Snakes Hate to Shed. Butterflies? Don’t even ask.
When people talk about transformation, they love to use the metaphor of snakes and butterflies. ‘Shed your skin gracefully, like a snake,’ they preach; ‘Emerge like a butterfly from the cocoon,’ they enthuse.
Clearly, these people have never actually made the acquaintance of either snakes or butterflies.
Snakes hate to shed. They remind me of menstruating women, grouchy, miserable, striking out at whoever is near. They lie in cool water trying to help the skin loosen. The rub up against rocks and branches trying to peel off the unbearably itchy container their skin has become. They shed even the covering over their eyes, so during the process they are close to blind, intensely vulnerable to predators.
Sometimes the skin slides off neatly, all in a piece, a lovely translucent envelope with each scale clearly delineated. More often, they rub off annoying little shreds here, a few more crumbles there. Imagine having no hands to help with the process, imagine having to undress by laying on the floor and wriggling off a skin tight body stocking until it disintegrated or finally peeled free. Hot, frustrating, maddening work.
Of course, when they are finished, they do look beautiful. The new skin is brilliant, catching the light. They are ravenous, and should you happen to have a mouse or rat handy they will scarf it down with alacrity. One while on a river rafting trip, I hiked inland to see a waterfall. On the way back I saw a gorgeous king snake, draped in elegant S patterns across some large green leafy plant that looked like something out of Jurassic Park. It had obviously just shed; its colors gleamed so radiantly it was like the first snake, the original snake in the garden of Eden. Any fruit that snake had suggested eating, I would have eaten it. It’s beauty was that persuasive. But having known several pythons and boas and corn snakes on a more intimate level, I knew what that snake had gone through to attain its jewel-like state. And I knew that every time that snake grew, it would have to shed anew. We humans like to think of transformation as a one-time deal. Go to a few yoga classes, attain enlightenment, never have to shed, sweat or strain again. But, alas, it is as the Buddhist masters say; ‘before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water’. Spiritual advancement is not one-stop shopping, nor is it a process of constantly moving up into ever-more rarefied atmospheres. It’s more like this; you reach down into the muck, the emotional confusion, the shadow side of human experience. Then you bring that piece of the shadow into the light, where it transforms, shining like the bright new skin of a lizard or a serpent. Then you plunge back down into the gunk and feel around for the next piece of unconsciousness to be transformed. Every time you grow, you must shed again. And not just those few little aggravating things you’d rather not take with you to your next level anyway. The whole container has to go. As Jesus said, “You cannot put new wine in old wineskins, for they would burst. You must have new wineskins for new wine.” In other words, we can’t just rearrange some of the contents of our lives. To truly grow, often we must shift the entire context.
Transformation metaphors become even more gruesome when we consider the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies. When I was fourteen, and desperately hoping to evolve from a gangling, awkward adolescent to a lovely woman, I gathered a bunch of caterpillars. I put them in a large, jumbo size former mayonnaise jar with holes punched in the lid, and each day replenished their supply of the leafed branches I had observed them eating. Each day my siblings and I leaned our foreheads against the glass, examining them carefully. Each day they appeared more or less the same. Then, one morning we awoke and the caterpillars were all gone. In their place, a dozen chrysalises hung from the branches, each the plain beige of a dried leaf. But—the horror! On the bottom of the jar lay a dozen caterpillar heads chopped off as neatly as by a guillotine. What had gone wrong? Were all the caterpillars dead? They must be—no creature can survive without a head. How could a headless caterpillar evolve into anything? My hopes dimmed, but still I checked, every day, to see if there was any progress. But the cocoons hung silent as withered fruit.
Over a month passed. It was pretty clear these butterflies were never going to hatch. I had killed them by putting them in captivity. I should probably give them a decent burial. But for some reason I kept putting it off. Long after I had given up on them, I woke one morning to find a butterfly crumpled at the bottom of the jar. I took the jar outside, into the windy spring. The butterfly on the bottom was dead. But soon the other cocoons started shaking back and forth in mad struggle. A tear appeared in one of them, revealing the orange and black of a folded wing. The struggle continued. I asked my mother if maybe I should tear the chrysalis to help the butterfly emerge. She said no, that might kill it. Trust nature to take its course. It was hard to trust nature, looking at the dead butterfly, but I did. I went inside and ate breakfast. By lunchtime, not one caterpillar had succeeded in fully separating from its womb-prison. But when I came outside after lunch, a crumpled butterfly had crawled onto the branch and was sitting there, damp and shivering. Tears stung my eyes. After all that waiting, all that work. The butterfly’s wings were damaged. It could never fly. It was ugly and defective, like me.
I turned away, tears streaming down my face. Probably they would all be like that. What would become of them? Probably they would starve. I turned back, and to my amazement, saw a real butterfly on the branch where I had last seen a helpless cripple. Its wings had unfurled in the weak spring sunlight and were stiffening into their proper shape even as I watched. It stopped trembling and began delicately testing the breeze with its new wings. Another butterfly hauled itself up on an adjoining branch and huddled there, wet and rumpled, trembling violently. Then a gust of breeze caught the first butterfly and lifted it off the branch; it fluttered, seemingly in amazement—and then bobbled off in the breeze, questing for nectar. I gazed closely at the second butterfly’s face. I imagined it was exhausted, disoriented. I saw how the head of the butterfly in no way resembles the head of a caterpillar. It was smaller, more delicate, with fern like antennae and a curled, elegant tongue in place of the voracious caterpillar mouth. This time I watched the whole process as the sodden mass of crumpled black and orange tissue on the butterfly’s back spread and stiffened into an elegant flying machine, like a piece of origami suddenly unfolded into a miraculous creation.
By sunset, nine butterflies had emerged, shuddered in shock, then strengthened and flown. I buried the first butterfly, who had perished at the bottom of the jar without tasting the freedom of the sky. Two of the chrysalis’ remained unmoving and mute. After another two weeks had passed, I allowed my sister, the budding doctor, to dissect the unhatched cocoons. Inside, there was neither caterpillar nor butterfly, just an undifferentiated mass of goo. The caterpillars had dissolved, but out of that chaos, no new life had emerged.
Transformation is a terrible risk. The old life disintegrates, with no guarantee that something better will arrive in exchange. Does the butterfly even remember its old past life as a caterpillar? I thought they did, that first moment when they stepped off the branch and seemed amazed to be borne aloft. But after that first astonished moment, perhaps it all fades, with the memory of all the suffering. Perhaps nothing is left but nectar and flight.
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