This episode of Living Myth looks at both the need to transform and our resistance to change through the lens of the metamorphosis of butterflies. The fact that the Greek word psyche means butterfly implies how we are secretly connected to the essential dynamic of transformation in life. As if compelled by the primordial poetics of transformation, scientists named the cells that carry the potential for a true transformation of the caterpillar “imaginal cells.”
The capacity of the imaginal cells to develop into a butterfly and transform life completely is related to the inner capacity of the human soul to also transform repeatedly in the course of life. In the same sense that the imaginal cells hold all the information and energy for the butterfly to be, there is core imagination and deeper self trying to awaken in the soul of each person.
At the same time, something within us resists changing, even when the time for transforming our lives has come. In the mysterious way of the world, the metamorphosis of the butterfly also offers ways to understand why we resist the exact changes we most need in order to transform ourselves and help change the world. In simple biological terms, an exchange of one kind of cell for a different kind of cell changes a crawling caterpillar to a winged butterfly. In terms of understanding the essential dynamic of change in the world and at the core of the human soul, a great mystery is revealed that can be called the wisdom of the butterfly.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
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Episode 385 - Your Inner Initiate
Episode 384 - Dealing with Emotional Storms
Episode 383 - Threaded by Dreams
Episode 382 - Unlocking Destiny
Episode 381 - Coming of Age in an Age of Chaos
Episode 380 - Elders and Youth on Paths of Healing
Episode 379 - Earth Day and the Origins of Gaia
Episode 378 - Mythic Medicine
Episode 377 - Eclipses and Epiphanies
Episode 376 - A Divided World, A Hidden Unity
Episode 375 - The Return of Eros
Episode 374 - Threads of Fate and Destiny
Episode 373 - Lies that Poison, Truths that Heal
Episode 372 - Jonah and the Whale
Episode 371 - Fear is the Way Through
Episode 370 - Veiling the Truth
Episode 369 - Three Kinds of Wisdom
Episode 368 - Touching Spirit, Making Soul
Episode 367 - The Redemptive Power of Soul
Episode 366 - Facing Our Fears
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