Growth is something that we are called to regularly and this often means being really stretched and overstretched and taking us to our limits of what we feel is comfortable and when this is happening we often find ourselves in a real sense of fragility or a feeling quite delicate and that feeling of sensitivity that we feel when we are being expanded is usually indicative of moving through a very transformative time in our lives.
We might perceive this experience as somehow being wrong or we feel it very personally as if something's being done to us but really what's being asked of us is to evolve and to expand.
It's a really beautiful teaching that Michael Mead shares about the concept of the butterfly and the caterpillar and what he shares is that the cells that actually form the butterfly are already sitting within the cocoon of the caterpillar and actually what starts to happen is the actual little caterpillar starts to resist the cells of the butterfly and all this does to the butterfly cells is fuel them to grow even more strongly and that resistance is actually the fuel for the growth and so we know that when we resist that we're pushing against it but ultimately what we're also doing is fueling the growth as we keep expanding and so when you feel that sense of resistance know that you're in that really powerful shift of change and remember that the brain's biochemistry doesn't know whether you're going moving through a good change or a bad change or a positive or a negative shift it'll just want you to stay the same but that's not what you're here for you're not meant to stay the same and so you have a conscious choice you have full agency around how you choose to respond to this shift and you either respond with open arms knowing that you're in a natural evolutionary process or you go kicking and screaming all the way and I can assure you if you choose the latter your experience of growth will be really prolonged it will feel like a really long period of time or concertina experiences one after the other after the other after the other because you are resisting the very nature of your being ways in which you operated five years ago are no longer in service into the being that you have evolved to be just like the cells of the caterpillar are no longer relevant to the wings of the free butterfly they've already done what they need to do so how you choose to navigate your way through growth can either be through resistance or through grace because that growth is inevitable whether you push against it or welcome it in and so what ways at this point in the journey of your own life can you surrender a little bit more have a greater sense of faith and when you have more faith it will automatically dissolve the fears you have to the shift in this change staying the same isn't something that inherently you are wanting we think that we we want to stay the same but really we don't and that stagnant way of being is wanting to shift and move again and you know this way in nature when you look outside and there's a container of water that hasn't moved it just becomes stagnant really quickly and it becomes a the home of your summer mosquitoes to come but when you look at water that's always moving it's always clear because it's moving it's growing it's shifting it doesn't fear there's a big rock there how am i going to get around it the water will just flow and it will find a way but as human beings we've attached ourselves to this real fear and this real sense of worry and the word worry even comes from the latin word to mean to strangle and that's what it feels like so as you shift have a greater sense of faith that all of the moving parts in your life are part of a grand design that you might not be privy to and if you were privy to it your decisions might be different so be okay with not knowing be okay with not being clear about what that might look like and instead just allow yourself to move into that greater flow state let that sense of faith and deep trust not only in life but also in yourself you've not come this far and move through everything that you have to not trust yourself so trust that those answers are there and then allow yourself to move through the evolution because we evolve many many many times in one lifetime this isn't just once so we might as well learn how to do it with skill and with grace and with peace in part along the way namaste
