Chrysalis Inside Out

Claiming Companions Begins Within

This month’s focus on Claiming Companions for our thresholding journeys seems outwardly oriented, but I am reminded that it begins — like all lasting transformation — within. Even if the caterpillar’s work of becoming a butterfly seems an individual effort, taking a closer look inside the chrysalis tells another story. So much linkage and interdependent connection is necessary for the new butterfly to come into being. In my book Trusting Change, I write this:

Here, on the inside, is where I call your attention. Like many mysteries, it happens out of sight. But listen—can you hear it humming?

Protected by the chrysalis, the caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes that break down all shape and form—caterpillar legs, eyes, mouth, its whole caterpillar way of being. It becomes a mass of goo, a thick soup cooking up something new. Only a few parts of the caterpillar will not be consumed: latent imaginal discs, a set of highly organized cells embedded from the beginning that contain everything needed for the change that lies ahead.

Imagine. The imaginal discs have been there all along, waiting. Designed to awaken in this breakdown and bring new shapes to the chaos: wing and eye and curled antennae. Like reverse fossils from the future, they are coded for metamorphosis, for emergence when all else has been dissolved and lost. But before they take on form, they begin with a thrumming.

Vibrating at frequencies unknown in the old caterpillar, the imaginal discs multiply rapidly. They cluster according to like resonance, communicating with each other until they grow into a shared knowledge of how to be something new. All have molted the identity of “caterpillar.” One cluster becomes an eye, another a wing, another a leg, each tailored to a butterfly’s ways, to the butterfly’s needs. They take on shapes and functions while linking to one another, their own development dependent on the others’, and in that interdependence, they become whole. They become one—a new organism unlike anything that preceded it, ready to emerge, orange and black to ward off attack, fantastically designed for flight and migration across multiple generations, for survival across distance and season.

Inspired by the ongoing repair work happening in my home, I recently found myself imagining what it might be like inside the chrysalis and how that interior work can lead us back out into the vibrant, interdependent world around us. The brief video below (for paid Threshold Times subscribers) explores where that took me.

If you’re intrigued by this or other related questions, I hope you’ll attend next week’s guided online session on Claiming Companions on the Threshold, Tuesday, July 18, 7 pm CT. Paid subscribers will find a registration link at the bottom of this message; or anyone can register for the session through the Christine Center or Prairiewoods. Please join in if you’re interested.