Caterpillar Change To Butterfly Quotes

When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.

When a caterpillar changes into a butterfly it loses it's caterpillar life.

Why is a caterpillar wrapped in silk while it changes into a butterfly? So the other caterpillars can't hear the screams. Change hurts

In her novel Regeneration, Pat Barker writes of a doctor who 'knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

She said it was because one day I was going to have to go through a metamorphosis like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly and that scared me, so butterflies scared me.

In our day and age, global society has been saturated with the wrong teaching of false positivity. The denial of darkness never equates the abundance of light. And the denial of your actual character never equates to the reality of your best character. People today are afraid to work on themselves and on their actual realities, they believe that outward appearances are enough. Outward appearances have become everything in our current day and age. People don't see what they are actually like, nor who they actually are, in reality. They live in a phantasmic version of reality. It has to stop. In the phantasmic version of reality, there is no chance to experience true love, true goodness, and true metamorphosis. The caterpillar does not become a butterfly by telling everybody it has wings. It actually buries itself in darkness and grows those wings.

The world knows caterpillar becomes butterfly but they don’t care that it also becomes a moth. One is diurnal another nocturnal.Human once awakened can change the view to change self from Angulimala to a Buddha

When the world told the caterpillar its life was over, the butterfly objected, “My life has just begun.

Keep up your faith to go high and fly, even after so many pains and sorrow. You can turn from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Life gives you a second change: a call to grow.

When a caterpillar bursts from its cocoon and discovers it has wings, it does not sit idly, hoping to one day turn back. It flies.

The thing about the old is that we never change so much as the young. We slip in degrees, adding rings like trees--a new wrinkle here, a shade less color there, but the young transform like caterpillars into butterflies. They become whole new people as if overnight.

The people thrown into other cultures go through something of the anguish of the butterfly, whose body must disintegrate and reform more than once in its life cycle. In her novel “Regeneration,” Pat Barker writes of a doctor who “knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cat of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.” But the butterfly is so fit an emblem of the human soul that its name in Greek is “psyche,” the word for soul. We have not much language to appreciate this phase of decay, this withdrawal, this era of ending that must precede beginning. Nor of the violence of the metamorphosis, which is often spoken of as though it were as graceful as a flower blooming.

Caterpillars can fly, if they just lighten up.

The uglier the caterpillar the lovelier the butterfly.

Time can do all sorts of things. It’s almost like a magician. It can turn autumn into spring and babies into children, seeds into flowers and tadpoles into frogs, caterpillars into cocoons, and cocoons into butterflies. And life into death. There’s nothing that time can’t do. Except run backwards. That’s its trouble really, it can only go one way.

Butterflies are not called butterflies overnight. They have to undergo tons of changes in order to acquire that name.

Remember that the key thing about life on earth is change. Cars rust. Paper yellows. Technology dates. Caterpillars become butterflies. Nights morph into days. Depression lifts.

Transformation is not a kind place, it’s chaotic and a source of inner conflict because it is not a ‘safe’ place, but it is a place of growth; a place of rebirth where you can restart and realign with who you are. We can learn so much from the caterpillar that grows its butterfly wings in the ache and darkness of its own cocoon; and is reborn, beautiful and free, with wings to fly. This is the true meaning and profoundness of transformation; it is where the truest parts of you can emerge and you transition into the most intuitive and vibrant canvas of yourself.

A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly

A butterfly does not wonder how it can stop being a caterpillar. It simply feels some feeling from within that tells it: isolate yourself in this cocoon and grow within it. It trusts that feeling. When it comes out, it is radiant and beautiful. All the little bug did was follow its nature. You are no different.

If you have WANNA, you can do ANYTHING!! - The Caterpillar That Wouldn't Change

Metamorphosis [10w] Change. Become the butterfly. Don't stay a caterpillar with wings.

Today’s caterpillars are tomorrow’s butterflies.

Why crawl like a caterpillar when you have the wings to be a butterfly?

It can’t be done,” they told the caterpillar. “It can,” replied the butterfly.

While the whole world was asleep, the caterpillar was awake, working towards becoming a butterfly.

I think that positivity— real positivity— is like the butterflies. The whole essence of the butterfly: caterpillar, cocoon, winged creature. When I look at a butterfly, I not only see a winged beauty, but I also see a strong beauty! A mind that decided: "I'm going to become better, I'm not going to be afraid of the dark, I'm going to roll myself up in this thing that I am and I will come out winged and colourful." A butterfly can never become a butterfly unless the caterpillar realises that it needs to become one. This, to me, is true positivity. I don't like what others do— the way they paint on colours and tape on wings. I like what the caterpillars do. They truly BECOME.

caterpillar must shed its skin five times before it forms the chrysalis. The caterpillar doesn’t just change. It completely transforms. The old form dies and the new is reborn. That’s the miracle that gives us hope.

It’s very painful when circumstances don’t allow you to act as per your nature. It may force you to change your nature. If you keep shame, guilt, regret etc. away, this change can be a transformation of caterpillar into butterfly.

Each of us may be a diamond-in-the-rough, needing only a muse and a change in circumstance to go from humble caterpillar to majestic butterfly." - Peter Whitmer, Ph.D. ~from The Inner Elvis: A Psychological Biography of Elvis Aaron Presley

Rivers knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the proces of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

It is actually during this resting phase that it is most productive. While it is cocooned in its sac, it is quite literally changing form! Organs, limbs, tissues, the whole deal – all parts of the caterpillar are changing. Interrupt this process too soon and the butterfly would be completely unformed. But wait in faith for just a moment; in between your breaths, something completely new and breathtaking will be born. We

Using time, pressure and patience, the universe gradually changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls, and coal into diamonds. You’re being worked on too, so hang in there. Just because something isn’t apparent right now, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. It’s not until the end do you realize, sometimes your biggest blessings were disguised by pain and suffering. They were not placed there to break you, but to make you.

Do you see the butterfly?” Suri grinned with enthusiasm. “Yes, I see it, but—” “So stunning and delicate; it’s marvelous. No one can see a butterfly and not stop to admire it. I’d love to be one. To go to sleep and wake up a season later with such beautiful wings and the ability to flutter about. That’s the most wonderful sort of magic, don’t you think? To change, to grow, to fly. But…” She paused. “I wonder what the cost would be.” The smile diminished once more. “There’s always a cost when it comes to magic. I suspect there is a great price to go from lowly caterpillar to glorious butterfly.

A butterfly is a caterpillar which refused to give up its dreams to fly.

Small caterpillars still become big butterflies.

The caterpillar's end is the butterfly's beginning.

The caterpillar achieves its full freedom and potential by transforming into a butterfly. This is the real beauty of change.

back at a distance and watched her the way you’d stare at a butterfly that you’d only known as a caterpillar, wondering how the hell change could be that dramatic.

A caterpillar is a butterfly inside out.

When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.

I don't think he misses being a caterpillar.” "Why not?" "Well, even after he changes into a beautiful butterfly, he's still the same on the inside. He's been the butterfly all along, he just wasn't ready to grow yet.

I recently learned that what happens in a cocoon is not that a caterpillar grows wings and turns into a butterfly. Rather, the caterpillar turns to mush. It disintegrates, and out of this mush, a new creature grows. Why does no one talk about the mush? Or about how, for any change at all to happen, we must, for some time, be nothing -- be mush. That is where you are right now -- in a state of mush. Right now your entire life is mush. But only if you don't try and escape it might you emerge one day as a butterfly. On the other hand, maybe you will not be a butterfly at all. Maybe you will become a caterpillar again. Or maybe you will always be mush.

Does the butterfly lose time in the months it grows from caterpillar to flying beauty? One day, I’m going to want to sleep twelve hours at a stretch and I won’t be able to. I’m not losing time. I am going through a metamorphosis.

Perspective - Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you're forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that. Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them. Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers. Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a false messiah. Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully. The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in awhile, and watch your answers change. Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years. The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof. There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts. Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing: The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have. The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't. A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed, it feels an impulsion....this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reason and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons. You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours. If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages. Every person, all the events of your life, are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you. In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice. The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities." The truth you speak has no past and no future. It is, and that's all it needs to be. Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't. Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends. The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution it not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they'll call you crazy. Everything above may be wrong!

Every time i see a butterfly, it reminds me of how precious life can truly be. To be able to turn from a caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly and fly away so freely and gracefully wherever she may please, without no one in the world to tell her what to do. I wait for that special moment in time when I get to live freely, without no worries, pain or tears. I just want to be happy. I want the laughter in the air without all of the pain. One special day I’ll get to live my life just like that beautiful butterfly. I will no longer feel blue inside.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls a butterfly.” —Richard David Bach The caterpillar believes it is dying because it's being sealed in a tomb. The Master knows that the caterpillar is not dying, and is simply transitioning (to something more). This points out that things are never over, that change is carrying us, (so often kicking and screaming), to higher states of being. I find it interesting that the caterpillar spends it's caterpillar existence crawling, (on a lone weed in the midst of an endless beautiful forest), surviving on bitter, poisonous leaves. Yet resists the changes to come. After the caterpillars "death"... And upon the butterflie's rebirth... The butterfly lives out it's butterfly existence experiencing all of the forest's wonders, being carried by the wind, landing on beauty, and drinking sweet nectar, all the while, being shielded from harm by the caterpillar's bitter and poisonous experiences of eating the weeds. Without the struggles of the caterpillar, the butterfly could never be. It is Truly wonderful how something as simple as caterpillars and butterflies can be such amazing reminders sent to us by a Loving Eternal Creator.

just as in the world of plants and animals nothing ceases to exist, but continually changes its form, the manure into grain, the grain into a food, the tadpole into a frog, the caterpillar into a butterfly, the acorn into an oak, so man also does not perish, but only undergoes a change. He believed in this, and therefore always looked death straight in the face, and bravely bore the sufferings that lead towards it

Then, step by step, you start to understand the difference that it produces inside yourself. And in the end, you choose who you want to be from that moment on. And when you reach that state of mind and being, you cannot undo what you just did. And you change. You transform yourself from a caterpillar into a beautiful colorful butterfly. You start to love your new colors, your wings, and once that process begins, you may develop this desire to fly up, and from up there, you see yourself first, then your life, your family, your friends, your job, everything. You start to compare your previous caterpillar perception, with the new butterfly one. If you like the caterpillar view, you stick to it. If not, you will change it completely. But this is not an easy overnight process. It takes time, patience, and perseverance to live like a butterfly.

Every human being is a wet, gassy katamari of triumphs, traumas, scars, coping mechanisms, parental baggage, weird stuff you saw on the Internet too young, pressure from your grandma to take over the bodega when what you really want to do is dance, and all the other fertilizer that makes a smear of DNA grow into a fully formed toxic avenger. Everyone is different, and advice is a game of chance. Why would what changed me change you? How do I know how I changed anyway? And how do you know when you’re finished, when you’re finally you? How do you clock that moment? Is a pupa a caterpillar or a butterfly?

To explain the metamorphosis that takes place in the process of recovery from addiction, we have to wait for that physiological change to occur -you can’t rush it, it will happen in its own time. Imagine trying to teach a caterpillar how to fly. The poor thing might listen, take flight lessons, watch butterflies darting around. But no matter how hard it tries, it won’t fly. Maybe we get frustrated because we know this whole day has it in him to become a butterfly. So we give him books to read, try to counsel him, scold him, punish him, threaten him, maybe even toss him up in the air and watch his flap his little legs before crashing back to earth. The miracle takes time, we must be patient. But just as it is natural and normal for caterpillars to become butterflies, So can we expect addicted individuals, given the appropriate care and compassion, to be transformed in the recovery process. The metamorphosis is nothing short of miraculous, as people who are desperately sick are restored to health and a “normal” state of being. So don’t sit around feeling sorry for yourself, be grateful that you have a disease from which you can make a full recovery.

It has been a bad year. There’s no way to sugarcoat it, no pretty words I can conjure up to turn it into something sweet, not when I’m so bitter. You’re the caterpillar that went into the cocoon and emerged a glorious butterfly, but I’m the reminder that butterflies don’t stick around long, a few weeks at most before they’re gone. I’m not going to waste time detailing everything. I’ll want to change too much to make it fit with my version of you, the one who walked into that American Politics classroom nearly four years ago and stole my heart, but that guy isn’t here anymore. Where has he gone? He took my heart with him when he left, but I’m going to need it back. I’m going to need it for what’s to come, so I can try to protect it, so it doesn’t shatter when this new version of you hits bottom. Because it’s coming, Jonathan. Your dream has become my nightmare, and I’m begging you to let me wake up. You don’t know this, but the woman you love? The one you hung around for in New York when she was still just a girl, even though you were suffering, and wanting to go, but you stayed because of love? That woman, right now, is doing the same thing for you.

CHAPTER 5. Advice from a Caterpillar The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice. “Who are you?” said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.” “What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar, sternly. “Explain yourself!” “I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, Sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.” “I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar. “I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied, very politely, “for I can’t understand it myself, to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.” “It isn’t,” said the Caterpillar. “Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?” “Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar. “Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,” said Alice: “all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.” “You!” said the Caterpillar contemptuously. “Who are you?” Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making such very short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, “I think you ought to tell me who you are, first.” “Why?” said the Caterpillar. Here was another puzzling question; and, as Alice could not think of any good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in a very unpleasant state of mind, she turned away. “Come back!” the Caterpillar called after her. “I’ve something important to say!” This sounded promising, certainly. Alice turned and came back again. “Keep your temper,” said the Caterpillar. “Is that all?” said Alice, swallowing down her anger as well as she could. “No,” said the Caterpillar. Alice thought she might as well wait, as she had nothing else to do, and perhaps after all it might tell her something worth hearing. For some minutes it puffed away without speaking; but at last it unfolded its arms, took the hookah out of its mouth again, and said “So you think you’re changed, do you?” “I’m afraid I am, Sir,” said Alice. “I can’t remember things as I used—and I don’t keep the same size for ten minutes together!

That night, she was neglecting her pen in favor of rereading one of the most-favored books in her library. It was a small volume that had appeared mysteriously when she was only fifteen. Josephine still had no idea who had gifted her the lovely horror of Carmilla, but she owed her nameless benefactor an enormous debt. Her personal guess was a briefly employed footman who had seen her reading her mother’s well-worn copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho and confessed his own forbidden love of Poe. The slim volume of Le Fanu’s Gothic horror stories had been hidden well into adulthood. As it wasn’t her father’s habit to investigate her reading choices, concealment might have been more for dramatic effect than real fear of discovery. Josephine read by lamplight, curled into an old chaise and basking in the sweet isolation of darkness as she mouthed well-loved passages from her favorite vampire tale. “For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me.” She slammed the book shut. How had she turned so morbid? For while Josephine had long known she would not live to old age, she thought she had resigned herself to it. She made a point of fighting the melancholy that threatened her. If she had any regret, it was that she would not live long enough to write all the stories she wanted. Sometimes she felt a longing to shout them into the night, offering them up to any wandering soul that they might be heard so they could live. So many voices beating in her chest. So many tales to write and whisper and shout. Her eyes fell to the book she’d slammed shut. ‘“You are afraid to die?” “Yes, everyone is.” Josephine stood and pushed her way out of the glass house, into the garden where the mist enveloped her. She lifted her face to the moon and felt the tears cold on her cheeks. “‘ Girls are caterpillars,” she whispered, “‘ when they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don’t you see?’” But the summer would never come for Josephine. She beat back the despair that threatened to envelop her. You are afraid to die? Yes, everyone is. She lifted her face and opened her eyes to the starry night, speaking her secret longing into the night. “‘ But to die as lovers may— to die together, so that they may live together.’” How she longed for love! For passion. How she ached to be seen. To be cherished. To be known. She could pour her soul onto the page and still find loneliness in the dark. She strangled her heart to keep it alive, knowing it was only a matter of time until the palest lover took her to his bosom. Already, she could feel the tightness in her chest. Tomorrow would not be a good day.

The caterpillar Turns into a butterfly It only becomes beautiful once But my soul it changes With every beat of my heart The vessel that holds it Growing more beautiful With every Vital Breath.

it grows. When a larva pops out of its last skin, it becomes a pupa. The pupa stage is a short "rest stop" before it becomes an adult. Pupas don't eat, they just rest. Maybe they're saving up energy to fly. The complete change from larva to adult happens while it is a pupa. When a butterfly caterpillar sheds its last skin, its inner skin hardens into a chrysalis. A moth caterpillar doesn't make a chrysalis. It makes a cocoon. First, it hooks a silk strand to the top of twig. Next, it fastens that same thread to the bottom of the twig. Then it hangs head-down and spins threads across for the rest of the cocoon. Find a chrysalis or cocoon and watch the new butterfly or moth emerge! What It Looks Like The cabbage caterpillar is green or tan. Its skinny body grows no longer than your thumb. It looks like a tiny cucumber, so it can easily hide on a plant, and is hard to find. It is the first bug of spring, and can be found in any garden cabbage patch. What It Eats The cabbage caterpillar was named for its favorite food. It also eats broccoli,

complete change from larva to adult happens while it is a pupa. When a butterfly caterpillar sheds its last skin, its inner skin hardens into a chrysalis. A moth caterpillar doesn't make a chrysalis. It makes a cocoon. First, it hooks a silk strand to the top of twig. Next, it fastens that same thread to the bottom of the twig. Then it hangs head-down and spins threads across for the rest of the cocoon. Find a chrysalis or cocoon and watch the new butterfly or moth emerge! What It Looks Like

pupa stage is a short "rest stop" before it becomes an adult. Pupas don't eat, they just rest. Maybe they're saving up energy to fly. The complete change from larva to adult happens while it is a pupa. When a butterfly caterpillar sheds its last skin, its inner skin hardens into a chrysalis. A moth caterpillar doesn't make a chrysalis. It makes a cocoon. First, it hooks a silk strand to the top of twig. Next, it fastens that same thread to the bottom of the twig. Then it hangs head-down and spins threads across for the rest of the cocoon. Find a chrysalis or cocoon and watch the new butterfly or moth emerge! What It Looks Like

us. Do you remember?” “Like a butterfly?” Gracie suggested. “How it changes from a caterpillar?” “Sort of—but in her head, not just in her body. So she’ll talk slower and not understand everything for a while. Some things she’ll have to learn again.” “Like what?” Caleb crossed his legs and

We want to change from featureless caterpillars to become beautiful butterflies, and the change takes place wrapped up in our own little cocoons.

Ugly caterpillars still turn into beautiful butterflies.

No butterfly is born beautiful and unique:It changes from an ugly caterpillar to become one.

Most of them would have nothing to do with a caterpillar, except watch it through its changes; but when at length it came from its retirement with wings, all would immediately address it as Sister Butterfly, congratulating it on its metamorphosis--for which they used a word that meant something like REPENTANCE--and evidently regarding it as something sacred.

...waiting builds faith's backbone. The waiting is necessary to cultivate a faith to die for and live for, a faith that will literally change the world. Waiting is necessary for faith in the same way a chrysalis is necessary for a caterpillar, to change it from a grub that crawls the earth to a butterfly that dances the air. Many of Jesus' disciples, then as now, would die for their faith. That kind of faith isn't grown in a week. And, mostly, it's not grown in warmth and sunshine. Miracles can take it only so far, and after that can actually stunt it. Its hardiest growth, where the roots get deep and tough, happens in darkness. In winter.

There is this transformation a woman undergoes when she becomes a mother. A sort of caterpillar to butterfly change, leaving them forever different and somehow more beautiful than you ever imagined they could be.

Not all things have the capability of changing their demeanor. A snake will shed it's skin, but will always be a snake. However a caterpillar sheds its cocoon becomes a beautiful butterfly" By Bonnie Zackson Koury

God changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls and coal into diamonds using time and pressure. He's working on you, too.

Everyone is different, and advice is a game of chance. Why would what changed me change you? How do I know when you’re finished, when you’re finally you? How do you clock that moment? Is a pupa a caterpillar or a butterfly?

There is a moment in the process where the creature is neither a caterpillar nor a butterfly. The transforming creature can feel, in that moment, that all is lost. But we know better.

​I have taken to thinking that to repent is to recognise that one has changed to the extent that one is no longer the person who committed some past wrong (the butterfly did not eat the cabbage leaf). Forgiveness is to accept that change has happened in another person (I see you’re no longer a caterpillar). ​I don’t think repentance is saying sorry. I don’t think forgiveness is responding to an apology with a ‘that’s OK’. ​I think repentance is when one recognises that one has become another person. ​I think forgiveness is accepting that the one who wronged you no longer exists, and that they are now a different person. ​And so, lying in my bunk, I think about all those ghosts against whom I bear grudges; memories of people who no longer exist. Have they moved on? They must have. Have I? I need to. They are no longer those people. I am no longer the person they knew. I understand that. I accept that. I repent and they are forgiven.

Life is a common good, it inheres in man and beast and passes from one to another, from body to body, this is how souls travel. In nature, everything is constantly changing, nothing is lost. The soul, that is, what constitutes life, is like wax: it retains its identity but only changes shape and constantly appears as new individuals. This is the nature of being: nothing in the world remains in one state, everything flows, every phenomenon is in progress, time itself moves steadily, like a river. Night turns into day, day into night, the moon has different phases, the year has different seasons. Nor will our bodies remain tomorrow what they are today or what they were yesterday. How many changes does a person undergo in the course of life, from fetus through infancy, crawling, maturity, aging, and unto death! And the whole universe. According to theory of the four elements, everything that exists arises from these very basic elements, and everything then turns into building material. “To be born”means “to begin to be something else.”“To die”means “to stop being what you used to be.”The ingredients are interchangeable, but matter remains the same. What does geology prove? Eternal transformations of the earth. There were seas, and now there are no seas; there were mountains and they have vanished; rivers flowed and dried up; volcanoes erupted and cooled. And that’s just the inanimate nature for you! The law of change in the animal world is even clearer. Caterpillars turn into butterflies, tadpoles into frogs, larvae into bees. Human societies and states are governed by the same principle. Troy has fallen, Pythagoras said to Numa Pompilius, and it is from that fall, thanks to Aeneas, the progenitor of the Julian house, that the Roman Empire will be reborn. It will be very powerful. Pythagoras did not say what would happen to Rome next. After all, everything changes? Yes, everything changes, the golden age has passed, the iron age has come. Therefore, I tell you, do not eat meat, concluded Pythagoras. And Numa Pompilius, having heard his teachings, came to Rome, instituted civilization there, and instructed a nation of warriors in the ways of peaceful coexistence.

For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must change. —Unknown

Apart from growth and change caterpillars don't become butterflies!

33. Don’t believe in good or bad, or winning and losing, or victory and defeat, or ups and down. At your lowest and your highest, whether you are happy or despairing or calm or angry, there is a kernel of you that stays the same. That is the you that matters. 34. Don’t worry about the time you lose to despair. The time you will have afterwards has just doubled its value. 35. Be transparent to yourself. Make a greenhouse for your mind. Observe. 36. Read Emily Dickinson. Read Graham Green. Read Italo Calvino. Read Maya Angelou. Read anything you want. Just read. Books are possibilities. They are escape routes. They give you options when you have none. Each one can be a home for an uprooted mind. 37. If the sun is shining, and you can be outside, be outside. 38. Remember that the key thing about life on earth is change. Cars rust. Paper yellows. Technology dates. Caterpillars become butterflies. Nights morph into days. Depression lifts. 39. Just when you feel you have no time to relax, know that this is the moment you most need to make time to relax. 40. Be brave. Be strong. Breathe, and keep going. You will thank yourself later.

I recently learned that what happens in a cocoon is not that a caterpillar grows wings and turns into a butterfly. Rather, the caterpillar turns to mush. It disintegrates, and out of this mush, a new creature grows. Why does no one talk about the mush? Or about how, for any change at all to happen, we must, for some time, be nothing—be mush. That is where you are right now—in a state of mush. Right now your entire life is mush. But only if you don’t try and escape it might you emerge one day as a butterfly.

God provides for our complete transformation when we accept Jesus as Savior. This transformation often takes a life time to achieve, still we’re to be moving continually and intently towards this goal. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed (metamorphoo) by the renewing of your minds.” (Romans 12:2) This transformation is a “metamorphosis,” as a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Scripture uses different images to express the change that occurs in all true believers: We become “a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We’re “made new in the attitude of your minds” (Ephesians 4:23). We “put off your old self” and “put on the new self” (Ephesians 4:22, 24; Colossians 3:9-10). We “live by the Spirit” and not by the flesh (Galatians 5:16; Romans 8:13). We become “instruments of righteousness” rather than “instruments of wickedness” (Romans 6:13). We have “been set free from sin and have become slaves to God” (Romans 6:22).

he talked about shifting strategies like they were the middle part of metamorphosis. Apparently when a caterpillar makes a cocoon, the next thing it does is melt. Completely liquefies. And then all the little bits of what used to be caterpillar come back together as a moth or a butterfly or something. Finds a different way to assemble all the same pieces and make it something else.” “Sounds like the protomolecule.” “Huh. Yeah. Guess it kind of does.” Bobbie took another bite of her eggs, her gaze on the far wall. She was quiet for long enough that Naomi didn’t know if she’d come back. “But he meant something tactical?” Naomi said. “Yes. That pivoting your strategy was like that too. You go into a situation thinking about it a particular way, and then something changes. Then either you stick with the ideas you had before or you look at everything you have to work with and find a new shape. We’re in the find-a-new-shape part.

The changing they do is easiest to see when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. That is a

Change can be difficult and painful. Ask the caterpillar, and then ask her again if it was worth it when she becomes a butterfly.

After we left Utah, when I became a life coach, I would see hundreds of clients through hundreds of “deaths.” I’d go through a few more iterations myself, and I’m sure there are more coming before the Big One. It’s always terrifying. It always hurts. It always brings up that familiar passel of awful sensations: the burn of anger, the horrible ache of loss, the sense of the ground falling away under my feet. But once you know what to expect, there’s a kind of calm that comes with the territory. Here we go again, I think, and surrender to the Void, clinging to the bumper-sticker wisdom that “what the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” I’m still mostly caterpillar, but each metamorphosis is informed by the last. Life changes, relationships change, bodies change, beliefs change. Buddha’s “noble truth” of impermanence is the only permanent thing in human existence. Once you’re okay with that, dying—even with all the pain—doesn’t seem as bad as you thought it was.