Butterfly Meditation

Nitya offers this inspiring meditation that inspires you to free yourself through transformation. Using the metaphor of the caterpillar to butterfly, Nitya reads from one of her original poems to further illustrate this message for your benefit. Her voice is deeply soothing as she guides you into meditation with visualizations.

Transcript

This is Nitya.

Thank you for joining me today.

Find yourself sitting comfortably or lying down comfortably.

Tune into the breath and begin to tune into three-part breath.

Durgas Vasam.

Breathing into the abdomen,

Pull the breath to the chest,

All the way up to the collarbone.

Hold,

Hold.

Open the mouth,

Sigh it out.

Continue with these three-part breaths.

Breathing into the belly,

Lifting it up to the chest,

All the way to the collarbone.

Hold as long as you can.

Then exhale audibly.

Sometimes we can feel really stuck,

As if we're forever waiting for everything to align so that we can move forward,

So that things feel like they're in flow.

When we feel this sense of stuckness,

Of being held back,

Over time it can really lead to feelings of despair,

Futility,

Frustration.

This meditation is to inspire you,

My friend.

I offer you this space to open the heart and open your mind to the possibility that you can free yourself and become more empowered in your life,

Despite what you might think.

Who are you waiting for?

What are you waiting for?

And why are you waiting?

So many good questions.

You might want to journal some answers to those.

Let's take another deep breath in and sigh it out.

Feel the mind emptying of all the thoughts.

This is an original poem called Butterfly.

Contemplate the butterfly in chrysalis.

No longer is it itself.

The wall came fast,

Stopped you hard.

Blood slithers down your face.

Soup,

It's a gooey transformation.

Messy as bed hair,

Messy as a wet dog waiting to come in.

There is no way past this wall,

The stopping place,

And no hole to dig your way out or through or a detour pointing out another way.

Take it,

Drink the bitterness and swallow hard.

As you lick the blood and claim your story,

Then just as you feel yourself dissolving,

All you knew now gone.

You look around and realize you no longer recognize your life.

Do you recognize your life?

Cocooned in your comforts,

You almost forgot why you embedded yourself there.

Until there comes that time to break out of your chosen prison and ascend.

You never realized or accepted just how beautiful you are,

That you have always had the ability to fly free.

The caterpillar is ever aware that in its heart,

It is the butterfly.

What do you know yourself to be?

What do you know of this knowing,

This flight of freedom?

The caterpillar is ever aware that at its heart,

It is the butterfly.

What do you know yourself to be?

What do you know of this knowing,

This flight of freedom?

So if you take the analogy of the caterpillar,

Times in our lives,

We are cocooned.

Sometimes we choose to cocoon ourselves so that we can create something,

Birth something.

And ultimately,

I think in life,

Many things cocoon us,

Relationships,

Commitments,

Friendships,

Family,

And certainly our work.

And they aren't always comfortable.

They're all there to transform us.

And for us to have an influence and impact on those things and those people,

And be part of their transformation as well.

After all,

We're all part of the web of life.

And so when we look at all the places we have been cocooned,

You can start to feel like your little caterpillar self has been stretched way too thin,

And is wrapped up in way too many things.

You can start to feel like you have been fractured or splintered.

How do you free yourself?

You start by saying,

No,

No,

Thank you.

I'm busy today.

You don't need to give a reason why you have more power than you ever thought possible.

My friend,

You have the power to walk away from something that does not serve you.

You have the power to say no,

The power to say maybe later,

The power to say I'm not quite sure.

And I'll let you know when that answer comes.

If it comes.

Another interesting thing is to ask yourself why you have given your power away to so many people,

So many things,

So many commitments,

If you can't truly serve them with joy and enthusiasm.

Let's take a deep breath in,

Exhale slowly.

So let's close eyes and begin to imagine that you are the caterpillar and that you are inside a cocoon,

Hanging off the branch of a milkweed plant.

So you must be a monarch butterfly.

And you've been in this space for long enough to no longer recognize your life.

And you have been in this cocoon long enough to have completely surrendered yourself to the situation.

And inside of you,

You feel a squirming and itching,

A wriggling,

Wiggling need for something to change.

At first,

You might have thought,

Well,

It's okay.

It's not that bad.

I'm strong.

I'm resilient.

Time passes.

You in the cocoon,

You can feel the time is up.

You've given all you can.

And that's perfectly okay.

You're not expected to meet the expectations of others.

As long as you know that you have done your best.

That's all that's ever asked.

And if someone's left disappointed,

It was their own expectation that set them up for that,

Not yours.

You do not have to dot anyone's eyes or cross anyone's T's.

And so now the weather warms and the seasons have changed.

And you've gone through a great transformation in this situation that you found found yourself in.

And as the wiggling the jiggling the great discomfort mounts and grows,

You finally can feel it.

You can't take another day.

You can't take another hour.

Whether you put yourself in this situation,

Or whether you feel like somebody put you in it themselves and wrapped you up in it,

And now you feel trapped,

Or maybe you trapped yourself.

There comes a time when you will know in your gut,

You will know it's time to break free to cut yourself out of the cocoon.

And don't rush.

Not yet.

It's going to feel like a shock,

Possibly a shock for sure.

If you are changing a relationship,

Changing a job,

Changing a big aspect of yourself,

Pause,

Breathe,

Take some time to journal and process where you are,

What it felt like to be in that situation,

And where you are now that you're out of it.

Take a deep breath in and sigh it out.

So there you are.

Not a caterpillar anymore,

Right?

That situation really changed some aspect of you.

You've got wings.

You've got wings.

Stretch them out.

They're wet.

Dry them out.

Fill them with color.

Put your energy into your newfound freedom and allow yourself the time to adapt and adjust to a new view of your life.

Look around.

You're not down low.

You're not on the ground.

You're up high.

You're looking up before you were looking down.

Feel the wings of freedom stretching through your body.

It's going to feel expansive.

You liberated yourself.

Now here's the big part.

One of many.

As you are standing there,

Newly transformed,

Check in with that heart.

The hardest part is recognizing that whoever was involved in that transformation is to have gratitude to say thank you for teaching me so much about myself.

And if needed,

I forgive you for the pain and suffering that I experienced.

But my friend,

It's pain and suffering that leads a caterpillar to become a butterfly.

It's through pain and suffering that we grow and become the ever improving humans that we are on this earth.

Let's take a deep breath in,

Sigh it out.

And now you're ready.

Are you ready?

If you're really ready,

Standing there on that branch,

Take a deep breath in.

Open your arms,

Turn your face to the sky.

I hope you're smiling because you're about to fly.

Feel it.

Feel it in your body.

You're flying.

You're soaring,

Transformed,

Liberated.

Close your eyes and take a moment to really visualize in your energetic body what it would feel like to be that monarch butterfly,

Suddenly liberated and free,

Flying over a field of flowers.

Now,

Whenever you have those moments of feeling stuck,

Whether you're outside or in a room,

Close your eyes,

Turn your face to the sky.

Open your arms wide.

Breathe big expansive breaths.

And remember,

You don't have to be trapped in any cocoon.

You always have the ability to break yourself free and fly.

The caterpillar is ever aware that in its heart,

It is the butterfly.

What do you know yourself to be?

What do you know of this knowing this flight of freedom?

Taking a deep breath in and exhale slowly.

Thank you so much.

And I encourage you to sit with this visualization for as long as it feels good for you.

And feel free to come back to it over and over as a reminder that you my friend are always always the butterfly.