Imaginal Cells
Perhaps, I’m quite late, but recently I learned about a thing called the “imaginal cells”
that’s what the scientist call them…
and though I don’t know who exactly who coined the term… I feel a special way for them doing so … for the courage to acknowledge that level of truth… the courage to bring the word imagination into the world of science… and to exalt it back to a throne of divine intelligence. but this is not about them.
this is about the caterpillar and the butterfly.
and so much more.
I had come to know that the caterpillar completely dissolves in order to let go… and allow what is to become… but what I did not know…is that the caterpillar is not at all in a state of acceptance and allowance … rather, it is resisting the whole time.
having survived the attempts of being devoured by all who tried… it now resists its unknown destiny of going from inching and crawling—to fluttering. gliding. soaring.
it resist the very beautiful life that has been prepared for it next. that it has earned. That it was always meant to have.
but… it doesn’t matter. while the caterpillar is being resistant the Unknown… to the newness it feels. the happening is still happening.
the Unknown still makes way for its own self… in this instance the unknown newness is of course the butterfly—not yet born… and yet already is and was a part of the caterpillar all along. ( kinda like how we each already lived inside our own grandmother’s bodies…. and didn’t even know it…)
So…while the caterpillar feels itself—it’s life— dissolving… these IMAGINAL CELLS… begin to emerge from within … they exist so deeply within the caterpillar…so quietly within it that the caterpillar doesn’t even recognize them… (hmph.) (that part is questionable to me.) (but nevertheless) it treats them as a threat… as a foreign body…. as a problem…… as something that must be gotten rid of… and so it tries. It tries hard. Its immune system fights hard against the newness. Against the blueprint of a new world once so deeply imagined. Kills off the imaginal cells as they form….
(I can’t help but to wonder how it all feels… i imagine … a strange fusion of … terror and ecstasy… peaceful familiarity and calamity… … home and wilderness…all at the same time… and I wonder about ones inability to see one’s own self… our inabilities to receive and accept beauty that is emerging … goodness. and… well.. insects have instincts better than we….so I just can’ believe that there is not some level of knowing… )
nevertheless. it resists.
but thru all the resisting… … the happening still continues… the imaginal cells accumulate. grows stronger. …the caterpillar’s immune system literally collapses from exhaust… from the exhaustion of resisting one’s own self. … critical mass of the imaginal cells occurs… and finally wings as already drawn down in the blueprint of the caterpillars dna… begins to take formation.
and ….well.
ain’t that grace if there ever was such a thing?
What u say Nipsey?… “Evidence of a divine presence?” for sure.
and then I get to wondering… God…well…why did you even bother with the Caterpillar… why not just go straight to the butterfly… why even put either of them through it?… but somehow the process is fused… designed that way… One Soul. 2 bodies. and the butterfly cannot exist without every detail that the caterpillar has experienced…and I guess that means that the caterpillar — no matter what it thinks or does … really can make no mistakes… it can’t mess this up! cause every bit of life experienced is the batter needed for its new life… for it to fully become…to truly BE. to take flight. all it really has to do is survive …. and the rest is already written. coded. hmph.
somehow it all gives me hope. u know. … that there’s a fail-safe on this whole shebang… and that maybe we can worry less. ... even if we don’t get it all “right” ...or try to sabotage it all… divine imagination shall still override this world. hmph. the “gentrification of good ness and rightness…so to say… it’s a good thought.
Here’s to hope.
here’s to courage.
here’s to love and grace.