The caterpillar – butterfly metamorphosis:

I invite you to join me in exploring a phenomenon of nature that will challenge your imagination… the caterpillar – butterfly metamorphosis. Five years ago I presented this subject in two blogs, the subject of which was “Recovering Our Soul.” This time, I have copied the text of a section in the core text we use in training people how to create and guide H.O.P.E. Groups, The H.O.P.E. Manual that I published in 2012. Life has nurtured in me a deep respect for the human soul and its ability to come into human form on Mother Earth for a specific divine assignment. It asks us to perform a life-changing process of growth and development that I find parallels the incredible phenomenon that turns a simple egg into a worm that then develops into that beautiful winged creature known as the butterfly.

Participants in a 1988 H.O.P.E. Group meeting in Portland, Maine, told me that the work was spiritual work… “shamanic soul work”… as found in Michael Harner, PhD’s book, The Way of the Shaman. I found the work intriguing, and participated in a training workshop given by Harner that year, at which I found I had a natural ability to “journey” for people looking for answers to questions… and finding the answers they said they were looking for! Harner introduced me to his student, Sandra Ingerman, who, in turn, taught me how to perform the healing practice of shamanic soul retrieval in 1996. It is a gentle, caring service that I have provided for over 20 years for people who have a subjective sense that they are not quite complete, especially for people with what is known as PTSD. (If you want to know more about this, I recommend that you read the book by Ed Tick, PhD, War and the Soul, and visit his web site: Ed Tick)

The text from The H.O.P.E. Manual continues…
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This miraculous process stuns the imagination with its intricate weave of complex processes, and yet it has a striking resemblance to human psychospiritual metamorphosis. The H.O.P.E. process, be it in a H.O.P.E. Group or a SoulCircling workshop, metaphorically contains all of the elements of this transformation. Let us then examine the process for the butterfly: specifically, the Monarch butterfly.

The egg of all species of butterflies contains DNA with two sets of cellular instructions: one set develops the larva – the caterpillar – and the second set creates the imago – the adult butterfly. The larva has but one purpose: to eat twenty–four hours a day and acquire all of the necessary elements for the formation of the butterfly. Its eyes and antenna–like feelers are specialized for the detection of the right kind of food. Its mouth is specialized for reducing its food to a size manageable by its digestive tract. Its gastrointestinal tract is specialized for the digestion of that food. Its respiratory and circulatory systems are specialized to support these functions.

And in its body lie inert collections of cells that contain the instructions to become the adult butterfly. Science has named these collections “imaginal disks” – words rich in their implication of the presence of an image that will fully express itself in the emergence of the butterfly, the scientific name for which is imago!

The caterpillar will molt once or twice as it grows, and when it reaches a critical size, it will hook its end into a plug of its silk, molt once more, and become immobile, hardening its skin. Its digestive system will break down, sending digestive enzymes throughout its body. All cell walls will dissolve (with the exception of the cells in the imaginal disks!). All intracellular structures will become formless, reduced to their molecular components. The imaginal disks and the central nervous system remain unaffected by these powerful digestive forces.

When the destruction ends, the imaginal disks will begin to draw material out of this primordial stew and replicate themselves with a new set of instructions – butterfly–making instructions – and a new cellular form develops that was always implied in the DNA instruction of the imaginal disks – the butterfly – that builds itself around the only thing left from the caterpillar, its central nervous system.

When this process is complete, no similarity to the larva remains. This new form has true antennae to sense the pheromones coming from a mate that could be up to three miles away. In the case of the Monarch, it has wings that make it possible for the creature to cover as many as three thousand miles to its winter home in Mexico. It has no chewing mouthparts but a long tongue for reaching into a blossom for nectar and water. It has six long legs to carry it gently over the flower. It has eyes capable of recognizing the color spectrum of the flowers that nourish it, and that it, in turn, fertilizes. It has a memory of the future, for it knows the way to its winter home in Mexico, even though it has never been there before!

Moreover, when it swelled and burst the skin of the pupa, now chrysalis, its wings were little fat nubbins completely incapable of flight. It had to struggle to get itself out of the rigid, protective confines of the chrysalis. In struggling, it built up its flight muscles. It drained the blood out of the wings, allowing them to expand to their full span. It had to endure this struggle… any attempt to help it would result in its death.

Now consider this: the adult Monarch knows the way to its winter home in Mexico where there is a particular tree that stays warm overnight, serving as a roost for the butterflies! Consider this, too: the adult butterflies know when the time has come to begin their journey… they all leave together! And this: take a group of butterflies born in Ohio, whose journey would be essentially southbound, and take them to the Atlantic coast. There they will begin to fly south over the ocean… and within 24 hours they will have changed course to go directly to their home in Mexico! Consider this, last of all: one generation of Monarchs makes the journey to Mexico where it over-winters, mates in the spring, lays its eggs, and dies. The resulting caterpillars go through the same metamorphosis as they did in Maine, but going north they take three complete generations of Monarchs to get to their summer home in Maine! Where is the knowledge that makes this incredible journey and return possible? What are the implications for our understanding of evolution?

The ancient Greeks knew something special about this metamorphosis… they gave the butterfly the name of their goddess of the soul – Psyche! Might it just be that as the caterpillar became a butterfly through physical metamorphosis, the human becomes a spiritual being – a soul – through its mental metamorphosis? Might that metamorphosis simply be a shift from guilt/fear/anger to love/compassion/forgiveness? Simple? Yes. Easy? No.

An important question before us… do the helping professions help a human being with a serious illness or mental crisis know that they are in a spiritual process of deep personal transformation? Is it possible to be present to the situation in such a way that the individual in metamorphosis becomes aware that the process is not just a pathological “dis–ease” but a natural consequence of suffering… growth and development? Is it possible to be present to suffering in a beneficial way without trying to stop it – rather to nurture the phenomenon? H.O.P.E’s traditions and practices focus on that possibility.