Wings and Flight

Wings and flight: 

of course it isn't an easy transformation, it seems the caterpillar's own immune system recognizes this event as a threat and offers a response to attack the very cells within it's system that are responsible for this metamorphosis. There's a strong resistance to the amazing change that offers wings and flight, an ignorance of what's to come even within the wisdom of the caterpillar's own body. Eventually the cells of change overwhelm any last resistance, using the material left to assemble a complete new structure, eventually connecting to remaining parts to complete this transformation. 

from resistance to surrender...

a butterfly emerges.

really, it's a natural resistance, sensing the pain of transformation, a bodies betrayal of familiar circumstance to the promise of something completely foreign and beyond its scope even fathom - a butterfly is born of initial suffering, fear of the unknown, and its eventual surrender. From caterpillar to flight is the story of life, our story too in similar metaphor, that we suffer the change of familiar to the unknown, comfort traded for the pain of transformation, the ground of our reality taken right beneath us without a trace of warning. We think of a caterpillar's metamorphosis as a seamless transformation to the amazing world of a butterflies flight. Yet wings and flight are earned from resistance, anguish, fear, and there is no promise of survival, no hint that another world awaits beyond this present suffering. There's just what's happening now, without explanation, nor story of a better world. 

a caterpillar has no faith in a butterflies world.

it doesn't yet exist in its reality. 

for a period there is only resistance, fight to regain the familiar world of leaves and ground, to maintain a caterpillars body even as it's betrayed by it's very own immune system. This is no easy surrender, again, wings and flight are hard earned, given through the grace of long suffering to the exact moment of letting go of all that's ever cherished. Yet it is a seamless transformation too, everything is present within the caterpillar for wings to grow, and flight is always an innate promise, even in the cells that are eventually destroyed. 

a caterpillar isn't a butterfly, nor is it anything other. 

there is a moment of our own wings and flight, but we are not meant to know it, our transformation is always present and ongoing, without promise that we will become anything other than exactly what we always are. We emerge to the world of flight only through a natural surrender, accepting what's present without denial of its pain, enduring through our own reality and not dreaming ourselves as something other. That's our immediate grace, our gift of wings and flight, always now, always now, and never strayed from our own surrender. 

each moment,

we are transforming.

our metamorphosis never truly complete...

we are always in the process of ending, becoming, resisting, and letting go - we are life in constant change and wonder. 

realizing this, we gain the grace of wings and flight. 

~

Peace, Eric