Metamorphosis

My preoccupation in the last seventeen years was attending and conducting self transformation workshops. It stems from the adage “the best way to learn something is to teach it”. I supplemented my education with books and information from the internet. From the Bible to the latest interpretation of the Quantum Theory, one thing stands out: Change is a given. There is nothing static. Coming from the same raw material of electrons and protons, all forms in the universe move about in varying degrees of vibration and energy. In this frame of mind, there is no difference between living and non-living. Things once thought of as non-living like rocks and furniture have their own time line of life and death. Everything goes through the cycle of birth and death. From beginning to end, there is only one thing: “stardust”.

I used to have qualms about changing my mind and perspective since the norm was to make up your mind early and stick to it. It reminds me of the Catholic Church’s Inquisition and Protestant witch hunts that burned heretics at the stake including the famous Joan of Arc who was later proclaimed a saint 500 years after the fact. Or Galileo Galilei who was forced to recant his new world view. So is there such a thing as absolute truth? How long would it be before our present beliefs will be replaced by new dogma and world views?

Around thirty five years ago, I confided my confusion to my father regarding world events. His suggestion was for me to stop reading. Naturally, I did not heed his advise and went on to satisfy my curiosity. Today, the same nature of events continue to resonate in greater degrees. At this very moment, there is Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Columbia, Tibet, Kenya, Somalia and pockets of insurgency in every major country in the world. There is world wide hunger and poverty. There is the worsening educational system. Drugs and prostitution. Campus shootings and gang wars. There is the rise of New Age concepts and Quantum Physics.

My very own country is rocked with scandals in proportions about to set a new World Guinness Record for kleptomania and prevarications in galactic proportions. Yet again, a nation that led the world in toppling a dictatorship is faced with a dilemma on how to deal with a social cancer that was diagnosed more than a hundred years ago.

It is apparent that current world views and religious dogmas are constantly threatened by new discoveries backed by empirical data.

Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal’s form or structure through cell growth and differentiation. It is derived from the Latin words ‘meta’ meaning ‘change’ and ‘morph’ meaning form. Some insects, amphibians, molluscs, crustaceans, cnidarians, echinoderms and tunicates undergo metamorphosis, which is usually (but not always) accompanied by a change of habitat or behaviour, a graphic picture of change where the original face can no longer be discerned. >Wikipedia www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosis

Today, the term is used to exemplify the change in an individual’s character or an organization’s change in form including government structures as well as cultural transformation. In all successful instances, remnants of the old form are hardly present except for a few old habits die hard syndrome.

Typical of how we deal with death, there is resistance to change and clinging to old ways persists despite its irrelevance and inappropriateness to the current environment. For those who see the need and inherent value of change, there is peer and social pressure to remain in status quo or deal with being ostracized or labeled crazy. Can this worldwide upheaval simply be a cultural resistance to change? Is our world as a living organism simply undergoing metamorphosis?

“The caterpillar’s new cells [after it has built its cocoon] are called ‘imaginal cells.’ They resonate at a different frequency. They are so totally different from the caterpillar cells that his immune system [that is the immune system of the worm] thinks they [the new imaginal cells] are enemies… and gobbles them up . . . But these new imaginal cells continue to appear, more and more of them! Pretty soon, the caterpillar’s immune system cannot destroy them fast enough. More and more of the imaginal cells survive. >Nicanor Perlas www.pagasa.net.ph/PAGASA/Editorials/Entries/2006/2/5_The_Butterfly_Effect_and_Societal_Transformation_.html

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”…this is simply crab mentality at its peak…the old world hanging on to survival…a caterpillar’s last struggle against the emerging butterfly.

New insights:

http://www.starchild.co.za/what.html