I have come to believe the quality of our lives is based strictly on the meaning we give to our
day-to-day existence, what we assume to be true; that is the bottom line
of what we are capable of experiencing and what we know as personal
reality. The same type of experience may
happen to many people, but what each person gets out of that, as you
know, is as variable as the dancing sparks of light across an ocean on a bright summer day. Such variance can mean all the difference between
whether we perceive treasures of epiphany and strengthening joy in our
unfolding days and decades or bitterness, unfulfillment and heartache.
For example, a near-death experience for millions of people has been dramatically transforming,
and overall, powerfully positive, even if the events themselves were perceived as negative or
fearful, and in spite of the attendant challenges so well articulated by
PMH Atwater [1988, 2000].
But this is not everyone's experience. A woman once told me of learning from her husband, after their having being married
for several years, he had had a near-death experience -- they had been
watching a program on NDEs, and he said, "I had one of those
once." She was so surprised he had never
thought to tell her before, since he knew she had a great
interest in these kinds of things. Only because she asked, he soon
revealed a 'classic' such event in which he had a meaningful encounter
with a family member who had passed years before, he saw 'the light'
after a tunnel journey, he saw his temporarily dead body at one point.
This was so puzzling to his wife because his life and attitude did not reflect aftereffects frequently associated with such dramatic
occurrences. As he told the story, it was apparent he was no more impressed by this
than which jam to put on his toast in the mornings. He said he
just thought of it as a memorable 'dream', and in fact he still did not
believe there was life after death! Clearly, the life we
experience is the meaning we
give to it.
I was trekking through a local park last summer, where I came across the most beautiful
butterfly I have ever seen!! This
was an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail like the one depicted below, though this is not the same
butterfly, and it
was as big as my not-small hand!
I grew up here and have seen 
many
and varied swallowtails but none
with this bright coloration before, such as mostly browns where you see black
in this picture, [more like the outer tip of the right upper wing -- I'd
never seen one colored like this before] nor so big or vibrantly strong.
It looked like a young one almost right out of the cocoon –
only dry.
This virtually archetypal swallowtail was dragging torturously along on the ground, as if it had no strength to lift
its wings, and at first its labored effort and a sensed element of
confusion or muddlement suggested to me it was
injured. I tentatively raised my foot, horrified at the
idea, yet thinking it would be best to put an end to its
suffering. But first, I knelt down to
see it more closely.
Also, I all but had my camera ready to click this gorgeous creature.
Admittedly, I felt a twinge of regret in firmly putting that idea
aside.
Even though I had seen this beauty from the other side of the road and
steadily approached it almost head-on, still it continued its trajectory
and pace, as if to walk right into me with no fear. As I watched, something about it nudged me to
let it crawl up on my fingers, and when I did, it grabbed on with
a firm grip, not unlike the reflex of a newborn child. Before I
could raise my hand even a foot off the ground, suddenly – SWOOOSH!! – it was 10, then 20 yards away,
that quick!
To witness this instant transformation from being crippled to sky-dancing
as only butterflies can do was definitely a heart-to-throat
event!
To think how close I had come to killing it!!
And all
it had needed was a bit of a lift, enough to get up off the ground so it
could at last fly!!
Something
about this magical butterfly moment reminds me of the gravity-well
challenges of getting this web project off the ground, in no small part
because it has also seemed to be a serendipitous butterfly of a
Gift. That wonder-woven park incident occurred near the time of the 21st death
anniversary of my brother and his best friend, who had themselves been
21 years old when a car accident cut short their earthly lives. That gruesome
spark was the
personal wounding, as
is so often the case, that initiated my journey, culminating in this
lifework, which Rhea White aptly identified as a "Project
of Transcendence."
This was such a long time not to have succeeded at what
meant the world to me (literally) and in spite of years of
immersion and effort, and so,
I was feeling very much a failure. All this time had
passed, and this work was still hardly more than something perpetually
on my drawing board. I couldn't help wondering if this magnificent creature
would finally get to fly. For the first time in my life, I tasted a kind of despair I had never
encountered before. Like the confused and distressed butterfly, I
faced the dreadful thought of leaving this life without having fulfilled
this work eternally in process.
This irony haunted me: even
though I have certainly felt at times the presence and intervention of Spirit in my life, especially with all the inspiration for
this work, I have also felt stymied by a lack of similar spiritual support in
other regards, including the very practical needs of day-to-day life,
sustained teamship,
funding, and technical expertise -- to help this finally succeed as
it deserves. It's like a big blind spot
of a challenge. Nevertheless, I can't help but suspect, this is
but the result of the
meaning of limitation I had come to expect or fear in these aspects of my life
thus far. So part of this extraordinary Gifting appears to be the
relentless opportunity to finally overcome this equally stubborn
handicap. [[[AAAAaarrrrgghhh!!!]]]
A few times I have come so close to giving up or putting myself out of
the misery of this effort for various
"practical" reasons, sometimes feeling I was just never going to be 'enough' to
keep it alive until it had the chance it deserved. But something in me
has always and relentlessly refused to kill it, to walk away, to
absolutely give up. I have come to
trust that most fundamental feeling and to accept, to imagine, to trust in Life and
the promise that in its own perfect time, it too will get the
LIFT it needs to fly, to soar into the heights, just as happened with the
butterfly. It's just too beautiful and bristling with meaning and
promise and purpose not to fly!
Of course this kind of difficulty is something most of us have dealt
with, one way or three others. In what has become a favorite
resource, Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future,
Peter Senge, Betty
Sue Flowers, et al., note that when two of their co-authors, Joseph
Jaworski and Otto Scharmer, ".. interviewed entrepreneurs and asked
them to describe the deeper aspects of their creation journeys and
especially why, in spite of all the adversities, they kept going, they
all answered that they felt compelled to continue, that they couldn't
'not do it.'"
Wow, does this resound with a familiar clankata-clunk---psssssssshh! to
you? If so, I consider us to be war buddies of the first
water! Wishing you a generous and unsinkable innertube --
none of those crappy luxury Titanics, the arrival of that "perfect
time" [Pa-leeez!!], and a miracle recovery to you and loved ones
from all the torture!
By the way, just a few days after that 'great picture that got away', I
came across the butterfly pictured above that seemed to actually be
'purposefully' present to a whole shooting session with it as the star, as if
this had been planned! Where most such creatures fly away like the
first one did when they see looming giants and flashing cameras, this
one did not! I got within about a foot of it and took several
shots, before it hesitated, as if to say, was that enough? before it
wandered its merry way. Somehow it's much more meaningful and
fun to imagine this than merely something like I had my camera, came
across a butterfly, took pictures and went home, which didn't match my
feeling of communion with this beautiful creature at all. .. don't you
think?
Remember that TV commercial an age ago that also showed up prominently
on billboards, "Got Milk?" If life seems a little empty
sometimes, try this for a meditation: "Got
Meaning?"
