Gentle Transformation
There’s a kind of transformation that’s gentle.
Recently I bought a caterpillar for my children to learn about the lifecycle of a butterfly.
A week after witnessing the (re)birth of a butterfly, I was still in awe of this powerful transformation.
It's not the type of dramatic transformation of a phoenix rising from the ashes, but a much gentler one, more akin to what I have experienced in my own awakening journey. Nothing life-or-death happened externally, and on the outside people might be saying “You look fine”, but on the inside, it was dark, slow, quiet and heavy. Like a cocoon.
Our caterpillar remained a cocoon for 11 days. I almost forgot that it existed.
It was on the 11th night, perhaps out of intuition, I decided to clean the box and took out the twig. Then I felt two gentle tugs through my fingers. Like contractions before labor. Could tonight be the night?
So my husband help set up an 8-hour time lapse to film the process.
The timing was divine.
The butterfly broke out of the cocoon at just before sunrise. It was breathtaking yet gentle.
I called it gentle transformation, because the dramatic part took place long before the actual breaking out of the cocoon moment.
It was the shedding of skin and releasing of excessive water before climbing onto the twig and turning into a cocoon.
This is like the awakening journey. Letting go was the hard part. The rest was simply gentle unfolding.
Your true self has to outgrow your skin, your identity.
You have to slow down and keep expanding, despite the pain of losing what was, and not knowing what is to come.
“Expansion comes without effort. It emerges naturally, slowly, quietly.”
— Richard Rudd
Cancer New Moon and Gene Key 53
The coming New Moon in Cancer on July 9th 9:16PM ET calls for turning inward and connecting to our tender heart and inner strength.
Maybe that’s why I fell into a contemplative state to reflect on my witnessing of this caterpillar turning into a butterfly a week earlier.
Such is the power of a Cancer. Soft inside but also strong from within.
"As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.”
— Laozi
This New Moon also transits astrologically in Gene Key 53. The Gift of the 53th Gene Key is Expansion, and the highest expression is Superabundance.
Superabundance is beyond abundance. It’s beyond all agendas.
I see Superabundance in a tiny and vulnerable cocoon. It just has to relax and simply let maturity come in its own time.
”That’s what superabundance really teaches us - the fine art of letting go…”
— Richard Rudd
My first daughter is a Cancer child with Sun/Venus/Mercury in Cancer, and her Life’s Work (the Sun placement) is Gene Key 53, so is my SQ (spiritual imprint). Naturally I was drawn to this particular Gene Key.
One evening I asked her,
“What is the next number after Googolplex?”
(She had learnt this cool word at school lately.)
She thought for a moment and answered:
“It’s One.”
As a 4.5 year-old, she might have just picked the easiest number she knew, but this answer was genius on its own, and captured the essence of Gene Key 53 so perfectly —
Keep expanding until it returns to the One, the Source.
That’s Superabundance, the gentle transformation.
Many blessings from the moonless sky,
Crystal x