Butterfly symbolism
Butterflies have always been a thing of beauty for me. I can be captivated by them for hours during the spring and summer months when they are abundant. I have jewellery with butterflies on it and am always drawn to clothes or scarves that have the image on them. To me the butterfly represents a symbol of transformation, evolution and freedom. The American Indians view the butterfly as being a spiritual teacher of transformation and soul evolution. The butterfly reminds me that I have the ability to change and to transform, at any given time during life. Old patterns, old beliefs – I can drop those and begin again, I have no need to hold onto anything.
Our health, lives, projects, ideas or thoughts may be at different phases, we can liken these to the various stages of the life cycle of the butterfly and we can take steps to move forward with ideas if we so wish (adapted from Medicine cards: the discovery of power through the ways of animals by Jamie Sams):
Egg– the very beginning of all ideas or thoughts
Caterpillar (larva) – we can relate this stage to the decision to create or take forward an idea in the physical world, evolving it from a thought into an action. We can look at the steps that are needed to develop our idea or our lives
Chrysalis (pupa) – this is a time of development, change and deep thought/reflection. Are we taking the necessary steps to manifest our ideas or projects?
Emergence as a butterfly – a time to share the joy of our creation with the world around us!
Then there is the beautiful story of the butterfly:
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole. Then it stopped, as if it couldn’t go further. So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily but it had a swollen body and shrivelled wings. The man continued to watch it, expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge and expand enough to support the body, neither happened! In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around. It was never able to fly. What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand:
The restricting cocoon and the struggle required by the butterfly to get through the opening was a way of forcing the fluid from the body into the wings so that it would be ready for flight once that was achieved. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us. We will not be as strong as we could have been and we would never fly.
In Entering the Castle Caroline Myss writes : “The silkworm, wrote Teresa is like the soul. She comes alive with the heat of the holy spirit and begins to accept the help God is offering.
The soul builds a cocoon where it will die, says Teresa, only to be liberated into flight once fully mature. She could not have chosen a more perfect metaphor, for the caterpillar has no choice but to spin a cocoon and become a butterfly. It is its destiny. The same is true for the soul. This is the perfect metaphor to describe the ending of one cycle of consciousness and the beginning of another.
The time within the cocoon is difficult, however, for the soul does not know how long it must remain in the darkness. The silkworm is in a highly vulnerable state, unable to protect itself, relying on camouflage to conceal it from predators. The soul is between worlds, in between identities.
What cocoons have you had to endure? The experience of dying to a certain kind of life and being born into another is archetypal, like the Phoenix descending into the ashes, only to be reborn and rise once again.
You may struggle all the way into the cocoon, but you cannot sidestep a cocoon experience if it is time for one in your life. You can choose, however, how to experience the cocoon. You may be able to draw comfort from recognising that you are preparing for emergence into the light, rather than fear that you are alone in a dark, lonely place. To be able to illuminate your most painful moments – or days or months – with the mystical truth that you are living a transformation in progress brings God into the walls of your soul”
“Symbols, rightly used, will deepen their transformative function, allowing us to change our inner attitudes and outer behaviour. The quality inherent in the symbols not only reveals to us new ways of experiencing ourselves and life, it also creates a new line of force in our psyche – one which can gradually become a trait in our personality and thus affect our actions” Piero Ferrucci, What We May Be 2004.
I was thinking about the butterfly and my capacity for transformation last night. How I often have intuitions and ideas but I feel held back through lack of support or fear or self doubt. Picking up Piero Ferrucci What We May Be 2004 and flicking through my eyes landed on chapter 14 The Pathology of The Sublime which starts off by saying “Strange as it may seem, when transpersonal inspiration starts to make itself felt, the personality at times devises ways to neutralise it. The personality realm has its own laws, aims and ways of functioning……the revolutionary impact of the new energies irrupting in the pre-existing framework may be felt as threateningly uncomfortable. Even though they carry with them a strong sense of rightness, superconscious inspirations entail a necessity for the whole personality to rearrange itself in order to fit the aims and laws of the Self. Old habits have to be obliterated, psychological blocks have to be courageously faced, new and vaster responsibilities have to be shouldered, and an unfamiliar rhythm has to be adopted – in other words, a series of big changes is on its way”
That first paragraph of Chapter 14 brought me a lot of comfort and certainly reassured me that I was not simply being lazy! The most striking thing about picking this chapter was the following passage “Sooner or later, it is right for the chrysalis to become a butterfly; but the chrysalis may feel somewhat reluctant about the process of change. Growth is understanding what we have not yet been able to conceive, feeling what we have never felt, doing what we have never done before. It is daring what we have never dared. It may not, therefore, necessarily be pleasurable. It obliges us to leave our comfort zone, to progress into the unknown, to face the tremendous impact of the Self” and I would say that it is this struggle that enables us to become the beautiful butterfly”.
Michael brown writes “High-end transformations of consciousness result from unusually powerful life experiences or from the persistent and disciplined use of inspiring methods and techniques that facilitate them. Transformation is a delicate and fragile process not easy to achieve, and specific principles seem to underlie it. In the world of nature, the metamorphosis of a caterpillar seems to result from at least three interlocking factors: right timing, the safety of a chrysalis, and the successful completion of an internally driven process. When complete, the caterpillar’s basic form has restructured and a butterfly emerges. Right timing, safety, and the direction of an inner guiding principle seem also to be necessary for the restructuring or transformation of basic patterns within the human psyche”. A psychosynthesis 12-step program for transforming consciousness:creative explorations of inner space, Journal of counselling and values, volume 45 January 2001
Well, yesterday I was diagnosed with Lupus http://www.uklupus.co.uk/, http://www.lupusuk.org.uk/ and strangely enough the symbol for many lupus charities is a butterfly due to the fact that some lupus patients get a characteristic butterfly rash across their cheeks and bridge of the nose. I have great comfort in the symbolism because I believe I am in a process of great change, I am evolving, letting go of old patterns of behaviour, moving forwards. It is my journey toward daily inner peace and all is well
