FREEDOM OF NOW Part 5. Chrysalis

The Chrysalis of worm’s metamorphisised into insects, moths or beautiful butterflies is an apt metaphor of our encounter and exchange in life. It isn’t our body taking on a new and different body as the cocooners do, it is our soul growing from its encounter and exchange between our mind/soul and our life’s experience. As we pass through life on this plane we keep the changes evoked from our encounters. That of course assumes the changes are positive. When they are negative they too outlast our temporal lifetime.

Using Chrysalis as the metaphor it could be said our consciousness comes into this temporal life on birth; we become cocooned in an outer layer around us. That outer layer is the material life into which we are foisted. We find ourselves here with no knowledge, just the talent to survive, and the attraction of the material things in the world to seduce us into surviving.

Once committed to this enticement we lose sight of anything other than this life into which we have become ensnared. This entanglement is not bad. The commitment to the attraction of things material is the wherewithal we use to learn to survive in this life. The struggle for survival takes us through the first two phases of life. It is during this time most of us have neither time nor insight into the actual futility of what we are doing.

In the third stage all of a sudden we have time. No longer do we have to acquire as seemed necessary in phase one and two. With this time and relief of pressure it becomes possible to start recognizing the futility of effort we went to in the first two phases. We are also able to apprehend somewhat the poignancy of that effort in spite of its ultimate futility.

With the first two stages bringing us to the third stage we become better able to exercise the insight to see deeper. We see most deeply as we see more than is in this world. If lucky we evoke Transcendence.

It is in this evocation that we leave our cocoons and assert our purpose in this life, namely, using it to migrate into after life. We came into this existence as if starring in a three act play. We play our part out. We are held to account for how we perform. It is ours to make the best of it.

This repeats a theme I have been writing about since the start of this series “There Is More than the Eye Can See” and “The Freedom on Now”. Both of these themes deal with where we are in this time/space dimension we occupy; why we are here; what we are supposed to do with all of that available to us while we are here. Between our presence here, our abilities and all the bells and whistles of this temporal time, our misdirection and then re-direction, one experience deals on the next bringing us ultimately to an enlightenment on what it is all about.

It is all purposeful but not in the way we thought it would be. Nonetheless it is a grand design. I write about it because of the way my life built up to it, leading me in far different directions than I would have taken to results I never thought I could reach.

When I had completed all of it I knew it to still be empty. Caught up in life driven for material reward I continually came up empty. My goal, my return, had no value. I gained all I set out to do. I got it which ended up as nothing.

I grew up with a fantastic education, married, had three wonderful children, I remarried and found love in my life and added a fourth child. I saw those children go on to success in life. I have experienced seven grandchildren from them. This alone is enough from life, enough to have made the trip worthwhile.

It was of course not enough. I used my education to become a lawyer. As a lawyer, encountering many pitfalls similar to every other undertaking of my life, I completed a career of outstanding success. I was a trial lawyer attaining the level of National Counsel to one of the three largest chemical companies in the world. This was on top of a solid country then state wide practice. Doing so I made good money, had all the typical honors, had a hand hewn mahogany office. I had some big homes, a northern lakes recreational home, a place in Scottsdale, and tooled around in my three piece designer suit, then my tailored suit, driving my white Corvette or my white Mercedes.

All of that, the getting it, the having it, did nothing in giving me value or even feeling of value from it. I was with every endeavor always empty, unfulfilled.

The culmination of all of this was then being struck with Dementia. This brought me to my knees. Along with that it also brought me to the epiphany of what I believe my life and what I was intended to have and do. With Dementia it all came together.

Having Dementia, in any of its forms overwhelms your life. It is living a long death in inches and millimeters, there is no way of accepting this. It is devastating, debilitating creating desperation for having existed at all. It is this until we accept it. It is not going away; it is here to stay and it changes the paradigm of our lives. At first this seems unforgiving, terrible, a horrid way for this escapade we know as life to change.

If we are able to see it for what it is, one more setback in a life of stops and starts, see the congruity of it having happened we can then get on to dealing and coping with it. In doing so we look for the best we can make it. It is in this way that our epiphany occurs.

What do I mean by epiphany? The dictionary describes this word in a variety of ways. One of the ways, not the name for the Christian celebration of the visit of the Magi is:

 

A sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of some-thing, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience

It is in the calamity of diagnosis that I was brought to Epiphany. It was in this Epiphany that finally I found my life’s meaning. I have a disease that is quickly reaching epidemic levels in this country and throughout the world. I have intimate knowledge of it. It has blessed me in the way it has infested me. It has caused many limitations. But….

I remain cognitively alert. I can read, write and talk about it. I want to share my experience of it. Doing so provides the way I can help others. This is what I needed to do with my life that remained undone. Everything that preceded in my life prepared me for acting on my Epiphany.

It is in the fulfillment and the sense of peace I have sharing and trying to help others with this disease that I know I am evoking the sublime from my level of imperfection.

I posted an essay some time ago that is the foundation of the thoughts I have expressed in this essay. Click on FREEDOM OF NOW Part 5. Chrysalis