Transformation

We find such profound awe in the metamorphosis of nature. It looks inspirational. Poetic. An earth bound creature grows WINGS from nothing? It is a perfect metaphor, this metamorphosis. Yet that caterpillar doesn’t just fall asleep once she’s woven her cocoon, waking up on the other side of nature's mysterious process as her glorious, transformed self.

She devours herself. She becomes mushy goo through her own efforts to deconstruct everything she was. She is absolutely annihilated by the process, her entire identity dissolving into primordial mush. And she does this with great purpose, driven by her wild instincts. By her innate wisdom. When the caterpillar began weaving her chrysalis, she didn’t know her fate as the butterfly. She willingly participated in the death of everything she ever knew simply to enter a chamber of absolute void. The process is as destructive as it is creative. In her surrender there is a becoming that calls her forward. To what end she doesn’t know. She emerges light and free of her formal self, retaining the lessons of her past form within her cells, stretching out the delicate wonder of her wings for the first time. Sensing somehow, that she can fly.

In Reiki we learn symbols - tools to help us focus in that deeply meditative space. The first represents transformation, Cho Ku Rei. Cho, in Usui's time when this was developed, translated to Buddha Consciousness. In modern Japanese it means butterfly. Ku is emptiness. The sublime void. Rei is sacred energy. In the sublime state of an empty mind we connect to our transformational Buddha Consciousness - the death of the little me - and we become one with the sacred mystery of life. Transformed, we can take flight.