July 2008

  
If you receive guidance that compromises your physical comfort,
would you be willing to follow it?
- Caroline Myss

The translucent butterfly (pictured above) has become a mascot for my own path of trusting the promise of brilliant living. Allow her journey to shed some light:
 
One day a lone caterpillar was suddenly called. She was told by the force of her very nature to retreat into solitude and containment in order to experience a death of one self into another.
 
In saying yes, she was called to a resting place - suspended in thin air. There she began to shed her skin. It was frightening! Who would she be without it? The form she once knew was replaced by a shell and she was enveloped by darkness and paralysis. She couldn't move. Where exactly was she? And what had happened to all the light?! She hung, suspended between two lifetimes within one. She waited in the dark, at times feeling very afraid and alone - wondering why she had agreed to such a calling. Yet all the while, she felt a spark of promise whispering from deep, deep within.
 
Over time, the light inside her very core - once faint - became a wellspring of divine light. It kept her warm and safe as she felt who she once was dissolve and transform. It was scary to be stripped of her very caterpillar nature and all that she once knew. She wondered what might become of her...and what would be her place in the world? At times she fought the urge to break free from this cocoon that surrounded her. To squirm back out into the world as she once was. Yet each time she tried, the path was denied. She knew that in heeding that first call, there was no turning back.
 
In time, a potential deep within her pushed its way to the surface. She was ignited by possibility and an outrageous freedom to take flight. And all in one miraculous instant she felt death and new life merge. She pushed, she squirmed, and she broke free - soaring into the unknown.
 
Like the caterpillar, sometimes we are called to be born anew - towards the next grandest vision of how we might best serve the world. Our interconnectedness to All That Is becomes apparent - if we are humble enough to heed the call. Paradoxically, with each of our mini-incarnations we come to understand that to live and make choices in authentic self-love is far from a selfish pursuit. By following the compass of our soul, we give our best to the world around us.
 
For some of us, it is a call we will receive many times in our life. Letting go of what was once a comfortable existence and accepting the promise of something that requires we change who we think ourselves to be. And it usually requires we (temporarily at least) surrender the physical comforts that we once knew (relationships, career paths, and sometimes the approval of friends and family).
 
In fact, one of the most challenging aspects of a time of transformation is the potent force of the unknown. We wonder, "where did the light go?" as experiences that once inspired us no longer ignite our soul...or as those who once held us in high opinion question our path of change. Yet the darkness and self-containment is the greatest gift of all. It is by experiencing this season in which we are cut off from the light sources in our external world that we learn to tap Brilliance and Guidance from within.
 
I encourage you to the heed the soulful call that comes your way. A calling on the modern spiritual path is not a booming voice from beyond. Instead it creeps in through the cracks of our daily existence - through physical or emotional imbalances that threaten us to grow and change or continue on suffering.
 
And may more of us emerge from our cocoons with the promise of the transluscent butterfly. May the wings that carry our brilliance out into the world be clear and transparent so that the glory of the True Source might SHiNE through in our everyday flight.

Cracking Through My Cocoon,
Candice

Click here to see a caterpillar's journey to butterfly on YouTube.

Entering The Castle
by Caroline Myss

I am loving this book! It is a work that appeals to all who feel themselves to be "mystics without monastaries." Myss has written a soulful and engaging book that speaks to the deeper desires at the soul of who we are as humans. A great prescription to awaken from the distractions of the physical world.

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