“Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything. Maybe it's about un-becoming everything that isn't really you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” ~ Paulo Coelho
In our becoming, we have to inevitably go through the process of un-becoming.
That is, we must symbolically die to who we have been, in order to transform into who we really are meant to be.
Just as the butterfly cannot become her true, beautiful self without leaving behind the caterpillar she has been, so we too must shed, shed and shed some more.
Layers and layers need to come off, but this takes much time, much repetition and much patience, for it does not happen overnight.
And it is hard work.
We have to shed the roles we've held for so long: Daughter, son, sister, brother, parent, wife, husband, partner, lover, people-pleaser, care-giver, etc.
As well as our compulsive behaviour patterns: our coping mechanisms; our unconsciously driven habits, and our false layers designed to make us blend into the background.
We need to take off our grey garbs and don our vivid, brilliantly designed true-skin. We must reveal and revel in our new found levels of sensitivity, creativity, self-compassion and genuine love for ourselves and all life.
We must commit to letting go of who we once were if we truly wish to be who we can be.
Our night-time dreams reveal to us where we are at each stage; what still needs to be acknowledged and transformed and where we are growing in strength in our new found capacities and awareness. Keeping track via your dreams is illuminating and instructive as consciously we like to think we have changed, but often our dreams show us where the residues of the old roles and patterns are still hanging on and driving us in life.
We are talking about energy shifting and actually changing and again, that takes much time and much focused attention.
There simply is no easy over-night transformation.
Our becoming the true butterfly we are destined to be happens gradually, in stages, and over our entire lifetime.
To become we have to un-become: the old ways must die so that we can finally live.
As Marion Woodman says: "The emergence of the new implies the death of the old. However, the old cannot die until we recognize what it is we have to die to."
© Angela Dunning
Artwork: 'Dancing Horse' by Tadashi Nakayama.