Yesterday afternoon I watched a butterfly being born.
The cocoon, which had been getting clearer over the 19 day gestation period split open and in no time a beautiful 
fresh, soft, limp new Monarch butterfly hung upside down under the milkweed leaf to which it was attached. It hung there, under the leaf, upside down, for about an hour. It would release a brown liquid several times over that period. It moved its tentacles around and made small steps away from the old shell of the cocoon.
After an hour it moved its wings for the first time, opening the beautiful orange colored span wide for a few seconds. It rested a bit and did it again. then it gradually move around the leaf, upside down. After twenty minutes of that it reached the ‘edge’ of the leaf and went right around once. It paused and made a move and gradually from being upside down it was now right side up on the leaf.
It rested again. After a few more minutes it walked all over the top of the leaf exploring the contours of it. It would open its brightly colored wings several times and then all of a sudden it let go and flew it’s first flight to about 15 feet away. It landed on the ground near a car tire and it grabbed on the rubber tire and crawled up the side. It rested again and after a time it flew again. This time making its way to the side of a large maple tree trunk about 30 feet further away.
There it rested again preparing for its next flight. What an amazing process to witness.
This wonderful drama of watching the birth of a butterfly reminded me of our own journey as human beings.
We are born and we crawl around for a while. I suppose our crawling stage can be much longer than that first year of childhood. In a way we crawl around learning about the world in which we were born and how to get around in it.
We collect information and create, as it were, the caterpillar view of life.
That stage of life can be satisfying but there comes a time when we want more. We might ask questions like; what is life all about? What is the meaning of life on earth and pain and sorrow mingled with joy and aspiration?
The dis-ease can grow to be intense and the caterpillar phase comes to an end as the ‘ego’ gets woven into a kind of cocoon.
Like the caterpillar it must let go all of its learning, its beliefs and structures. The caterpillar turns into a gelatin like substance. I suppose that’s like the ego loosing it’s structure. It has to let go of what it thought it was to become what it is intended to be.
In the cocoon it looses the memory and the form of its old self. It lets go of its old structures. It surrenders, as it were to a higher power.
Gradually it is transformed. It becomes a whole new creature. From a hairy flat colored crawling thing it turn into this magnificent brightly colored luminescent flying creature. It has now beauty it did not have and a new power to fly around instead of crawl. It is at a new level of consciousness. It is empowered to experience life at a whole new level.
So it is with the ego or our old self… the self that came into being in a certain context with certain experiences and with only limited ability to process. That poor ‘ignorant’ ego had to learn to make all sorts of decisions without ‘knowledge’ as it were. It created its own world in which to survive.
One day that is not enough and it needs to learn to connect with it Source. In so doing it is given the permission now to move toward the cocoon stage. This could be called “the renewing of the mind” process.
In this phase Spirit instructs the ego. After some time ego comes to a halt – it is trapped in the cocoon. And love instructs it to let go off all its old ideas and beliefs and to trust that it is being empowered to be a whole new creature.
As Thomas Troward says: Principle is not bound by “precedent”.
The ego in its surrender of the old ideas of itself, is freed up now to connect with Principle, free from all those preceding ideas of itself. It can now experience itself at a whole new level of existence. It can now see and understand itself as totally loved, guided and governed. It can understand that it now has the power and the resources to make intelligent decisions according to this new level and that this will continue infinitely. It can now rest from all the stress of the old and expand its wings with joy into the forever spiral of delightful learning and unshakable confidence consciously aware that it is guided by love and wisdom at that it has a share in this great reality.
It knows itself as not separate but it as ‘One with Source’. It is now free to create liff from Principle cleared of precedents. It is free like the new butterfly to spread its wings and create a whole new way of being and of serving. It is free to create from it new awareness and consciousness a life in keeping with it essence.
It’s no longer a bitter caterpillar life but a bright and free flowing butterfly life.
Joy now presides as the new creation, the essential new self co-creates with Spirit a new life from a whole new perspective.
The soul set free sounds through its real beautiful colors.
Peace and Blessings
Norm.