Before we fly....

Scrolling my newsfeed on Facebook the other day, I saw this quote, as part of an inspirational meme: "When a butterfly is mature, it slides from its chrysalis, dries its wings and flies away." My immediate thought was, "It's not that simple!"

I know the reality of the butterfly's post-chrysalis phase, and I also know that it's a great metaphor for your growth and transformation--and mine. For us, emergence from our transformations is also not so simple.

Years ago, I was a butterfly farmer (yep, raised Monarchs) and I can tell you that there is a significant span of time and some crucial activity between a butterfly's emergence from the chrysalis and that first flight. This window of getting ready to fly is greatly over-simplified by the phrase "dries its wings."  In fact, three simultaneous and inter-related activities take almost a half-hour to complete. In a six-week lifespan, that 30 minutes is like 4-1/2 years for one of us humans.

First, the butterfly begins to "zip" its proboscis, creating a long cylindrical tube out of what starts out as two half-cylinders. She unrolls and re-rolls the two sides of the divided proboscis, over and over, to seal them into a continuous long tube that will enable her to feed for the six weeks or so of her lifespan.

This rhythmic unrolling and re-rolling is associated with and necessary to another rhythmic pulsing. The newly emerged butterfly is all abdomen, fat with blood, which must be pumped into the crumpled, tiny wings to fill and expand them. The abdomen contracts, pulsing and pumping the blood into the wings, in rhythm with the proboscis as it unrolls and re-rolls.

Finally, as the shriveled little wings fill with blood, and the abdomen thins down to the narrow twig it will be for the rest of this creature's life, the wings begin to pulse, as well. They open out flat, move together like praying hands, then open flat again. The rhythm continues in synchrony with the zipping of the proboscis, until the wings are dry and the proboscis is sealed and ready to suck nectar.

If any one of these steps is not completed, the butterfly will die very soon. No proboscis to feed with, tiny wings unexpanded, or an abdomen too heavy to lift--any one of these errors can doom this beautiful little insect.

These kinds of activities, a period of getting ready, are also essential in our growth as human beings. After a childhood and maybe many adult years crawling around like a caterpillar, focused only on survival, you may have entered a period of transformation. Maybe that chrysalis stage involved some therapy; maybe it was a self-directed process of reading, study and reflection; or maybe you "did your work" in a supportive environment like a spiritual community. 

However you created that chrysalis of transformation, when you emerged from it--like the butterfly--you were not yet ready to fly into a new way of living. You needed a period of time find your rhythm. You needed to practice, practice, practice some new interpersonal skills that enable you to receive the nourishment available from healthy relationships. Like the butterfly unrolling and re-rolling its proboscis, you had to "zip up" a state of wholeness in your ability to receive love, enabling you to take in this nourishing nectar of life. 

Just as the butterfly must pump its blood--its life force--from its abdomen into it wings, the new heart and spirit you created during your transformation had to be pushed out from your center, into all the pathways of your life. Your new emotional heartbeat had to find how its rhythm fits in the whole symphony of your life. Your new awareness of who you are--what you want, what you believe in, what you value--had to move from awareness into actuality; from principle to practice.

Integrated with these activities of practice and expansion, you got reacquainted with the environment in which you live your life, the equivalent of drying of your wings. All the friends you had before your transformation had to get to know you as a butterfly, rather than a caterpillar. You had to learn to navigate work, family, maybe your marriage or other primary relationship, and all your friendships, as one who no longer creeps and crawls, but takes to the skies. Some longtime friends may have been lost, if those friends kept expecting the newly-winged you to continue crawling.

For humans, as for butterflies, transformation is not over at the end of the incubation period. Call it a chrysalis, call it therapy, call it healing, call it enlightenment.... Regardless, after transformation must come another kind of transition, in which you ready your life, in which you learn to live as a transformed one. This period of "becoming" is a time when the 7 Childhood Treasures work can be your ally.