In Goo we trust

Metamorphosis happens, if you let it.

I’ve lived long enough to see that the big bookends of life, Birth and Death, are poster children for the continuous, or at least periodic, births and deaths (aka transformations) that we experience on our journey through the mortal coil.

There have been periods in my life when I am aware that I am experiencing a shift. It’s always hard to tell whether external events are the cause or the effect. Both. This life ain’t a vacuum, baby. It’s full of everything under the sun including us. There are some ways in which we are separate entities, and more ways in which we are not.

Sometimes external events are so extreme that all we can do is react… e.g. get the hell out of that burning building. And sometimes, the burning building is within. Or the crumbling building, or just the building with deferred maintenance. The point I’m making is that interior turbulence asks for our attention, which means withdrawing some attention from the status quo, the daily grind, inner and outer.

goo with potential

Sometimes we need to go quiet for awhile. For our own sake, no-one else’s. We need a cocoon… a place to go in as a caterpillar and come out as a butterfly, or at least a different kind of caterpillar. A cocoon is a protected space in which to take yourself apart and put yourself back together in a new configuration. This may require physical space. Most of all it requires interior space. Which means what?

In the case of an actual caterpillar, it means allowing yourself to turn into goo with potential, and then letting that potential work its magic. If only we could allow disintegration with as much selflessness as a caterpillar, it would be a lot easier to turn into a butterfly.

As above, so below

What I find meaningful in the idea of caterpillar goo with butterfly potential is that what may seem like undifferentiated goo has its own innate intelligence and instructions.

First, the caterpillar digests itself, releasing enzymes to dissolve all of its tissues. If you were to cut open a cocoon or chrysalis at just the right time, caterpillar soup would ooze out. But the contents of the pupa are not entirely an amorphous mess. Certain highly organized groups of cells known as imaginal discs survive the digestive process. Before hatching, when a caterpillar is still developing inside its egg, it grows an imaginal disc for each of the adult body parts it will need as a mature butterfly or moth—discs for its eyes, for its wings, its legs and so on. In some species, these imaginal discs remain dormant throughout the caterpillar's life; in other species, the discs begin to take the shape of adult body parts even before the caterpillar forms a chrysalis or cocoon. Some caterpillars walk around with tiny rudimentary wings tucked inside their bodies, though you would never know it by looking at them.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/caterpillar-butterfly-metamorphosis-explainer/

In Goo we trust

Allowing space for interior reorganization via the goo of letting go, of acceptance, of not knowing, requires faith in Goo. You gotta trust that metamorphosis happens, if you let it.

I’ll never be able to change in as obvious and dramatic way as a caterpillar does—emerging as a new entity from my little cocoon—but what caterpillars do inspires me to trust that transformation, evolution, unfolding, of awareness, of spirit, is not something I do; it’s something I allow. What I allow is feeling.

One of the differences between me and a caterpillar is that metamorphosis makes me feel like crying.

Lately my eyes have been wanting to cry. I feel the presence of tears in my tear ducts. My body is talking to me. Am I listening? I want to listen. I have strong habits of not listening to my body.

There are reasons my eyes want to cry. They want to cry because of death and impermanence and fear and change. They want to cry to express what I feel and don’t know how to express. They want to cry because crying is a flow, a release, a process. I’m not crying, but I feel the urge.

Some reasons to cry go back generations. We carry the unresolved trauma of our ancestors in our bodies. Every personal trauma we experience is part of a chain of suffering. It doesn’t come from nowhere; it comes from somewhere. The actions of others that harm us are informed by their generational trauma.

And then there is the present and accounted for suffering of so many—the cruelty, carelessness, blind stupidity, all manner of unnecessary wrongdoing, that happens everyday and everywhere in this world. What’s not to cry?

But my sneaky tears, my tears that are trying to sneak out, are not attached to any specific reason that I know. If I had to give you a reason, I would say that my imminent tears represent a recognition of feeling—more feeling than I have allowed myself in the past. A melting of some kind of protection that I don’t want anymore.

There is something sad about letting go of what I thought I needed to protect myself.

It’s my party; I’ll cry if I want to.

Crying is an involuntary technique for creating interior goo. It’s not the only way, but there is great potential in unabashed crying for letting go, for flow.

As therapeutic as crying can be, it’s not a socially acceptable activity. Like grief, anger, all the feels. So what? I’m here to say that I support you in crying all you want. I’m trying to support myself in that way.

A new year is a great time to see yourself as pre-organized goo.

I want to see real change in my life this year. I’m not making resolutions, or commitments, because that always feels like a divided self—like I’m trying to force myself to do what myself maybe doesn’t want to do.

In 2025 I want to be goo with potential. I want to want. I want to allow myself to want. I want to take my own desires much more seriously than I have known how to in the past. I want to make art.

Making art requires not only goo with potential; it requires faith in goo with potential. In Goo we trust. Here come the butterflies.