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You can’t talk to a caterpillar in butterfly language: It won’t land.
I read my Rob Brezsny horoscope every Tuesday morning. I use it as guidance, I use it as a possible context for my week.
Last week my horoscope was:
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “You cannot use butterfly language to communicate with caterpillars,” said psychologist Timothy Leary.
That’s good advice for you to keep in mind in the near future. You might want to find a way to carry on constructive dialogs with people who have a hard time understanding you. It’s not necessarily that they are stupid or resistant to your charms. The problem is that they haven’t experienced some of the critical transformations you have. They can’t be expected to converse with you in your butterfly language. Are you willing and able to speak caterpillar?
I had a real rough time with the guidance, because it hit too close to home.
I do not speak caterpillar. I spent the past week speaking even higher butterfly language, and wrecking my brain for a solution, a translator, anything…
Caterpillars translate themselves, all of themselves, to butterfly… nothing of the caterpillar remains. All of the caterpillar is translated to butterfly…
First off: how do you explain it to a person in caterpillar state that I am not saying what I say to insult them?
Yesterday on the Elite Circle Coaching call I observed how this whole phenomenon, this translation of languages, plays itself out in an area of life.
Insight must precede application ~ Max Planck
People on the call had the homework to observe a certain behavior on others. Each and every one of them translated it to watch other people.
When you watch, you judge. When you observe, you are like a scientist: play attention to what you see, but don’t judge it. The WHO of the two actions is a different person… has a different intention, a different insight preceding the action.
- Observe gets translated to watching.
- Practice gets translated to doing, doing it once, maybe twice, maybe for a week.
I could start building a dictionary, because I can see the difference, I bet you can’t.
There are no words that can turn a caterpillar into a butterfly. I can speak any language, caterpillar or butterfly, only what you will do with what I say will matter.
The major difference between caterpillar state and butterfly state is context… or as Max Planck calls it: Insight
Caterpillar lives in a default context: they don’t even understand context, because the moment they did, they would suddenly enter butterfly state.
A friend of mine, last week, entered butterfly state and stayed there for a whole three days. Don’t worry, he is over it… ha-ha, not funny.
He organized his life that day to stretch beyond his normal capacity, then in this stretched state he attended a transformational event. Something happened, the beginnings of the butterfly state… so he called me. Through the conversation he got still only semi-consciously into butterfly state. He had done it before, that’s why we are friends, I guess.
Then life dragged him back into caterpillar state. Semi-conscious is not sufficiently alert, not sufficiently conscious, not sufficiently “cause” to return you there.
It is hard to define the difference between the two states… so I’ll use an analogy:
Newtonian physics is caterpillar language. Quantum Mechanics is butterfly language
In quantum mechanics things are not things, not fixed, not predetermined.
Before you look at a “thing” it is pure potentiality. It is either wave or it is particle. It cannot be both, it has to be one of those. The observer decides what it is going to be, wave or particle. Their expectation.
In quantum physics you cause reality, it is not already set.
A caterpillar’s world is dealing with everything as if it were already fixed. A butterfly’s world is calling it, consciously, or calling it unconsciously and taking responsibility for having called it.
It is really simple.
You can’t fake calling it, and you can’t fake responsibility.
In the caterpillar’s world the caterpillar is not responsible for anything, because they are always the effect, never the cause. They are dealing with what is… the idea is that they called it never even enters the picture.
In the caterpillar’s world the context is what the context is. It the butterfly’s world the context is the most important thing, and it is created, or consciously altered… therefore life can be on an ever rising spiral… instead of the ever descending spiral of the caterpillar’s reality: becoming smaller, tighter, more and more constricted, less and less aliveness, less and less joy.
In my view: explanation, understanding, has never transformed anyone. Only experience does
The key is challenge, the key is effort, the key is pushing the envelope.
In my next program, no training, no explanation, just pushing the envelope.
It would work best as an on-site training, like a boot camp, but none of us is prepared for that. I am not. Therefore it will be, probably, a total failure, because whether you push the envelope or not, will be left to you.
But even if you just enter butterfly state for minutes, hours, or maybe days, you’ll have a new opening, a new paradigm opening up, and you’ll want more of it. Or not… but at least you’ll have a choice.
The paradigm can only shift if who you are, for yourself shifts. Sometimes your project gives you who you are. But more often who you are shifts and you find yourself working on a worthy project as a result.
I teach two technologies to shift the WHO: the Instant Coherence method, and the Soaring Method. Both are good, both are recommended.
If and when you manage to shift your WHO, the whole world changes… that is how you know.
Use the Soaring Method to change your WHOUse the Instant Coherence method to change your WHO
