I’ve only one thing to do and that is . . .

. . . . be the wave that I am and sink back into the ocean

Fiona Apple

"When a caterpillar enters its chrysalis, it dissolves itself, quite literally, into liquid. In this state, what was a caterpillar and will be a butterfly is neither one nor the other, it’s a sort of living soup. Within this living soup are the imaginal cells that will catalyze its transformation into winged maturity."

Rebecca Solnit

When I was in graduate school, I remember one lively discussion in particular.  We were talking about what was known about healing and transformation.  What was it and what made it possible?  A fellow student asked the professor how come some people “got better” -  became more conscious,  and others couldn’t.   

“Those who can withstand . . . endure . . . see their way through pain and discomfort will heal and grow.”

I asked a similar question when I did my research on resiliency and came to the very same conclusion. 

Awakening spiritually is surrendering – it is a movement of subtraction, undoing, and therefore means living inside a profound letting go and uncertainty.  It is a letting go of the familiar and the known, the limited and the relied upon, dissolving, at least for the caterpillar, literally into liquid. The caterpillar is becoming no-more!  For however long it takes it is neither a caterpillar nor is it a butterfly. 

To the ego this is crazy talk, terrifying. Like letting go of the trapeze behind before getting hold of the bars in front.  Like the Saturday between good Friday and Easter.  To the ego, in the world of ‘trying’ it is like a combative tug of war.

To presence, inside silence, letting go is a sweet, sweet call into the most effortless movement, into profound rest.  To presence, to silence it is the beloved beckoning to the lover. The very nature of presence is openness . . . always there, softly holding and containing. 

I clearly remember my delight and surprise when the shift out of separation into oneness proved gentle and oh-so-natural.  The extraordinary so ordinary.  And the ordinary exquisitely extraordinary. Like slowly falling back or down into a bed deliciously padded with layer upon layer of soft cotton.  Like the autumn leaves swaying and floating or carried along with the winds as they fall from the tree and glide to earth.  

Not at all what I had expected. Certainly not what my ego had conjured and fretted about – expecting it to feel . . . no, to be terrifying - like a long, horrific fall over the cliff of the Grand Canyon.  

We essentially are natural beings; we are designed to evolve, grow and transform.  We are designed to wake up to our true being, to remember, to come back home to ourselves, our Selves.  When we are devoted to growing and to waking up, we will consciously find ourselves in the land of uncertainty, having to remember . . . in our bones remember the imaginal cells that will carry us to the “other side”.  

The longing to wake up comes from the deepest place in us.  It is this longing, this whiff of an invisible world that propels us to withstand the terrors and confusion we experience when we sincerely open into the unknown and let the clinging to the familiar and the known sift through our fingers. 

The longing to wake up comes from the deepest place in us. But it often gets hijacked by the ego and misunderstood as freedom from any kind of uncertainty.  We often act as if we are allergic to that in between place, setting our hopes instead on some kind of pain free life or perfect personality, some sort of completion.

It is the taste of something much larger than ourselves that will allow the letting go into expansiveness. Yes, it may require courage, but in its purest sense it is a call to a deep relaxation – a relaxation of sliding into that gentle and tender sweetness, a relaxation of resting in the arms of the deeply treasured and dearly loved.  

The heart-felt spaciousness of pure presence gives you the freedom to fully feel absolutely everything that’s arising for you. Every feeling that’s showing up . . . comfortable and uncomfortable . . . sadness, joy, frustration, anger, sorrow, happiness, melancholy, despair, fear . . .  is welcomed, embraced and experienced. Spiritual awakening is the freedom to feel absolutely everything that’s showing up for you, not about being free from painful or ecstatic feelings.  What is felt, what is known, is bathed in presence. No matter what arises, it can be soaked in love and let go; can dissolve and go on its way, giving way to the next moment and the next after that. 

Have you noticed . . .whenever you are accepted completely, unconditionally, if even for a moment, you begin to open and feel more; perhaps more deeply . . . more honestly?  Acceptance, feeling loved gives you the courage to open even further, gives you assurance, warms you from the inside out.

We live in a body that moves and desires and stretches beyond imagination. We live in a body that gets sick, ages, breaks, and dies.  We live in a psyche with a history and memories, full of all sorts of thoughts on that history, all sorts of perspectives and grudges and ‘certainties’.  We live inside a psyche that feels, sometimes deeply and sometimes overwhelms us.  

Complete and radical acceptance of all that gives you confidence to be yourself, be authentic, honest.  (Who amongst us have not experienced judgment or a lack of respect and seen how quickly that shuts us down- whether that judgment is coming from you or from someone else). Acceptance beckons, “be yourself . . . I love you just as you are, not what you do or look like or what you have.” 

Have you noticed? . . . when you do not have to meet outside expectations or demands; when your true being is respected and loved, fragmented parts of you are invited into the fold and integrate, effortlessly.  

This is love. This is why love realizes us so deeply. 

And the part that still appears a blessed miracle to me - when you are loved as you are, as all parts of you are loved and included, change happens; not according to someone else’s idea of how you should be – but instead, you unfold according to your own genuineness. You sing the song in your heart; you dance the movement in your being. When you are loved, you transform. You don't adapt or alter or become fixed, you transform. You come alive, as life being lived through you alive.  As undoing happens, as old skins are sloughed, you are incrementally renewed and expanded into new dimensions of your effortless being.  

And to my continual appreciation and awe the opening continues and there appears no end to what love does.  I remember silent prayers that my heart would open – not having any idea how the world as I saw it had to die first.  The letting go of the folly of separate existence and return to the real existence of oneness.  The very devotion to fall deeply in love with everything, coming from deep within, slays you . . . liquefies you . . . and revives you.  

It is a dance.  Acceptance and letting go.  The letting go is a falling into love.  What allows us to endure, withstand and find our way through the pain and suffering of being human is love, is acceptance, is compassion.

Every act of acceptance . . . every act of love moves mountains.  Life can be a love affair as the parts, and pieces and phases of life that are unconscious are irresistibly drawn and, like moths to flame, softened and transformed within the light of consciousness. 

“We are in the soup (always).  Why not become a butterfly.”

                                                                                                Rebecca Solnit