The Butterfly, Inner Advent and You
Published: Sun, 11/25/18
In one of those coincidences that say there must be other forces, angels, perhaps, at work, I was led to reading up on the science of the metamorphosis of the butterfly while preparing for Inner Advent.
Nothing could offer a better metaphor for our souls’ yearly need for Inner Advent then the process from caterpillar to butterfly.
The Metamorphosis of the Butterfly
Let’s begin with the caterpillar. It’s an eating machine in order to grow, grow, grow. Think about your soul as a caterpillar eating up life...all the events, stories, sense perceptions, ideas, feelings, desires...throughout the year in order to grow more personal meaning.
A caterpillar suddenly stops eating. Enough! time to transform. It then builds its chrysalis and spins its cocoon. In the chrysalis, the digestive juices of the caterpillar, once so devoted to taking in food, now start digesting itself. It becomes liquid, caterpillar soup. This soup is made up of imaginal cells...cells that can become anything...wings, eyes, legs.
Some wonderful creative invisible force then imagines the butterfly and the imaginal cells actually bring that imagination to life. The butterfly is slowly formed inside the chrysalis until it bursts forth in all its glory. Wings unfold, it takes flight. The butterfly doesn’t exist to eat and grow. It’s purpose is to generate remarkable beauty and lay the eggs for the future.
Inner Advent - Your Soul's Chrysalis
If we bring the cycle of the life of butterflies as a metaphor for the yearly cycle of the life of our souls we can imagine the diminishing light of late November to signal a time to stop growing through our experiences and begin to inwardly digest our soul life. Advent then becomes the soul’s chrysalis and all that was defined through stories, identities, thoughts, feelings and deeds we dissolve. By Christmas, we are pure possibility, innocent like the holy child and the imaginal cells in the caterpillar soup.
During the Holy Nights we allow 12 new imaginations to form our soul preparing us to emerge at Epiphany, unfold our wings and take flight into the coming year.
I find this metaphor exquisitely fitting for the Imagine Self guidance found in Inner Advent (the dissolving of the caterpillar), Inner Christmas (the forming of the butterfly), and Inner Epiphany (the emergence of the butterfly).
Imagine your soul as the part of your being that is continually metamorphosing...every hour, every day, every week, every year but for most of us it is an unconscious and uncertain process. Begin the metamorphosis of this year consciously with Inner Advent. Digest your memories and let your soul rest in its own juice of creative possibility, then you can truly resonate with the sacred imaginations of the Holy Nights.
If you have felt an inner connection to the butterfly all your life, begin your metamorphosis this coming weekend, knowing a part of your soul will emerge in early January as a winged beauty shaping your new year.
Celebrate Inner Advent This Year
Inner Advent occurs over the four weeks (a lunar month) before the Winter Solstice (Northern Hemisphere) and Christmas Day. You can engage with the Inner Advent
Advent begins next Sunday, December 2, 2018.
Inner Advent is simply a guide, a compassionate and creative structure for shaping the work of integrating your soul’s year. There are four audios and lots of handouts to support a truly elegant design for celebrating your inner year. Inner Advent reflects the traditional Christian Advent of the four Sundays before Christmas. The difference is in the focus of attention. Christian tradition focuses on the four moods of Christmas: hope, joy, peace, love.
Inner Advent focuses on your soul’s activities of thinking, feeling and willing over the previous year and guides you to...
Recollect your memories of how you lived the year and expressed yourself.
Review and discover your the meaning of your thoughts, feelings & deeds.
Release your memories in to the world ethers and create within your soul a new openness for wonder, warmth & wisdom.
If you choose to work with the artistic suggestions of Inner Advent, you will develop a mandala filled with images of your soul over the four seasons. You will see your year in language, form, color or whatever you choose. Or your Inner Advent activity may be journaling, active thinking, or conversations with a friend or therapist.
The true gift of the Inner Advent program is the beauty and usefulness of the design, structure, and process. You learn how to create a spiritual practice that brings depth and rightness to your inner work. You will find the union between your soul and the cycle of the year in nature. You will discover the spiritual meaning flowing through your inner development in each season.
If you feel you don’t remember your year, that you couldn’t recollect it, the guidance of Inner Advent will awaken memories, but will also create a foundation for your relationship to 2019. Inner Advent serves the past year and the future year equally.
Inner Advent offers a creative and illuminating spiritual practice. You will feel a new freedom and a deeper compassion filling your heart and mind as you arrive at the Holy Nights. There are two Inner Advent programs to choose from.
Inner Advent - Your Year of Light recollects, reviews and releases your soul's activities in thinking, feeling and willing throughout the year. It leads you to the truth, beauty and goodness in your life. Learn more and register here.
and
Inner Advent - Your Year of Darkness recollects, reviews and releases what you experienced in the darkness of your soul. It leads you to the light beyond the shadows, sorrows and sufferings of the year. Learn more and register here.
Dear Lynn,
Your posts awaken senses and memories long lost, and it is such a comfort to find them again, especially at this time of year.
I have been working with your Holy Nights posts for the past 5 or 6 years (?) and I so love them!
This year especially they provided some much needed healing to myself.Your work is so wonderful and I look forward to it every year. I also did your Inner Mother and Inner Father workshop a couple years ago and for the first time worked with your Inner Advent material. I can not describe the healing it has brought me.
Thank you for all the gifts you give us! Maggie