Butterfly Within

I walk along the enfolding path of a butterfly labyrinth, winding through a wing. Each step unfolds the implicate order, rendering an explicate reality—a butterfly in flight. My journey brings it to life. We are one, the butterfly and I. Together, we fly. Looking down, I see my shadow upon the path reveal wings and antennae. I am transformed.

The butterfly is a symbol of transformation and represents spiritual metamorphosis. A butterfly begins life as a caterpillar, feeding on their host plant and growing ever larger until a strange impulse within leads them to attach to a stem or twig. As they dangle by their abdomen, they shed their supple skin and form a hard-shelled chrysalis, wherein they literally liquefy. Imaginal cells—the implicate butterfly—give rise to an explicate being. The adult then emerges from the chrysalis with a head, thorax, abdomen, antennae, legs, and wings. Their wings expand and dry. When ready to fly, they rise, aloft and fluttering.

Like a butterfly, we are holograms in motion, expressions of perpetual enfolding and unfolding, what physicist, David Bohm, describes as the holomovement (1, 2). I propose that a labyrinth is analogous to the holomovement. When walking a labyrinth, I move on an inner journey along its implicate path. This journey forever transforms my experience and perception of the outer, explicate world.

For all that is,