Butterfly: Medicine, Effect, & Meaning

According to Rainbow Medicine: A Visionary Guide to Native American Shamanism by Wolf Moondance, the Butterfly as a Spirit Helper symbolizes beauty, faith, change, and sacredness.  The butterfly represents the circle or opening, both the beginning and end, and transformation.  Given the distinct life phases of the butterfly, and their limited life-span, butterflies exemplify the constant transient nature or way of things, what in Buddhism we may refer to as impermanence.  It's our grasping to our preferences that causes suffering.  We must learn to welcome whatever may come, and be willing to release whatever may go, for who are we to say what is better or worse for us anyway in the end? 

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Ram Dass often told the story "of a farmer who had a horse that ran away.  His neighbor came by and said, “Oh, that’s terrible.”  The farmer said, “You never know.”  The next day the horse came back, and it was leading two other wild horses. The neighbor said, “That’s wonderful.”  And the farmer said, “You never know.”  Later, his son was training one of the wild horses, and while riding the wild horse, he fell off and broke his leg.  The neighbor came by and said, “That’s terrible.”  The farmer said, “You never know.”  The Cossack army came through recruiting everybody, taking away all the able young men.  They didn’t take the farmer’s son because he had a broken leg.  The neighbor came by and said, “That’s wonderful.”  And the farmer said, “You never know.”  And so it goes."  
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Butterfly medicine teaches us to avoid clinging too dearly to any one state, and to appreciate the beauty in every cycle--birth of the caterpillar,  cocooning in chrysalis, emergence of the butterfly, butterfly dance and migration, and eventual return to the earth.  There's exquisite elegance in the perpetual dance of impermanence, a richness to each stage and epoch.  

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The Butterfly effect:
Causality or Energetic Alignment

Understanding and applying this Buddhist philosophy can bring the Butterfly Effect to life in our lived experiences.  In chaos theory, the Butterfly Effect refers to a phenomenon in which due to the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in later states.  While the theory and mathematical definition are applied in weather pattern prediction and quantum mechanics, the popular metaphor describes the example of the minor atmospheric perturbations from the flapping of a butterfly's wings influencing the details of a tornado's formation, path, and duration several weeks later.  
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The idea speaks to our propensity to try to make everything comprehensible, to provide logical and calculable models and explanations, when in truth nature always defies rules and reason.  The essence of the lesson is to relinquish our dependency on our ordered reasoning, our ideas of cause and effect, our evaluations of undesirable and desirable events, and our maps and plans about how to avoid or achieve them.   Instead, when we emphasize aligning our intention, expectations, and vibrations to feelings of peace, joy, and appreciation no matter the circumstance or situation, we generate an energetic field around us for more such experiences to take form and be drawn in.  We create our own energetic field with every thought, every word, every prayer or intentionality in mindful action; our figuratively flapping butterfly wings can quell tornadoes and restore a sense of balance and cohesion.  It's about aligning in a particular heart-space and head-space, about maintaining a particular posture or attitude in our expressions, a rhythm and ritual to our way of being, that may ripple out and environ our peaceful place.  

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Butterfly Design, Pattern, & light

We often admire butterflies for their intricate designs, shapes, colors, and plays of light.  For example the Morpho Butterfly, one of Costa Rica's great prides, exhibits a striking contrast in its wings from the top and under sides.  With wings closed together, they show natural hues of browns and yellow, with several round 'eyes,' but when they take flight with wings open, their scales diffract the light and shine with blue bright.  

We can appreciate the dichotomy between a butterflies' neutral tones to camouflage and blend in, and their flashiness to scare away predators, which makes them stand out.  

We can appreciate the dichotomy of the butterfly and the moth, diurnal and nocturnal, resting with wings closed or wings open.

We can appreciate as well how butterflies express and often reject the male and female dichotomy, expressing in many different asymmetries and new patternings.  

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Sacred SInging CIrcle

The first two Sacred Singing Circles with Angel and Adriana have been a pure joy to attend, coming together with like-hearted souls and building positive energy within a charged container, singing in  English, Spanish, Japanese, Sanskrit, Lakota, and Nahuatl.  In our first circle we sang the Mariposa / Butterfly song, appropriate for the new beginning in sacred and transformative circle, and in our second group we developed the felicitous theme with a Nahuatl butterfly song, 'Huey Papalotl.'  Lyrics, translation, and some explanation are outlined below.  Please join in the Sacred Singing Circle every other thursday evening; see the facebook events for up to date details and information.​

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