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 so
many people has been utterly, even extremely positively transforming in every aspect of their
lives, even if the events themselves were perceived as negative or fearful.
But this is not everyone's experience. A woman told me
recently 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, life is the meaning we
give to it, and this meaning suffuses our lives much as light shines
through and reflects off of a living precious stone.
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 bigger than my hand!
I grew up here and have seen 
many
and varied swallowtails but none
with this bright coloration before, such as browns where you see black
in this picture, 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 ponderously 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 almost 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!! It was so big that
its wings, flattened on the ground as they were, apparently made it impossible for
it to get any air lift under them. What a privileged JOY, this
experience!
Something
about this magical butterfly moment reminds me of what has been a long
period of struggle in my life. Here
I am with this glorious potential for what I have always considered to
be a thrilling Gifting to me, this web project [or "project
of transcendence," as a friend and mentor has called it], as much in the
Big Idea of it as in the art; I have never felt this was
"mine," because it always seemed to come to me and through me,
like a playful, well, .. serendipitous
butterfly!
The butterfly 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. I was now in my
mid-fifties; this was such a long time not to have succeeded at what
meant the world to me [ha! 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 other than something perpetually
on my drawing board. For the first time in my life, I wondered if
I was going to see this project fulfill its promise during this
lifetime. Almost none of my friends or family in all these
years had shared this interest, much less excitement and joy and awe that filled me every day with its presence.
Maybe after all I was just
fooling myself imagining that others could find in this anything close
to the inspiration, nurturing, hope and healing for our world I've discovered
through this these last many years. Why couldn't they
SEE this, why didn't they 'recognize' it, why didn't it connect for
them?
Most likely it had everything to do, not with the BIG IDEA of this, but
with my anything-but exemplary life of what it means to most people to
be successful, or even to be a participating and useful member of family
and society. Analogous to the butterfly, I could hardly crawl across the ground of day to
day to get this magnificent creature to fly. I had spent almost
everyday of especially the last nearly four years putting in sometimes
16-20-hour days in front of a computer. Sometimes I even went for
days at a time without sleep, totally immersed in this project.
For a little of that time I was blessed with funding enough to get a
healthy start on the major architecture for
a larger, more inclusive website (see Dear
Friends..], but otherwise, I had been pursuing this
without any Earthly support, nor did I have the technical knowledge to
do this efficiently myself.
It's safe to say this became a midlife crisis that indeed took
over! Credibility was not uppermost in my mind. It was all
about living totally out of the heart of the joy and thrill of hope that fed me to just
keep on keeping on, no matter what. I was so afraid if I went back
to your basic fulltime get-the-rent-paid kind of job, I would not have
enough energy or heart to finally see this through, and in either case, it felt
like the effort was going to do me in before it even had a chance to be
completed, much less to succeed, whatever that meant in this
situation. I was DE-pressed, distressed, truly dragging my
wings.
Seeing the disparity between this wonderful work that begged to be
birthed effectively into the world and my desperate life situation, I felt
embarrassed, almost hypocritical, imagining to suggest to others of what
I perceive as this Consciousness rEvolution and all that that infers in
our singular and collective lives, and yet, I was quite challenged just
to keep a roof over
my head. So, I couldn't fault anyone for their polite but
circumspect attitude; rarely did anyone come right out and say, 'Rachael,
this is a pipedream, a fantasy, a .. what kind of life is this?'
Maybe if I had been an already accomplished medical doctor or other recognized expert within a community of professional peers, people might
have been more willing to hear what I felt were important insights.
Or if my life truly reflected in ways they could relate to what this
transcendent consciousness could mean, they could have related to it
better.
No wonder those whom I called family and friends could give this but little credence at
best. No doubt, all they could see was someone off in her dream world, living very much on the edge of the abyss in terms of a workable life
with all the physical and social and familial amenities that seem to be
the quintessence of what it means to have lived a respectable and
accomplished life.
This irony haunted me: even
though I feel so frequently the presence and intervention of Spirit in my life, especially with all the inspiration for
this work, I have felt stymied by a lack of similar spiritual support in
regards to the physical and psychosocial support -- the teamship,
funding, and technical savvy -- to help this finally succeed as I had so
long envisioned it. It's like a big blind spot
of a challenge. Which just goes to show you, again, this is the
meaning of limitation I had come to accept in this aspect of my life
thus far.
A few times I have come so close to giving up or killing 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 let go. 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.
This is an example of how I experience Spirit continually creating
opportunities to communicate with us. One of the characteristics
of the aftereffects of spiritually transformative experiences is that
life becomes so rich with meaning! Any and every thought, feeling
and event can be a gift of insight and direction.
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. .. 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?"
