Hello Spiritual Warriors!!! Welcome to another edition of The Source, where we dive into timeless wisdom & bring it into our real world experiences to help us thrive and live the life we dream of and are worthy of receiving!

This week we explore manifesting our best version – transforming from a caterpillar into a butterfly. A few quick facts about butterflies:

• Butterflies do not have mouths; they taste with their feet.
• Butterflies are cold-blooded and can only feed or fly when their bodies are warmed to at least 30° C. They require the warmth of the sun to fly, and mostly fly during the day.
• Butterflies have great eyesight and can see red, yellow and green, as well as other colors in the ultraviolet spectrum that humans cannot see.
• Butterflies have their skeleton on the outside of their body, which helps them retain water and stay moist.
• Despite popular belief, butterfly wings are clear – the colors and patterns we see are made by the reflection of the tiny scales covering them.
• Butterfly wings move in a figure-8 motion.
• Scientists thought butterflies were deaf until the first butterfly ears were identified in 1912; their ears sense vibration.

A butterfly starts as an egg, which hatches into a caterpillar. It has only one job: to eat! Most caterpillars start by feasting on their egg shell, which contains plenty of nutrients and then they move on to the tender, small parts of leaves.

Caterpillars face a challenge as they grow! Since their skin cannot grow with them, they must keep making new, larger skin! First, they grow a new skin underneath the outer skin. Then, they “shed” the old skin, and the newer, larger skin underneath is exposed. This process is called molting. Throughout a caterpillar’s life, it molts five times. It creates five new skins that bust out of the old.

When the caterpillar gets to the fifth time, they totally evolve themselves. They don’t develop a sixth new skin underneath – instead they totally liquefy themselves – dissolving all of their tissues to become a tube of caterpillar soup. We call this tube a chrysalis.

Inside the chrysalis, a certain group of cells – known as imaginal discs – survive this massive liquification and begin to use the protein-rich soup all around them to form the wings, antennae, legs, eyes, and all the other features of an adult butterfly.

After approximately 10 to 14 days as a chrysalis, the butterfly is ready to emerge. When the butterfly emerges from its chrysalis, its wings are small and wet, and the butterfly cannot yet fly. The butterfly must pump fluids from its abdomen through the veins in its wings, which causes the wings to expand to their full size. Next, the wings must dry and the butterfly must exercise flight muscles before it can fly. It fails at first and keeps flapping until the wings are dry and very quickly it perfects this brand new ability.

And then… voila! The magnificent butterfly takes flight, scours the earth to explore, eat, mate and live its dharma. It lays eggs, and the whole process begins again.

As we go through life, we sometimes feel that who we were as young adults is who we are destined to live our lives as. We feel if we had a plan or a trajectory and it got changed or derailed in some way that we are stuck. We fear that if we got divorced, separated or widowed that we are doomed to stay in that role. We worry that if we had a plan and it didn’t unfold as predicted, we are a failure – and our life is done. But each of us has a butterfly inside waiting to burst out – and just as the chrysalis stage of the butterfly appears to be one of sleeping or resting – it is actually a powerful and critical stage of development and evolution – in which the butterfly-in-waiting is preparing the world for a new magnificent wave of existence, which only exists in its own imagination!!

If you can dream… you can fly. Remember, you are never stuck – you are never trapped – regardless of your circumstances!!! You can always molt! You can always take your life from where you are to where you’d like to be. You simply have to lean into your dream & TRUST… just as the caterpillar trusts it will someday emerge as this magnificent being, if you trust in your heart… and trust in the universe… you will step into your butterfly years. In the meantime, keep meditating, keep destressifying, and keep nourishing yourself. You’re only one chrysalis away from your next incarnation!

The timeless words of an ancient sage – still reverberate in our consciousness even more powerfully than when they were first uttered more than 2000 years ago.

If I am not for myself, who is for me?
If I am only for myself, who am I?
If not now… when?

Let’s make it real this week: send me an email with your current dream and let’s start the metamorphosis together!!! aham brahmasmi baby – you are the Universe.

Peace. -davidji