CATERPILLAR SPIRITUALITY--OR DO WE PUPATE?

 I have been blessed to have 15 Monarch caterpillars on my two Swamp Milkweed plants this summer. I have never had so many, and one of my joys is to get close to them, peer at the "cats" as butterfly folks call them, and see how big they are and how near they might be to pupating and becoming a chrysalis.  Apparently, what you look for is the caterpillar becoming a J-form as it hangs from a leaf. This is the beginning.

 

Is there anything more magical and mysterious in our world than this, other than how an egg and a sperm produce a human baby? The Monarchs go from an egg, to a tiny cat, a bigger one, and all the time they are ferociously eating and chawing down on milkweed plants (the only thing they eat), finally becoming a fat, beautiful creature.

I watched a video of one pupating: it starts with the head, as they hang upside down, and soon a lovely green surface appears like a small green helmet. Then it wiggles and wiggles and the skin shrinks darkly up to the tail of the cat. 

Finally, as it jerks back and forth, the skin falls off and the cat becomes the chrysalis we know and love--an iridescent green with golden dots on a ridge. If we are lucky, we get to see it emerging, wet wings hanging, as they pump them gently to fill them out preparing for flight.

Apparently, there are a lot of other voracious critters which eat the cats, and parasitic things which infest the chrysalis. I read that their survival rate is only about 3%.

So how does this apply to us? In some old movie from the early 80s, I think it was, we saw vampires hanging upside down like these cats, ready to emerge. I hope that will not be my fate for I truly do not like the taste of blood.

BUT--I think when we die, or the more gentle "pass over", it is a tiny bit like the cat pupating. We breathe less frequently, often loudly; sometimes our hands flex unconsciously, like the cat wiggling its skin off; at some point our heart stills and breath stops as we shed our incarnate body for another body, another form, not yet known. I am sure it will be beautiful, just as the Monarch chrysalis is beautiful and incandescent. Then we will breathe new air into our resurrected bodies, flex our hands and feet, and set off on a new journey, towards the source of all life.