Butterfly Wisdom: Navigating the Extinction Burst of Patriarchy
Many of us are emotionally and mentally spiraling as we take in the news of the recent attacks on Iran. This, added to a seemingly endless barrage of abject cruelty and willful ignorance on the behalf of our supposed “leaders”. Our nervous systems are enduring continuous fight-flight-freeze-fawn activations, and our bodies and relationships are paying the price.
But/and also, there is something else happening here. This turn of events is shaking many folks awake from their deep slumber. Suddenly, a veil of delusional safety and separation is being lifted. Many are encountering a moment of somber wakefulness regarding the precarious ground beneath us.
We are collectively navigating the extinction burst of patriarchy (an outdated system defined by hierarchical, dominating, extractive power structures). Extinction burst refers to a pattern described in behavioral psychology that occurs when a habitual behavior stops being rewarded. Before the behavior pattern dies, it first increases and intensifies, often violently and erratically, as it desperately tries to reap the same reward it once received. It represents a final attempt to perpetuate the status quo before a quantum shift occurs.
Which is precisely why I’d like to invite us to pause and consider an additional - not alternative, additional - perspective to what we’re presently witnessing. You see, we humans prefer things to be cut and dry, black and white… simple. But that’s not reality. Reality is complex, paradoxical, and nuanced. More than one thing can be true at the same time.
And so, if you would, please indulge me a moment as we give our systems a chance to settle and contemplate the esoteric wisdom of the life cycle and metamorphosis of a caterpillar and the profound yet practical metaphor it offers us as human beings who exist within a complex, interdependent system.
The wisdom of the butterfly and imaginal cells has been shared widely in recent years. Still, I find myself reinspired each time I consider this teaching, so I’m sharing it in case it resonates.
Whether we realize it or not, we encounter a profound example of alchemical transformation each spring and summer: the transfiguration of a caterpillar into a butterfly.
After living its short life confined to crawling upon the earth, consuming ravenously and solely focused on survival, the caterpillar’s outer coating hardens to become a chrysalis, and all that the caterpillar was dissolves into a gooey substance. It breaks down into the most basic components of life, falling away so the butterfly can be created and emerge.
It’s not that the caterpillar grows wings and is suddenly a butterfly. It is utterly transformed into an entirely new being.
That’s amazing in and of itself, but it’s not what is most fascinating. Scientists have discovered that the cells with the genetic information of the butterfly, which they have termed imaginal cells, lie dormant within the caterpillar, waiting to be activated.
So, the butterfly cells exist as unmanifested potential within the caterpillar until the larva is within its chrysalis, its body breaking down into only the most life-sustaining cells. At this point, the imaginal cells - the seeds of a future becoming of a butterfly - awaken and begin to create a new form and structure.
But the caterpillar cells don’t just sit back and allow this to happen. The caterpillar’s immune system actually sees the imaginal cells as a threat, and so they fight and resist the butterfly cells until a critical mass of these cells form, resonate, and come together (cohere), ultimately resulting in the creation of an entirely new creature - one that is delicate, exquisitely decorated, and capable of flying and adventuring anywhere it pleases.
It’s not that the caterpillar cells and butterfly cells are separate. They’re part of a unified whole that contains within it the polarity and resistance necessary to compel the butterfly cells to strengthen and persist until the innate compulsion to transform and metamorphosize is complete.
You see, once we have woken up, even for a moment, there’s no going back to sleep. We can try. We may pretend that nothing has changed, and for a while, we may even forget. But Grace helps us remember again and again, because it is graceful to wake up to life. It’s a miraculous gift. In Buddhism, they say that to be born a human is the greatest gift because there is the potential to awaken to our true selves.
Once we experience the initial realization that there is more to life than we previously believed, we are invited to grow ourselves up, clear away whatever may be impeding us, and step into (surrender into) the unknown. We let go of our need to make sense of everything and instead live from a space of self-confidence, faith, and interdependence with the world around us.
We stop resisting life and begin dancing with it, making meaning out of it, and creating beauty within it.
Those of us who are strengthening our capacity to face and engage with reality with clear eyes, steady feet, and an open heart are embodying the imaginal cells in the collective of humanity. We are awakening and clarifying the collective consciousness despite the collective ego’s resistance and desire to stay in a less-evolved state.
We are not separate from those who prefer the status quo, who prefer the delusional safety of an outdated system that we are inevitably outgrowing. In actuality, we are like the differentiated cells of the unmanifest butterfly, part of a unified whole that contains the resistance and limitation needed to compel humanity’s evolutionary transformation.
The work you do on yourself matters. Keep going, you’re doing great.