Metamorphosis

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or

whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

~Chuang Tzu

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes

it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

~Maya Angelou

"Consider what happens to a bottle of water when it is left in the freezer. As it cools down, there is a steady, continuous change in its temperature.


The water won’t change much

in appearance until it begins to get near the critical threshold of its freezing point. Then, as it passes this, an extraordinary process happens.


Tiny crystals form, and when they do, other crystals form around those crystals, until there is a mass movement of crystallization in the water that rapidly changes state from liquid to solid.


This is discontinuous change.
With discontinuous change, a threshold is crossed where rather than just more of the same happening, something different occurs. There’s a jump to a new level, an opening to a new set of possibilities.


We might think it impossible that a small amount of water could crack something as hard as glass, but as the ice expands, it breaks the bottle."


Joanna Macy

“All life on Earth was created by tiny changes in molecules. An inestimable number of changes. Our bodies are miracles of transformation.”

"To find a fossil in a galaxy of rocks, you have to see in a different way. It’s called having a search image, a biological term. A search image is simply a picture an animal has in its mind as it looks for food or habitat. 

When an animal finds something that helps it survive, it fixes the visual characteristics of that thing in its mind. 

If it finds it again, the sharpness of the image improves, as does the animal’s chance of survival. Humans got where they are today with the help of search images, and we still use them every day.

 It’s how we quickly find our favorite cereal in a vast landscape of boxes.

Discontinuous change and phase shifts are the things of cocoons—metamorphosis. Most of us are familiar with the general concept of how a caterpillar will form a chrysalis then emerge weeks later transfigured into a butterfly. 

Less well known is how the caterpillar resists change. As it dissolves in its own digestive acids, the immune system of the cocooned pupa will attack the imaginal cells that are trying to transform it. In turn, a nascent imago will fall again and again into the soup of its former self. But this seemingly counterproductive immune response serves to strengthen the imaginal cells so that they can finally give rise to a winged, visually stunning creature.

Daniel Pinchbeck

How Soon is Now: From Personal Initiation to Global Transformation

"I have come into this world to see this: all creatures hold hands as we pass through this miraculous existence we share on the way to even a greater being of soul, a being of just ecstatic light, forever entwined and at play with Him."

Hafiz 

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies

as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are.  

We adults,

on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to

stoop down to them.  It seems to me that the grass hates us when we

confess our love for it.  Whoever would partake of all good things must

understand how to be small at times.

~Friedrich Nietzsche

Grown-ups love figures.  When you tell them that you have made a new

friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters.  They

never say to you, “What does his voice sound like?  What games does he

love best?  Does he collect butterflies?”

 Instead, they demand:  “How

old is he?  How many brothers has he?  How much does he weigh?  How much

money does his father make?”  Only from these figures do they think they

have learned anything about him.

~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 

From "The Little

Prince"

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.  How

else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?  For the

moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone.

That is where the writer scores over his fellows:  he catches the

changes of his mind on the hop.

~Vita Sackville-West

Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave.

The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.

~Rabindranath Tagore

"Stray Birds"

I blog on a Galaxy Note 9 mobile phone using only mobile data signal in a no wifi home.  Not easy but I am a determined woman who doesn't give up easily!

Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands sharing an imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting "from my heart and with my hands".