METAPHORS OF TRANSFORMATION

Cracking Seeds
In a dream this week I had a brief vision of a seed, surrounded by a hard shell (as a nut is), cracking open so the fresh green shoot can begin to grown into the plant that is to come. In the dream it was clear that this was a metaphor for spiritual growth.

In reflection the shell is aspects of ego and mind which are formed from old hurts, pain, anger, fear. We hold onto these and make a shell of them to protect ourselves from possible future hurts. But, while it protects us, it also limits new growth.

Just as the shell must crack so the seed can sprout, we have to relax our old protection and release the old emotions so that we can be open to new spiritual growth. Growth that allows us to emerge above ground in this time of spring, to bask in the sun of Spirit, to be nurtured by the rain and the soil.

In this growth beyond the shell of the old ego/mind we find our true nature and purpose. While the "cracking" may be painful or hard, it is also necessary for us to move to a new level and be reborn. Like most processes if we resist it it will take longer, if we relax it can be easier.

May we all be able to recognize the times when our shells are trying to crack open so that we can grow and find our souls.

Butterfly Cells

We have all heard the metaphor of the inch worm becoming a butterfly. When the caterpillar is ready to transform it spins a cocoon. Inside the cocoon it begins to break down, the cells coming apart into an organic goop. As this happens a few new seed cells appear, cells that will be part of the butterfly.

At first the old cells attack these new ones as foreign, perhaps as diseased. But they multiply very fast, and more and more are formed, too many to be suppressed. The old cells continue to fall apart, and around the new seed cells the butterfly is born.

How often to we attack the seeds of transformation in others or even in ourselves? But they are there inside us so that when we let go of the fear of dissolving, of coming apart, when we crack, these new cells, the seeds of the spiritual self are already there to guide the new form. We will loose the old self, but that is not the self/mind that will create the butterfly of our soul. Your higher self, your deeper self, the seeds of your soul already stirring within you will do that.

Relax your self/mind. Just as the new sprout, struggling to be free of the seed shell, knows how to grow into a plant, the seeds of your soul will guide the alchemy by which you become the butterfly of your soul-manifested-through-the-body.

(© 3/09)

THE FLAVOR OF THE SEASONS

Have you ever taken time to notice the emotional flavor to a day or a season? Its easiest on those days that are noticeably un-seasonal. Those days in late August or September that we get a first hint of Fall, or the warm days in February or March that stir up the feelings of Spring. Often its a fleeting sense that we may barely notice, sometimes a whole day that has a different feel.

Here in the front range we have been having a very warm Winter, that has been feeling like late Spring for a while now. Even for Colorado's infamously variable weather its been pushing things a bit and we have had a consistent feel of May through most of February.

For me the awareness is emotional, and the triggers mainly subconscious. It may be the temperature, the color of the sky, the way the light hits, or a smell, but suddenly it feels like a different season. Our subconscious memory structures are all associative, so when we get key sensory cues to the season the associated feelings and sometimes whole memory chains pop up to the surface.

We all have our favorite seasons, or ones that are challenging. Fall for me has long had a flavor of new beginnings, because of the school cycle that I spent so many years in. Other seasons have their own flavors that have built up over the years, some coherent, others mixed.

These flavors become the background of our lives, the layering of old emotions that form the stage dressing for current experience. As long as the progressions are as they have been in the past, and reasonably stately, we don't notice them much, the emotional background is simply part of each season for us.

When things are different we can begin to be aware of how much old flavor we are constantly bringing to the present.

Now we are in high Spring in February I am noticing whole seasons of emotional content that are showing up. Past springs that were good or challenging, floating through my being. I wonder if the clearing processes are moving so fast now that we are releasing the emotional charges not of single memories or events, but whole seasons at one shot.

When we can be aware of these associations we have the opportunity to transmute our relationships with each season: Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. To clear the season's past emotional flavors, to come to each one fresh and open, as children do, with excitement and anticipation. We are being stirred in a way that makes it clear that much of what shows up each day or week is not about the present energies and being in relationship to them as they are, but is echoing out of the memories of the past.

Releasing these old associations, attachments, resistances, we can actually feel today, rather than all the yesterdays. Not that we have to get rid of the past, but to allow it to be past, a faint echo, so we can be present to have new experiences of joy and wonder. That's what makes the good memories so good, they were times in childhood or in love, when we were truly present to the moment, fully alive.

The churning of the seasons, by bringing the emotional overlays to conscious awareness, gives us the chance to claim this state again: being present and fresh in all moments, choosing new ways of relationship to the events of our lives, and new emotional flavors.

May your season, whatever it is, be wondrous and joyful, and all your moments deeply alive.

(© 03/09)[read the full version @ http://www.wholebeingexplorations.com/spirit/writings.html ]