Butterflies are extraordinary creatures. They have been my greatest inspiration the last several years, and have showed up in my life in beautiful and mysterious ways. Butterflies remind me that the journey is encoded in my DNA and I believe they are the way showers, modeling that total metamorphosis is possible.
“Evolution is written on the wings of butterflies”
-Charles Darwin
In the winter of 2016, a friend of mine died suddenly in a warehouse fire in Oakland, CA. I was so distraught in the days following the fire, and felt angry, actually enraged with the universe. Everything felt like total chaos and I could not understand how a benevolent great spirit could have allowed that fire to happen, killing 36 bright and shining souls, each a beacon and major contribution to the great turning. Immediately following
energy and whispers of loved ones who’ve passed over while in the presence of monarch butterflies.
On January 31st of 2019, for a holiday my friend Rachel invented called “J31: The Firstival”, I travelled down to Michocan, Mexico with a group of people to go to where all the east american monarch butterflies travel to spend the winter and rest before their next migration north. To be surrounded by millions of them was an exquisite gift, it felt like peering behind the veil to reveal the divine intelligence orchestrating it all.
We have the ability to radically transform as a species. I believe a radical shift in our collective consciousness is underway.
To better understand the opportunity hidden in today’s crisis, consider the tale of another world in transition. Imagine you are a single cell among millions that comprise a growing caterpillar. The structure around you has been operating like a well-oiled machine, and the larva world has been creeping along predictably. Then one day, the machine begins to shudder and shake. The system begins to fail. Cells begin to commit suicide. There is a sense of darkness and impending doom.
From within the dying population, a new breed of cells begins to emerge, called imaginal cells.(aka YOU!) Clustering in community, they devise a plan to create something entirely new from the wreckage. Out of the decay arises a great flying machine—a butterfly—that enables the survivor cells to escape from the ashes and experience a beautiful world, far beyond imagination. Here is the amazing thing: the caterpillar and the butterfly have the exact same DNA. They are the same organism, but are receiving and responding to different organizing signals.
That is where we are today. When we read the newspaper and watch the evening news, we see the media reporting a decaying caterpillar world. And yet everywhere, you and other human imaginal cells are awakening to a new possibility. We are clustering, communicating, and tuning into a new, coherent signal of love.
- -Bruce Lipton, Biologist