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
Nura,
I am in that tunnel with you, with tears and a longing to be done with it. Reach out and hold my hand. Even if we do not exit that tunnel together, we will meet on the other side of it, surrounded by love and God’s mercy for all time.
Gi Gi