SAPLING #92 — Cocoon
Some images will change your life forever. You carry them inside you, like a kernel of truth, because they are so powerful and have effected you so deeply.
The cocoon is one such image for me. I wrote a blog about it back in 2017 (and it had been with me for much longer still), and I am very grateful to have been able to dedicate a Sapling to it now. It is, in every way, the right time for it.
The world as we know it, has been shaken all the way down to its foundations. So monumentally even, that 2020, which used to be no more than a mere calendar number, has turned into an anomaly we wish to be over as soon as possible. This entire year has turned out to be an extremely intense process, on so many levels at once: global, national, regional; financial, economical, ecological; political, social, personal.
Each and every one of us have run into ourselves in the course of the last few months. Each of us have identified with certain tendencies in society or politics, and have been impatient with others. Many of us have changed our minds, not once but several times, bouncing back and forth as the walls and the perspectives of our understanding kept shifting and expanding. Many of us have harboured a myriad of contradictory and inconsistent opinions and feelings all at once.
We have been looking for balance, and we still are.
We have been asking ourselves the question whether the things we are doing truly matter, and following the particular answer to that we have asked ourselves how to somehow shape that in our personal lives. Or perhaps we aren’t asking ourselves these questions at all, and instead feelings of fear, depression, anxiety and grief have mainly taken over.
Whichever it is (or a mix of both), it is clear we are navigating times of deep uncertainty, of old truths crumbling or downright imploding, of destructive patterns exposed (both in ourselves and society at large). These patterns, however, do wreak more havoc before getting solved, because the beliefs and habits bolstering them are for the larger part unconscious.
This is no more (or no less) than a Cocoon experience. Cocoon experiences are deep and frightening. Very much like what happens to the caterpillar, they will leave nothing we recognize as familiar in our lives untouched or unchanged.
The good news is that at the end of this process of descent, we will have experienced a profound transformation, a resurrection comparable to a butterfly’s. Unfortunately, there can be no resurrection unless you died first. Metaphorically, perhaps, but still.
Those of us who have been there, know how deep this runs. While you’re in the middle of it, is all but a pleasure cruise. At the time when I was writing Chrysalis, back in 2017, bearing a vivid memory of my own descent, I felt our global society was on the brink of a major Cocoon process. Now, we have been pulled into it for real.
Not of our own free will — we have become far too detached from our connection to the greater unity of things to have initiated this process consciously. This will probably make the descent harder than it already is. And collective processes can be quite a bit trickier still than personal ones. But it doesn’t mean we can’t find new forms to grow into, or that the state of utter dissolution we are experiencing now should be permanent. Quite the contrary.
May this Sapling be a beacon of support to all those struggling in the dark, reaching out for something to hold on to.
The SAPLING series is a joint project with artist and illustrator Jurgen Walschot.
Saplings are creative sprouts. I will write to the images, he will draw to the words.
((This blog marks my return to Medium and my English writings in what feels to me like a VERY long time. Sorry for the SAPLINGs that didn’t get translated, sometimes life just catches up with you and you have to live it instead of write it. On the whole, I really can’t complain about the cards I’ve been dealt in this truly challenging year. I hope you are all well, and I intend to be here more frequently in the future.))
If you want to know more about Soulcraft or Cocoon work, check out Animas Valley Institute and the work of Bill Plotkin.
