I find that one of the most fascinating things on Earth is to observe certain natural phenomena of mutation. One such example is the process that leads a caterpillar to become a butterfly. Particularly beguiling is that phase when the caterpillar weaves a silk cocoon, shields itself from the world and becomes immersed in its own concoction, only to come out in a completely different form, as a butterfly. I remember, as a child, being shown those tiny cocoons on leaves and looking intently at them, half guessing, half sensing what was going on. I realised there and then that some of the most important and potent things in life can be completely invisible to the eye.
No less interesting to me has been to observe and be part of human transformation. I am particularly drawn to understand the unfolding of selfhood, or the process of be-coming. In order to better puzzle out the complexity of this procession, I find it useful to play with possible correspondences between the human becoming and that of the caterpillar-butterfly.
In fact, these correspondences have inspired, to a great degree, my counselling practice, not only conceptually but vitally. By this I mean that I work from the recognition that there are larger principles and forces that act both on humans and caterpillars alike.
Recently I have been called to reflect upon my own challenges of self transformation as well as of some of my clients. Like a change in season, or an impending storm, there is nothing quite so vision-full as a good identity crisis.
The “Middle Age”crisis as situational standpoint
I really don’t know what the phrase “middle age crisis” is supposed to mean in a collective sense, but I can say what it means to me, since I am abundantly familiar with personal crises and closer to the end of my life story than to its beginning.
I take it to be an invitation to relinquish some key aspects of my personality, better said, kick away the corner stone of the edifice of my persona. More often than not, the invitation seems absurd, if not ludicrous. Possibly because personalities are not inclined to self-destruct and implode, quite on the contrary.
Some parts of the personality (or sub-personalities) may be ready to believe they can, on their own volition and by engaging their own skilfulness, achieve the eradication of the egoic self. This is particularly true for the “spiritual character”. Yet, I have lived enough to know that, despite all mental ruses, no aspect of the persona will voluntarily do it. It is not designed for it1. And no external agent can do it either. It is not possible.
An existential impasse is at hand.
Is there anything else in me that is willing to do it?
Am I being dreamt by a more mature form of me, my own butterfly? If that is so, this caterpillar can only conceive it ever so lightly; thoughts can grasp harder than hands. As any child learns, for all the admiration butterflies evoke in us, we cannot grab one without destroying it. Sometimes, as we open our hands carefully, we may find the lofty winged creature willingly landing to touch us.
Individuation - the caterpillar mode
In the realm of psychology, Carl Jung saw individuation as a continuous process of transformation by which individual beings are formed and differentiated (from other human beings). In practical terms, this describes how a person shapes their identity within several societal conditions which s-he is a part of, such as family, gender, ethnicity and so forth but can also, over time, emancipate from societal constrains towards a more encompassing identity, or what can be called a ‘higher self’. To step into this other self means to experience and express oneself in ways which are often prohibited by the compromises made in the service of social acceptance.
In summary, and from the view point of individuation, the “I” is better understood as a process, rather than some-thing. It supposes a drive towards (self) realisation and, as a psychic individual, the I is always in relationship to an-other, including the “we”. It supposes a relation (and a tension) between self and world. It entails both a belonging and an emancipation.
In my early years and well into my twenties, I sought life experiences avidly. The meeting of self and world, in manifold ways, forged a personality, which included the definition of attractions and repulsions, the affirmation of belief systems and all manner of psychic material with which I would identify.
Elsewhere I have written about this part of the process, seeking to understand how individuation presupposes a continuous transformation of world into self as well as self into world. In that piece of writing, I was particularly interested to see the destructive forces at play in the most elementary way in which we humans carry out our lives.
For a flavour of what that means, I invite you, reader, to take note how the objective state of the world is continuously being appropriated and assimilated by all of us, as subjects. It is an invitation to envision the consumerism of the species but in a much deeper view than that of consumerism understood solely as a socio-economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.
From the viewpoint of individuation, our consumption ranges all the way from food-stuff to religious truths. Our life unfolds through encountering goods, people, ideas and gods, and we internalise these to satisfy our basic needs and desires, such as the need to survive, the need to know and make sense, and the need to love.
As I cognise the world, I do not just “identify” objects, I internalise them. If I see an apple on the apple tree, I pick it and bite it. By doing so, I extract it from the real, objective fabric of world-reality and as I do, it becomes a part of my world (as a separate being). Now, “that” belongs to “me” and not to the -isness of the world. The subjective ‘I’ experience increases while the objective world diminishes.
At present, humans are not really conscious to what degree they take life and make it their own. Life is inherently an egoic experience, in its self affirmation. In this way, appropriation makes me become more ‘myself’, at the expense of everything else. The neglect of the true, unconditional being of the other, be that an apple, a spouse or an idea, is a blindness that all spiritual traditions speak of.
From entomology, the science of insects, we learn that caterpillars spend their entire larval stage eating ravenously in preparation for their next pupal stage and consequent metamorphosis into adulthood.
With humans, however, one can justifiably suspect that this caterpillar phase can extend indefinitely and become a modality in and of its own2.
Sometimes, however, we experience developmental growing pains. That is the acclaimed opportunity bell sounding from a self in crisis.
The choice
In my understanding, individuation does not manifest in a linear, sequential way. Tension and potential disruption is woven throughout the individuation process, particularly in the relation between the multiple polarities that one finds as we grow up. We want to belong and we want to emancipate, we are drawn to the new and we crave the known and tested.
When we are middle aged, this tension does not necessarily play in the relation between oneself and the world around us and instead becomes an internal drama. By then, most of us have a fully developed persona, that is, the social world has been greatly assimilated and internalised.
And yet, it is not uncommon in this phase of life to experience a strange dis-identification with our life and with ourselves. The crisis comes through a collision between the drive to become something completely other than oneself, whilst experiencing the inertia of a solid personal edifice. This inertia is greatly backed up by the social world in which one lives, be that internal and external, with all its tacit conventions and covenants.
A crisis reveals that individuation is not a wholly mechanical affair and that we have a ground for taking decisive choices.
What does it mean to ‘become more oneself’? There are different possibilities. One can either affirm and hence reinforce the egoic traits one has developed, or relinquish as much as possible the many layers that make up our mundane identity (likes, dislikes, belief systems, etc.). And one does that out of the recognition that there is another, unseen, untried, unknown self, a kind of butterfly that cannot possibly fit in our current caterpillar form.
The silky, fiery crucible
In the self development and spiritual circles it is not uncommon to find viewpoints that reinforce, more or less implicitly, the opposition between the “small self” and the “higher self”. I prefer to see the “smaller self” as a limited version of the latter, or a proto “Self”. Let’s return to the insects’ cocoon and consider what happens there. It is the caterpillar that excretes, from itself, the chrysalis, that is, the space and internal conditions that make possible the birth of the butterfly but also its own caterpillar death bed. One could say the caterpillar dreams of the butterfly, dies into itself and is reborn in the butterfly.
It is a well known axiom in esoteric work that when one aspires for one’s transformation, one doesn’t do the transformation but instead connects to the part of oneself that is already transformed.
Let’s take an even closer look into the chrysalis. Inside, the caterpillar lies in stillness and begins dissolving into a gooey substance.
Cells which have been dormant in the caterpillar begin creating a new structure and a new form. Biologists call them “imaginal cells” – seeds of future potential and that contain the blueprint of a flying creature. First they operate independently as single-cell organisms. Regarded as threats, they are attacked by the caterpillar’s immune system. But the process continues; they persist, multiply, and connect with each other. The imaginal cells form clusters and begin resonating at the same frequency, passing information back and forth until they hit a tipping point. It is then they begin acting not as discrete units but as a multi-cell organism – and a butterfly is born.
I encounter an untold source of noetic juices and inspiration in this process. It speaks to me of multiple aspects of metamorphosis, equally valid for different beings, stages and scales; from a single womb to a planetary range.
Can we envision individuals as imaginal cells on the way to become a new humanity, a transformed Earth?
A fuller breath
Butterflies exist in an ecosystem. The ravenous caterpillar eats from its environment. Equally, a middle-age crisis is as much an individual subjective experience as a collective event. Only a hyper-personalised state of consciousness sees it as distinctive and disconnected.
In certain societies of the past, the individual choice to drop one’s personality and worldly concerns was a process collectively understood and normalised. In India, for example, it was not uncommon for middle-aged men to relinquish worldly affairs and embark on a spiritual path, typically leading one to become a mendicant. This action was collectively understood and even sustained. The figure of the sannyasi is such a one who has renounced the world, we are told, by performing his own funeral and abandoning all claims to social or family standing. Concomitantly, the collective conceived of ‘Bhiksha’ (the tradition of asking for alms with the purpose of self-effacement or ego-conquering). This frame gave the possibility for the ones who were on the worldly side to partake of the renunciant’s choice by deciding themselves to give the dāna, an ancient practice of almsgiving, and in so doing providing a way for the sannyasi to focus exclusively on spiritual development.
This example is not meant to be prescriptive but inspirational, in line of what sometimes is called gift economy. I find there is something very precious in such a covenant. A recognition that the individual choice affects the whole and the whole comprehends the individual. It rests on harmonising a fundamental relationship between the giving and the receiving, the emptying and the filling, the productive and the reflective, the worldly and the sacred.
Perhaps there could be such social agreements in future communities.
It is designed to support the learning process of freedom but not to take wing.
In previous reflections I have called it the solipsistic self. On a collective level, this stage of becoming that ‘gathers the world to oneself’ according to the interests of egotistic drives has a dramatic impact on the world. I contend that many of the social and environmental crises we experience today are the downstream symptoms of an unconscious, collective stage of “individuation” that is arrested in a caterpillar mode.