From Caterpillar to Butterfly: Quarantine is Humanity’s Necessary Metamorphic Time in the Chrysalis
Use this time of quarantine wisely. It’s not a time to push away the silence and pine for the “good old days”; rather, it’s a unique opportunity for self- and world-reflection. This is not a time to wish us quickly back to the comforts and familiarities of “normal”, to the life of the caterpillar; rather, it’s an essential right of passage, a metamorphic period where “normal” must dissolve into the butterfly. The metamorphosis of caterpillar to butterfly is a widely-held representation of the stages of transformation that no human being can avoid, try as they might; a transformative period we are now in the thrust of. The stages are, in essence: 1) Leaving the known and comfortable; 2) Incubation and dissolution of self; 3) Emergence […]
Healing and Self-Love: The Courage to No Longer Diminish the Truth of Our Childhood Adversity
Listed at the bottom are 26 examples of adverse experiences you may have diminished in order to cope and survive. I’ve also included a short video to add further context. There’s a saying: “Love is a place we go when we no longer wish to hide.” The same is true with healing. Because healing is seeing and feeling something for what it is, without diminishment, which is an act of self-love. Healing occurs when we no longer diminish our childhood adversity — both what happened (verbal and physical abuse, for example) and what didn’t happen that we desperately needed (affection, for example). It occurs when we own the magnitude of the environmental failures endured. We own the stark reality that our older brother beat us, […]
COVID-19: A Call to Wake from the Perennial Dream of “Normal”
When the world pushes you to your knees you are in the perfect position to pray. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi In times like this, with the world besieged by outright panic and high levels of uncertainty, the words of ancient wisdom keepers, such as Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi, resonate loudest. Now is a good time to take in the sages whose words have so often fallen on deaf ears. Indeed, with growing fear and a collapse of global infrastructure—sporting events, conferences, schools, businesses, etc.—collectively, we are being brought to our knees. The slowing and stoppages bestow a rare opportunity to see/consider something we cannot when lost in the busyness of everyday living; when upright in our usual stance. We are being forced to uncover […]
To Welcome Someone into Our Heart, First We May Need to Learn to Push Others Away
There is a great emphasis put on letting love in. “Open your heart” says the self-help teacher. “Give yourself to love” sings the romantic poet. They make it sound so easy! Yet, for the one who learnt that love is unsafe, the heart is quite guarded. Coiled around it, usually for decades, is protective barbed wire. The closer one gets to the heart, the closer one gets to the wound and the protective mechanisms keeping people away. For this wounded one (who makes up many, if not most, Euro-westerners), asserting boundaries may be the necessary first step. Before letting love in, the old truncated impulse to protect must be exercised. Completing survival responses A precursor to the vulnerability of receiving is so often the vulnerability […]