From Caterpillar to Butterfly ... or Parasite

The role someone played for you must eventually die, if you want to experience a deeper intimacy with that person.

Humans are designed to evolve.

Meaning, at some point the version of someone you are connected to is destined to become something else.

Something more. More radiant. More aware. More enlightened in who they are.

If you try to hang on to the version of someone that no longer serves the person, you begin to stint their growth.

This person either has the choice to reject your blockage, or they mold to it, as a butterfly with clipped wings.

This flightless butterfly reenters a no longer useful cocoon.

At this point, what was designed to grow into something beautiful and fly freely, slowly weathers away until the butterfly looks unrecognizable.

Its wings become brill from not flying. Its color fades from not soaking in the sun. It’s full of fear from not experiencing the different elements of life.

This is the result of continuing to play a role that goes against its very process.

And a question I ask to those who cage and oppress the potential butterflies in your life:

What do you expect to gain from trying to be fully served by something that wasn’t designed to fully serve you?

You deny yourself life.

You hang on to the hope that if you keep the butterfly caged, you yourself will be free. You believe by preventing the butterfly from evolving, you yourself do not have to evolve.

You believe you can fight the natural design of life.

You believe you are stronger and more wiser than life.

Ultimately, you deny the steps placed before you that are necessary to yourself.

Why? What’s the fear that motivates this?

You believe these steps lead you to a confined prison, when they in fact lead you to a place you cannot possibly see from the ground.

By focusing on how the life’s process makes you feel uncomfortable, you avoid being with your discomfort.

You avoid being with yourself and looking into your reflection.

Seeing you for what you have become: a wretched caterpillar who has ignored its destiny.

A caterpillar that turns into a nutrient absorbing parasite, no longer in harmony with others and life itself.

All life becomes something for you to feed off of. You are unable to fly off the ground and see multiple perspectives.

You stay stuck to the ground. Looking for something to consume.

What is the parasite to do when it has realized that their resistance to life has made them this way?

What does it do when the footsteps of death sound closer each year, as the seasons embrace, and it does not?

Most times at this point it’s too late. If the parasite is strong enough, it will continue to feed on others, preventing them from being butterflies, until its last dying breath.

Or, if the parasite doesn’t have enough to feed on, it will eventually die. Nature will not aid it for the parasite is resistant to nature itself.

There is another way, but one many people cannot really hope in because the path is so narrow: the parasite becomes aware and adapts to life.

Speaking plainly this means: Protecting those you love — from judgement, from control, from anger, from oppression.

Providing for those you love — in quality time, in resources, in attention, in nutrients, in gifts, in service.

Aiding the life’s plan — if things or moments come to you, you do not resist. You do not fear. You embrace the moment as if had chosen it yourself.

As the parasite begins to do these things it will begin to realign with the natural evolutionary flow of life.

Eventually, it will no longer be a parasite.

When this happens, life itself will once again provide you with what you need to continue the process of growing.

You yourself will become a beautiful butterfly, alongside your partner, friends, and family who are beautiful butterflies.

You will all fly throughout life together, freely, joyfully, as the winds take you to new levels of what it means to be alive.