*
A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening
appeared, he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it
struggled to force its body through the little hole. Then it seemed to
stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as
it could and could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the
butterfly.
He took a pair of scissors and snipped the remaining bit of the
cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. Something was strange.
The butterfly had a swollen body and shrivelled wings. The man
continued to watch the butterfly because he expected at any moment,
the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body,
which would contract in time. Neither happened. In fact, the butterfly
spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and
deformed wings. It was never able to fly.
What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand, was
that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly
to get through the small opening of the cocoon, are natures way of
forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings, so that
it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the
cocoon. Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life.
If spirit allowed us to go through all our life without any obstacles,
that would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could
have been. Not only that, we could never fly.
Take a look at what obstacles you are facing right now….you were
born for something great…remember the struggle is only there to
make you stronger, to open your mind and body to receive insights
into how to grow and mature.
Without the earth, her creatures and without the elements there
would be so little to learn from. Yet we use the earth as a resource
for our own use, for our survival. The elements are speaking to us,
‘wake up we are here, we have a message for you,’ the disasters
we see and face, the forces of nature are so present with us, yet we
forget there is a teaching in every movement, we can be so naive at
times, stuck in our own blindness and inability to fully connect with
what is around us.

The grub that is to turn into a butterfly becomes liquid within the cocoon. It dissolves itself completely, ready to transform into a butterfly. Some times we need to dissolve parts of ourselves to truly transform.

from ‘Reclaimed Innocence’ (MyVoice Publishing)