Life Anew.
What does it mean to be whole? To feel like a complete Being, a fully formed butterfly exiting the gooey chrysalis into a world of sunlight and sound, wind and rain, armed with certitude of purpose amongst infinite possibility? What conditions, experiences, sensations, formulate this phase of existence, and how does one firmly know that this time indeed has come.
How does a butterfly know that it can fly?
A flutter of brilliant wings flashes through the sky. Flitting graciously through the eternal blue, another butterfly manifesting presence in view of the newly arrived. The dance with heaven and earth, flecked with iridescent glints of the omnipresent sun, draws the eye of all passers by - speaking without words the truth of wholeness, the yawning chasm of Becoming. Dynamic completeness on wondrous display.
And so the other takes flight.
For years I thought I knew what it meant to live, to be a human being in a straightforward world. Sacred paths were laid by those before me, supposedly intended to ease the imminent discomfits of infinite Earthly possibilities - go to school, get a job, make the money, buy the things, raise a family, and remember that your Self is nothing more than a subservient and shamed creature who will one day leave this place for much greener eternal pastures.
Live quietly by these rules, and I would receive salvation.
Let my life be like the rest, and rest would be granted to me amongst this world deemed alien, not my true home.
This programmed experience, designed by minds I’d never known nor met, was a ride I didn’t choose to take; a school bus stopping at the end of my street, the sole option to traverse towards whatever pre-produced existence I was set to suffer. How could I understand that choice was my own to make, to curiously harness, to explore, to create?
I began along the path, crawling in favor of flying, never questioning the lingering feeling in my gut that something was not quite right. Layers of bodily anxiety built up slowly, a persistent chorus of self immolation playing as the soundtrack of my trek towards heaven. It wasn’t long before I learned a Truth; if one is not in heaven, now, then one must instead be in hell.
And in hell I remained, living in a shunned stasis of stulted senescence.
But Life does not accept a dead end for long. Mysterious processes of disruption naturally emerge to flood the weary lands, burn the tired soil, leaving an expanse of possibility in their violent wake. Storms, high seas, fires set by lightning, all commiserating to recycle the decay sitting listlessly on the undulating surfaces of the Earth - organic matter and human spirit, dead yet alive, in desperate need of change.
I knew not just how desperate I was for change, and when it appeared in the form of destruction I at first could do nothing but cry out in terrified despair. My whole world, built by standards set long before I was born, fell apart cleanly like a house of sticks in the wind, a sand castle during high tide. My beliefs, my identity, my family, my love - shattered and scattered into the blank void of nothingness that was my new reality.
Darkness formed a bitter hull around me. My inner world melted into chaotic disarray. My body felt foreign, my mind playing a constant barrage of discordant notes and sounds; no trustworthy sense remained. The voices of friends lost their charm, the spoils of studious productivity lay rancid on the floor of my past.
There was nothing here, in this newfound liminal place.
I was nothing here.
But just as the land is razed to its muddy foundations, new seeds take root. Just as the chrysalis grows the darkest during the long winter nights, sparks of cellular transfiguration take place.
Life transformed into life anew.
