a complete inner transformation was occurring. I was not “certified” as a Spiritual Guide, but truly emerged 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 helped 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.”

Who Will You Become

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. Although my program finished several years ago, I continue to transform, and am getting glimpses of the impact this process has also had on other people in my pathway. Through my life and through my work, I sincerely hope to help others in their own transformation to spread this beauty and offer hope to the world around us. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross were convinced social transformation in social and justice could only happen 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.”

As I shed my own intricate cocoon, I sense my newly transformed wings will in fact soar and bring new life to my home and my work, as well as the other social, political, and environmental systems I “flutter to” and function in each day.