Butterflies 🦋

Metamorphosis (Part 5)

We don’t always get what we ask for but we always get what we need.

I went into my “retreat” emptied out, having died all the way through. Not in a bad way though. I have been emptied out before. That was different. That felt like a dead end.

This emptying out felt regenerative. I imagine this is how trees feel all winter long. Barren and Frozen on the outside, so much going on the inside.

I came home to New Jersey and witnessed the tree on the front lawn in full bloom. The most gorgeous purple flowers, peeking from every branch of the tree. 

“It suddenly bloomed,” my husband said.

There was nothing on that tree a week ago and now it was standing gloriously, with its beauty proudly on display.

“Wow! That happened fast!” I said but then caught myself.

To our eye, it happened so fast. It suddenly bloomed. Nothing yesterday and now “Wow!”

That isn’t the full story though. 

There is so much that happened beneath the surface. So much we can’t see or feel or touch. The tree went through a massive shedding, dying and then just waiting in the liminal, fully surrendered. 

All this while, the elements around the tree, air, light, earth, and water, continued to do their magic. And here it is! Fully bloomed.

I felt like that tree. Still, rooted, surrendered, and in complete harmony with the elements around me.

So emptying out actually felt like preparation for the Re-Birth. For the Emergence.

In one of my meditations, I saw a multicolored butterfly shimmering right in front of me. The cadence of its breath matched mine. Its wings fluttered as it came close to me. I don’t know how to say this but either I absorbed her or she absorbed me because we became one and the same. There was no separation. We moved as one, we shimmered as one. 

It was such a moving and yet fierce experience. You know sometimes you have these moments that you know they’d change your life forever. You know that even though that moment may not feel spectacular or in any way relevant, it means something.

This was that moment! I mean it definitely was spectacular in every way but it was also evolving my consciousness in some way. 

I journal every day. On the last day of the retreat, I came back to my room and wanted to write about my experience. 

I wrote 6 pages and towards the end drew a butterfly. I didn’t do it consciously and was surprised that I drew one. 

It felt like a sign from up above that my Re-Birth was near and my metamorphosis was complete. But have you heard of that joke on Instagram “Okay Universe but can you give me a more signier sign?”

I did that. Our hotel property had the most beautiful rainforest inside the premises. I mean it was a Greenhouse but there were no birds, no bees, not even a bug! I knew it’d be kinda hard for me to find a butterfly there and I had no plans to leave the property.

But I said “Okay Infinite Intelligence, I may need something more. If I really made contact with you this week and if this means that I am ready to make my way up from the underworld, show me a butterfly.”

And then I let it go.

The next morning I was so enormously wrapped in joy and bliss that I totally forgot about it. I had some time before I had to leave for the airport so I decided to go into the gift shop to buy my kids souvenirs. I was wandering around the shop when I saw it!!

Butterfly earrings!!!

That was definitely my sign! I had to get them.

Lessons 6 and 7 are intertwined in the way the butterfly and I were.

Life moves through us when we get out of our own way.

Now, it’s Bloom Time! 🌸