Metamorphosis: A Journey in Seven Parts

Dedicated with gratitude to
   A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love

Living Oneness means enfolding ALL of our brothers and sisters in love’s embrace. No one is left out, for not a single one of us is truly home until each and every last one of us is home. Relationship with each one and all of everything, is the truth of who we are. And it is in this inclusive relationship with all that we begin truly to trust ourselves — trusting our own knowing with certainty, trusting the ever-unfolding process of coming to know the unknown, and together cocreating the new — a new world.

In this paper, I share my experience of how A Course in Miracles and A Course of Love have worked hand-in-hand in my life. The stages of metamorphosis of the Monarch Butterfly provide the perfect framework to begin to make sense of the essence of my on-going journey; the ‘stages’ I feel I have more or less willingly lurched through, and back around, and onward again, these past several years. Your journey will no doubt be different, and yet, the same — different in form and same in content. May you recognize yourself in my story, and may the recognition bring you comfort.

The Sound Bite

First, for those in a hurry, here’s the sound bite:

I am the caterpillar, the chrysalis, and the butterfly. Twenty-four years ago, ACIM showed up and triggered my transformation from caterpillar to chrysalis. Seventeen years later, ACOL showed up and triggered my transformation (a work in process) from chrysalis to butterfly. Each sacred text entered my life in exquisitely precise timing, each doing its job to perfection.

The Headlines

Next, here are the headlines of each ‘stage’ —

Part One: The Hungry Caterpillar
Full scale engagement with the world, building an upwardly mobile life.

Part Two: The Caterpillar-Chrysalis Hanging Upside-Down
Unseating the ego-self, awakening to choice, and descending into the time of undoing.

Part Three: The Chrysalis Hanging Secure
A leap of faith, replacing belief in the ego-self with tender new belief in the Christ-self.

Part Four: The Chrysalis Dissolving
Descending deeper, total dissolving of the ego-self, a time surrender, pain, grief and isolation.

Part Five: The Primordial Soup
An in-between time of no-identity, great vulnerability, and deepest excavation.

Part Six: The Butterfly Emerging
Dawning of a new way of being present, joining in union and relationship, in dialogue, of knowing without words, of enfolding all of everything, of informing and being informed by the intent of creation.

Part Seven: The Butterfly — Yet to be experienced in sufficient, sustained depth to write about!

“Go forth not as completed works of art but as permeable energy, ever changing, ever creating, ever new. Go forth with openness for revelation to happen through you and through all you encounter. Go forth joyously on this adventure of discovery. Be ever new, ever one, ever the beloved.” — A Course of Love

The Story

And for those who enjoy a good read, here's the ‘full’ story — Metamorphosis: A Journey in Seven Parts

Read about the spiritual foundation of CoCreating Clarity.