In my imaginal musings, I likened the aging process to that of the lifespan of the butterfly. A mama butterfly lays her eggs on a plant that is conducive for a hatching caterpillar’s diet such as milkweed. (That’s a favorite around here, anyway.) The caterpillar will then spend most of this stage of its existence eating – being a consumer of whatever is available to it for its continued growth. Then, it becomes time for, well, CHANGE! Imagine that. The little grub is not meant to spend its entire existence eating and crapping. And, maybe sleeping – I guess they have to sleep?
These little creatures are very fortunate because they have an innate knowing – the natural instinct to metamorphose into something very different and greater than what they have been. They don’t have the distractions and misinformation that often keeps us humans creatures very much the same throughout our entire lifespan until our bodies and minds eventually break down and deteriorate because we did not make the choices necessary to change into something different – greater and better than what we have been before.
The time comes when the caterpillar spins itself a safe cocoon to enter while their body and entire being changes into a flying machine of beauty and grace. That’s what we all need to do as a human being entering later life – prepare for ourself a self-made cocoon to go within so we can have the time healing to become that which we are meant to be in later life. And granted, our societies often do not allow for us the time and support that is needed even if we have the inkling to go within and transform ourselves into the elders that hold the wisdom that all civilizations need to endure hardships in order to thrive. But, we need to do it anyway.
O.K., back to the Lepidoptera. (I wish I could see the actual process of change a caterpillar goes through while inside its transformation pod.) After a while, when the time is right that has been predetermined by its own biology, the bugger begins to break its way out of the cocoon, which if you’ve ever witnessed a hatching butterfly, can seem like very hard work – which it is. The worst thing you can do is to help the butterfly out of the shell because it needs to work its wings in order to strengthen them enough to be able to fly.
Then, finally, the beautiful winged creature fully emerges, stretches and works it’s wings until it’s ready to fly. Once, it takes flight and gives us their gifts of delight (and of pollinators) as fully transformed beings, they have only a short time to thrive as this is the shortest part of their lifespan. They only have a couple of weeks to freely fly, partake of holy nectars while being the full potential of what they were meant to be all along. I know that sounds kinda corny and I am not giving it the poetic justice it deserves given that I am attempting to describe how a butterfly’s life correlates to the lifespan of a human being – but, just do me a favor – open up and think about it, see it and feel how it is to fly freely as someone totally new and different and powerful – the way that we are truly meant to be in the later years of our lives!
