The Inglorious Reality of Real Transformation
Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash
Let's get real Sweet Friend,
I always imagined that global transformation happened at dawn or sunset, with dramatic mists parting and birds calling. This would be accompanied by a personal revelation that would be sent from on high allowing me to suddenly and gracefully transcend my previous patterns and thus personally evolve. What a crock of naïve new-age alpaca shit that all was!
In my experience, transformation actually happens far from the tinkling wind-chimes and mood lighting the new-age literature suggests. If it’s genuinely transformative it’s more like childbirth: sweaty, red-faced, tear-streaked, stretch-marked and hemorrhoidal with the occasional accidental turd in the birth pool. Giving birth to the next iteration of yourself and the world is a messy, graceless
business indeed.
You know that childhood image of a caterpillar crawling into its cozy little chrysalis that sprouts wings and then emerges as a magnificent butterfly? Well it’s a lie!!!! The caterpillar doesn’t sprout wings at all, it actually completely dissolves. That’s right, its skin melts, its organs liquify and its little caterpillar heart breaks into a thousand pieces. That’s what the process of transformation looks and feels like. It’s like becoming a caterpillar smoothie.
The process of transforming and being made anew is actually a dying process you see. If you don’t have snot in your moustache and lipstick in your eyebrows you aren’t doing it right. It’s therefore impossible to properly go through such transitions with your dignity intact. Long before there’s any ‘break-through’ the whole thing is indeed an actual break-down – don’t let anyone bullshit you about this. It’s a roaring, screaming, weeping, whimpering, bleeding, sweating breakdown.
When you’re in this phase you are definitely drowning, not waving… but when everyone you know is in it too?
What then Sweet Friend?
Neither does the whole process take place at dawn on some over-priced but picturesque spiritual retreat dressed in whites. It takes place in stained tracksuit pants, a comfy t-shirt, mismatched socks and your menstrual undies. Why? Not only because we’re all in our lockdown uniform, but more importantly because what is being broken down is your previous identity. A productive breakdown can’t actually happen if you’re still posing as your previous I’ve-got-it-all-sorted persona. This is as true for the state as it is for the individual- but states are notoriously bad at owning their dysfunction and vulnerability.
Photo by Arun Clarke on UnsplashYou know you’re truly in a transformative process by the raw unbearable vulnerability – like that of a hairless pink blind marsupial foetus freshly crawled from its mother’s vagina: the wind hurts your paper-thin skin, soft voices berate your ears, hell even anyone truly looking you in the eye is like a searing sunburn… posing is no longer an option.
Yet… there is always a yet in posts like this isn’t there?
Yet within the oozing chaos of the caterpillar smoothie, there are some cells that are not broken down. These are known in caterpillar-ology as the ‘imaginal cells’ and they hold the dream of what is to come. Truth be told you have them too and they are your soul. So although it feels like the sloughing and oozing and wailing will never end sweet friend, trust me when I tell you that eventually it will.
History shows us that it always does… eventually.
Somewhere within all of us, there is a cluster of those imaginal cells guiding this process – let them do their work – this is our time to die. Imagine a world united against the challenges that face us. Imagine freedom from fear for all of us that is utterly unconditional. Imagine a community that embraces the tragedies of the human condition and allows for radically divergent ways of responding to them. Imagine a green planet thriving and healing and evolving. Imagine a political process that you could believe in once again.
Imagine whatever the hell your imaginal cells dream of, but whatever you do, awaken from the nightmare that we all currently thrash and moan within AND START DREAMING AGAIN!
For you sweet friend, you precious human caterpillar you. You don’t just ‘have’ imaginal cells, you ARE an imaginal cell. Remember this as the whole world enters this era’s chrysalis: you are the dream of a better now.
With Heartfelt Hope,
Jimi
