Why the butterfly?

The butterfly commemorates personal potential. We know that the butterfly does not start out as a butterfly. It

starts out as a caterpillar that hangs upside down from a twig or leaf and spins itself a silky cocoon. It’s skin

hardens into a chrysalis. Within its protective casing, the metaphorical transformation takes place. 

The caterpillar’s body literally disintegrates. 

Imagine the agony and pain that may be involved for evolution. There was nothing in the caterpillar to tell it to hang in there.

Don’t give up. You were created to be more. It feels like the only thing left to do is - die. It’s world is over. 

The caterpillar and butterfly are, in fact, one in the same.

What was once a caterpillar attached to a twig is transformed. Metamorphosis occurs. Metamorphosis is the Greek word that means transformation or change. During the metamorphosis the biology of the caterpillar doesn’t change. What does change is the shape. It’s almost like it rearranges itself into a butterfly. 

Unbeknown to the caterpillar it already has everything it needs to become the butterfly. 

The potential is already there. 

The caterpillar just isn’t aware of it. It doesn’t realize it’s potential, nor does it realize what it was really created to be. I associate this metaphor to us when we are ready for change. As the caterpillar withdraws, and literally dissolves, so do many of us withdraw and feel like we are dissolving, like our world is over. Everything we thought we knew, our dreams, ambitions, and ideas seem to no longer hold meaning. 

We feel lost, incomplete, like the world as we know it, is over. But just like the caterpillar, our world doesn’t have to be over. Like the caterpillar, we have a choice. We can stay in that cocoon and die, or we tap into our inner strength to break our way out. If the caterpillar who is now a butterfly refuses to break out of the hard shell, and stays in it’s comfort zone (the cocoon) it will die. 

On the other hand,

if it decides to fight, maneuver and burst it’s way out, it will be free to fly! It bursts out with innate knowledge and power. No one has to teach it how to fly. 

It just flies! 

As the caterpillar that already has everything it needs inside to become the butterfly! 

You too, have all you need inside you to be that butterfly you were created to be.

May you realize and discover your own Divinely orchestrated personal potential when you consider the butterfly!