A few days ago I read a post from Seane Corn where she talked  about trusting the process and used the image of a caterpillar right before becoming a butterfly.

Trust your process, let it open your soul and allow for a new awakening to occur that can bring you closer to your highest self in love. Always remember “just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly. – Seane Corn

The analogy struck a chord in me, and something in me made me want to share what my process can sometimes look and feel like, knowing and believing that I am not alone in this. This comes from my own personal daily writing:

I have been waking at around 3am and in the darkness of the night, so many thoughts and feelings arise.  In those moments, I have no-one and no-where and nothing to turn to…but God. And in the solitude where communing seems somehow easier (or perhaps all I have), I ask to be shown the way out the the darkness, but it only seems to grow. I feel the sense of loss, the grief that comes with having to let go of ideas, and hopes. I feel wrapped in darkness and in that darkness the tears come and I yearn for relief.

Some say the eclipse symbolizes the end of something and something new to be borne out of the darkness.  In the idea of the caterpillar, I feel myself trapped in the chrysalis, and I’m alone and can’t see the light. I can’t see the hope of something new and better..  Just darkness, like the state of the world.  This is a turning point, but I need guidance, and I’m being shown in my own process that there is only one to be reliant on.  In the middle of the night I feel myself squirm away from the painful lonely sensations. I feel the desire to have someone wrap their arms around me and help to take away those scary feelings, and these moments, when no-one can be there and it’s just me, the blackness, my tears, I seek distraction from the pain. Noise, approval, an ego boost.  Anything to remind me that I am “someone”.  Because in truth, the ultimate terror is to realize the ego’s attachment to self.  This is what total self-annialation looks like, and there is nothing more terrifying to our ego than being annihilated.  Free-falling, scary, dark. I want to be rescued, held. But there is nothing.

Knowing the journey of the caterpillar, I keep my eye out, I keep wondering when the light will crack through. I keep wondering in what way my wings will unfold. Until the sun moves, until the eclipse passes, right now, in this dark, tight place, I can’t begin to fathom what will come next.  I can’t even dream of how all this will come out beautiful.  Right now, in the darkness I guess I can’t see the doors that might be opening, I just sense all the doors that have seemed to shut.  Until I crack open, my new path will not be revealed.  And so I find solace in these lyrics from Trevor Hall:

you can’t rush your healing, darkness has it’s teaching