Episode 357 - The Wisdom of the Butterfly

Living Myth

Michael Meade

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode of Living Myth looks at both the need to transform and our resistance to change through the lens of the metamorphosis of butterflies. The fact that the Greek word psyche means butterfly implies how we are secretly connected to the essential dynamic of transformation in life. As if compelled by the primordial poetics of transformation, scientists named the cells that carry the potential for a true transformation of the caterpillar "imaginal cells."

The capacity of the imaginal cells to develop into a butterfly and transform life completely is related to the inner capacity of the human soul to also transform repeatedly in the course of life. In the same sense that the imaginal cells hold all the information and energy for the butterfly to be, there is core imagination and deeper self trying to awaken in the soul of each person.

At the same time, something within us resists changing, even when the time for transforming our lives has come. In the mysterious way of the world, the metamorphosis of the butterfly also offers ways to understand why we resist the exact changes we most need in order to transform ourselves and help change the world. In simple biological terms, an exchange of one kind of cell for a different kind of cell changes a crawling caterpillar to a winged butterfly. In terms of understanding the essential dynamic of change in the world and at the core of the human soul, a great mystery is revealed that can be called the wisdom of the butterfly.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Living Myth Podcast with Michael Mead, where this shifting, changing world is looked at from a
0:16.9	mythic perspective.
0:20.0	This episode looks at both the need to transform and our resistance to change through the
0:26.0	lens of the metamorphosis of butterflies.
0:30.4	The fact that the Greek word psyche means butterfly implies how we are secretly connected to the essential dynamic of transformation in life.
0:40.0	As if compelled by the primordial poetics of transformation, scientists name the cells that carry the potential for a true transformation of the Caterpillar,
0:51.0	Imaginal cells. The capacity of the imaginal cells the is related to the inner capacity of the human soul
1:03.2	to also transform repeatedly in the course of life. Life is an old maxim to which Heraclitus added nothing is permanent except change and yet parts of us will resist changing even when we know that the time to
1:37.9	change has come. An even greater challenge comes from the old idea that transformation is the way of the soul.
1:48.0	To change typically means to alter, to make different, to transform implies change of a different order altogether,
1:57.0	literally to transition from one form to another form, whereas change can simply be an alteration of the appearance of things,
2:06.6	transformation involves a thorough change of form, a transfiguration, metamorphosis from one state of being to another.
2:18.8	When it comes to metamorphosis, butterflies have been the focus of many studies.
2:26.6	Butterflies are found everywhere in the world as thousands of species with various colors brighten the face of the earth.
2:36.0	In each case, two separate beings with radically different body forms,
2:42.0	a crawling caterpillar and a winged butterfly develop from a single fertilized
2:48.0	egg.
2:50.2	This metamorphosis of the butterfly has captivated human imagination for thousands of years,
2:56.5	and it remains largely a mystery to this day.
3:01.9	Butterflies begin life as tiny plant-bound creatures inching and eating their way along leaves
3:09.6	as caterpillars concerned primarily, it it seems with survival. A Caterpillar
3:16.0	crunches its way through its ecosystem eating hundreds of times its weight in a
	...

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