What the Caterpillar Knows: The Blueprint of Perfection Inside You

It’s all about imaginal cells

Image by Bettina Berlin from Pixabay

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” — Richard Bach

I was reading a Medium article the other day by Jess West called From Caterpillar to Butterfly: Breaking Free From Limiting Beliefs. In her article (linked below), she mentions “imaginal cells,” those poetically named seeds of future potential, the ones that hold the blueprint of the butterfly.

I had heard the terminology before, but thanks to Jess it was once again at the top of my mind.

Imaginal Labs, on its About (Our Story) page (also linked below), does a fabulous job describing in simple terms the science of these imaginal cells as they explain the inspiration for their business model.

At first these imaginal cells — the seeds of future potential, which contain the blueprint of a flying creature — operate independently as single-cell organisms.

They are regarded as threats and are attacked by the caterpillar’s immune system. But they persist, multiply, and connect with each other.

The imaginal cells form clusters and clumps, begin resonating at the same frequency and passing information back and forth until they hit a tipping point.

They begin acting not as discrete individual cells but as a multi-cell organism — and a butterfly is born.

Fighting Our True Nature

There seems to be a corollary between this process of transformation in the caterpillar and our own process of transformation. But it’s one that I hadn’t thought of before. It’s the corollary of the immune system.

As humans, we are struggling with a lower nature, but all the while we are already perfect. All spiritual traditions agree on this point but they seem to have different ways of arriving at this perfected state.

Our lower nature, like the caterpillar’s nature, does not immediately recognize the blueprint of a higher nature that is emergent, even though an extraordinary amount of preparation has seemingly subconsciously been taking place. This lower nature of ours can resist and fight the idea of a perfected self that is everything and needs nothing.*

*This preparation is evident in the caterpillar’s tendency to eat voraciously before constructing their chrysalis. Our preparation as humans manifests in myriad ways that might well be better discussed in another article.

By nature, we resist any new information that challenges our belief systems, because they shake our foundations. We stand on what we believe to be true, however limiting those beliefs might be.

Denial is always the first step, mirroring the Five Stages of Grief, or what is also called the Five Stages of Acceptance. When we are confronted with new information, it means the potential loss of something we held to be true before. Perhaps denial in this case is in anticipation of this loss. As humans, we do tend to be loss-averse.

To be open-minded is to be accepting of loss.

It is a balancing act, one that reminds me of a specific rendition of the Chariot card from the Light Seers’ Tarot Deck by Chris Anne.

On this card, a young man is not cemented in front of the chariot led by two seemingly immobile sphinxes as in the Rider Waite Smith deck but is balanced confidently atop a chariot, led by two very swift and powerful horses. The young man is alert and ready to pivot at any moment.

Another image of the balancing act might be that of a sailor, managing the wind and the waves while trying to keep his vessel upright. Indeed, it is less about the idea of balance that we get from a picture of scales, and more of one that requires moment-by-moment adjustments.

The Metaphormosis

I didn’t just make that word up, metaphormosis. Someone else beat me to it. William M. Plater, a higher education consultant, used the term in 1973 in his Ph.D. thesis on communication and community. Writer and writing coach Ellen Waterston used it in a Ted Talk in 2014 where she urged us to change our metaphors to change our lives.

This idea of a metaphor causing change begs the question. Is our metaphor the caterpillar or is it the butterfly? I imagine most people would say it’s both because we can see the beauty in both the earth-bound fuzzy fella and the sky-bound winged marvel. Indeed.

But, do we truly hold the butterfly and all its metaphorical possibilities in our hopeful minds?

I have included a chart to illustrate the possible correspondences between our respective journeys. Please don’t get hung up on the order or static definitions of the terms below; simply contemplate the similarities and possibilities.

Image and concept created by the author.

Our Butterfly Blueprint

I realize that my chart is perhaps too simplistic. As I said above, it’s merely a jumping-off point for exploration.

Maybe our processes are not just spiritual, but also physical and mental. Maybe part of our own chrysalis includes a dark night of the soul, where we are made into a mush of metamorphic proportions. And maybe “enlightened being” is far too simplistic, at least on the timeline we are on.

It is, it seems, a lengthier process, but even the butterfly doesn’t emerge in an instant. It also must emerge of its own accord, lest it be too weak to fly, and instead die. This last statement deserves serious consideration and cannot be understated.

Can we at least stop and consider that perhaps we are fighting our true nature? Can we look at this lower-nature immune response as an auto-immune disorder that is fighting the “good cells,” the imaginal cells of who we are destined to become?

The Bigger Butterfly Picture

Perhaps the most astounding thing I read on the Imaginal Labs website about the caterpillar’s process of transformation was this:

They [imaginal cells] begin acting not as discrete individual cells but as a multi-cell organism — and a butterfly is born.

And with that, another question begs to be asked.

What if…? What if, we don’t become butterflies as individuals — although I think that in some metaphorical and spiritual sense we can — but we become butterflies when our individual selves start to act in concert with one another as a multi-self (multi-cell(f)) organism?

Together we become the butterfly.

When we, as individuals merge in cooperation with each other to overcome the misguided immunities of our lower nature, we can grow stronger to overcome the “mush that is us,” and learn to fly.

Now, wouldn’t THAT be beautiful?

For further reading…

[embed]From Caterpillar to Butterfly Breaking free from limiting beliefsthetaoist.online

[embed]The Story of Imaginal Cells - Imaginal Labs The term "imaginal" has connotations of imagination, the process of creating new ideas and concepts of things that do…www.imaginal-labs.com

Runa Heilung is an Old Soul Alchemist, mystic, and dream archaeologist. She works with dreams, oracles, and the imagination to help people rediscover their Inner Wisdom.