Upon awakening on the morning of September 24th, 2023, on the second day of the two meditations of Heal Yourself with the Autumn Equinox, I noticed a drop of red liquid under the stool where my computer is during the meditations. My first thought was, “Is that blood?” Nobody in the house was injured and checking underneath the seat of the stool, the only thing I noticed was a dry moth clinging to the underside. “I’ll clean it later,” I thought.
I passed the morning meditating outside and when I came back inside, the floor under the stool had more liquid droplets, transparent like water. I kneeled to look under the stool again and saw that it wasn’t a moth – it was a cocoon with what looked like a baby butterfly in mid-metamorphosis!
When I returned, I found the new-born butterfly standing on the floor under the stool.
A few minutes later, it attempted its first flight but couldn’t find its way to the garden and landed on a window.
With extreme care, Paula caught the butterfly in a glass and placed it on a table outside. We looked carefully at the intricate design of its wings. Strangely, each wing was decorated with shapes of … butterflies, like a fractal of butterflies. Did you know that butterflies are born grey? With the light, the wings soon became dark-orange, and we recognized the species as a typical “monarch” butterfly. After saying our goodbyes, Paula lifted the glass, and in the blink of an eye, the butterfly flew off into the eastern corner of the garden.
This is the first time in my life that I have had the privilege of seeing the birth of a butterfly. I didn’t know that the cocoon contained a liquid, some kind of amniotic fluid to sustain the chrysalis, which was the liquid on the floor. Butterflies are a universal symbol of transformation, death, and rebirth. The chrysalis has to die in its current form to be reborn as a butterfly. It was like the Autumn equinox wanted us to understand something important.
In Autumn, nature becomes bare, which is the death of a cycle. But what we often overlook is that, with death, automatically comes rebirth.
In the Toltec tradition, death is represented as a man and a woman back-to-back, the female character having a big belly, signifying that she is always pregnant with new life. What an amazing piece of wisdom!
In our life, whatever is ending or dying, it is time to look to what is coming to life. Life and death, death and life are inseparable, and you have a choice in emphasizing one or the other. So, which one are you going to focus on? Things that are ending, or what is being born?
I am sure we will be tested by the universe this month to see how we have integrated the balance of life and death. October 14th to 28th is the eclipse season, which is about transformation over the next six-month period. In the end of October is Dia de los Muertos, the Days of the Dead, in which we reconnect with our loved ones who have passed away.
These next two weeks are an important time of transition for you to integrate the first half of the Toltec year and be grounded and conscious about what you want to manifest in the second half of the year.
So many opportunities for all of us to transmute, transform, and fly high in the sky… to the East, the most auspicious direction, which is the path of your highest destiny!
