A guide for your personal transformation. Thoughts, musings, mythical stories, and creations - inspired by a caterpillar's journey to become a butterfly.
Updated every Friday.
Nature's Chrysalis: Most of the caterpillar's body breaks down, with the help of imaginal cells, initiating biochemical processes that transform the deconstructed caterpillar into a butterfly. Growth and differentiation occur, and structure is born.
Your Chrysalis: This is a time of challenge and miracles. With the struggle and breakdown, comes growth and differentiation. This time asks a lot of you. The way you make it through is with persistence and courage. The result is a new identity and structure for your life, making it all worthwhile.
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Histogenesis
The process of histogenesis is the differentiation of cells into specialized tissues and organs during growth. In nature's process of Chrysalis, undifferentiated cells are used to build different body tissues, propelling the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly.
Interestingly, the root of the word is from Latin—histo: tissue and genesis: beginning. Existing tissue of the caterpillar creates a new beginning.
Consuming Yourself
When you are ready for your Chrysalis, must you use your own energy as the caterpillar does? Yes, you must. What is the source of energy? Perhaps it is the strength and courage you have built up in your life or the wisdom you have gained or a deep desire for change that allows you to endure.
Starting With Yourself
In your own Chrysalis, you start from where you are, developed and conditioned by the outside world. Who would think a caterpillar's tissues would create a butterfly? It is a beginning for you, different from anything that has gone before.
Imaginal Cells
In nature's process of Chrysalis, the new cells that are forming are called imaginal cells. What a fabulous name! They differ greatly from the caterpillar's cells. Initially, the caterpillar's immune system destroys them. But the imaginal cells keep coming and soon a tipping point is reached. They survive and multiply, eventually creating the butterfly. A butterfly is composed of imaginal cells! No wonder they have so much beauty and magic.
The caterpillar's initial destruction of imaginal cells has its parallels in your own Chrysalis. As new ideas, experiences and inclinations show up, their differences from your current life may cause you to reject them. You may fear them or see them as foreign. However, over time you will find yourself drawn to them and, symbolically, begin forming your own imaginal cells that eventually become a larger part of you.
Imaginal cells begin the Chrysalis of a butterfly as your own imagination, creativity and willingness to be different may begin yours. How beautiful! And then, your imaginal cells begin to multiply and your deconstruction and reconstruction advance towards your emergence.
