Understanding and experiencing happiness and joy can give great peace and balance to one’s life. One’s mental attitude, mental outlook, and mental health can be determined by their ability to experience happiness and joy. Different people have different life experiences making the journey to understanding and living with happiness and joy a very personal one. We have so many obstacles and challenges in life that it is hard not to feel tied up. Sometimes we are immediately successful in an endeavor, but very often, we struggle over and over with life challenges and overcoming barriers. When we don’t succeed, it is effortless to become sad and depressed. We can even give up and escaping through addiction or suicide is a common outcome.
We all experience the greatest repetitive failure in our lives as infants. The process of advancing from crawling to standing is a long, drawn-out process consisting of many repetitive failed attempts to stand. No child determines that they’ll never be successful and gives up, and neither does any parent give up on their child labeling them a failure. Later in life, whether during young years of schooling or during adulthood, many people consider themselves failures in various endeavors and undertakings in life. But we know that very often what distinguishes one who is successful from one who is not is his fortitude in overcoming temporary “failure” and never giving up.
The successful person has self-esteem and self-confidence and doesn’t let a temporary “fall” in the ongoing attempt and struggle to stand get them down or discourage them. They maintain a positive attitude, pick themselves up and brush themselves off after any fall, and push on towards their goal. The individual falls or failings are only failings if you let them be. They can equally well be tremendous learning experiences and practice in the process of gaining the wisdom and know-how to finally achieve success. It’s all according to one’s attitude and whether you can have the attitude, approach, drive, and joy of the infant and its parents. The infant’s falls on its journey from a crawler to a walker are never failures, and your “falls” in life should not be considered failures either.
The process of battling on with strength and courage through struggles and challenges in life in the process of breaking through so many of the barriers that tie us up and restrict us is a never-ending one. Just as the infant that conquers the ability to stand transforms from the identity of a crawler to the elevated identity of a walker, every time we break a barrier, we, too, undergo an elevating transformation. This process is repeated over and over in our lifetime. Despite a massive change in who we are because of this barrier-breaking process of transformation, there is typically no concomitant visible outward change in our appearance.
We begin our lives as babies, little people, and as we grow older into adulthood and beyond, we become bigger, but basically, we are recognizable as the same person and creation. When we encounter and engage challenges and obstacles, the process does not typically produce any outward visible transformative change, yet often an internal change does occur. To better understand what is really happening through this change, it helps to examine the life cycle of two different creatures that also undergo transformative change, albeit a different type.
First is the butterfly. The butterfly starts as a caterpillar. The caterpillar does lots of eating and growing. At a certain point, the caterpillar creates a cocoon for itself within which it disappears. The cocoon is a place of hiding and separation from the outside world. It is a barrier formed by the caterpillar, creating a place of darkness, silence, and vulnerability. While in the cocoon, significant transformative physical change occurs, and when the time is right, the creature emerges as a beautiful winged flying butterfly. This transformative metamorphosis occurs a single time in the lifecycle of the butterfly.
Next is the lobster. The lobster is a soft creature that has a hard outer shell. The inner soft animal continually grows throughout its life while the hard-exoskeletal shell is fixed in size and is not compliant. The lobster grows increasing in size until the outer shell becomes confining and painful, no longer accommodating the size of the lobster. The lobster then finds an isolated hidden dark crevice to escape to and in that space sheds its shell. Without its protective shell, the soft creature is then totally vulnerable as food for any other creatures. Once out of its shell, it imbibes a lot of water and grows even bigger before it creates a new comfortable shell. Once it is protected in its new shell, it leaves its hiding place. The lifecycle of the lobster involves repeated episodes of molting or shedding of its confining shell and creating a new, larger, more accommodating shell. This process, which occurs many times in the life of the lobster, has similarities singular caterpillar to butterfly transformation.
Both the lifecycle of the butterfly and the lobster share a monumental transformative visible physical metamorphosis. These transformations are both characterized by a period of separation, darkness, quiet, and vulnerability. This process of physical change is not a choice for these creatures, but instead is a pre-programmed part of their lives as ordained by the Creator. The change for both creatures is about the formation of an advanced, new and improved version of themselves.
These transformative changes in the life of the butterfly and lobster serve as wonderful models for the many changes which occur in the lives of human beings. Our Divine Soul can be compared to the soft lobster creature. As we feed our Divine Soul with faith, learning G0dly wisdom, prayer, and performing acts of lovingkindness, the Divine Soul grows. The Divine Soul is confined by the physical human body and by restrictive thoughts, speech, and action imposed by the outside world. Often many times in the human life cycle, we go through a process of transformative metamorphosis not unlike that of the caterpillar to butterfly transformation and the molting of the lobster. The difference is that whereas for the butterfly and lobster, it is a physical transformation, for humans, it is not a physical transformation, but instead is a Soul or Spiritual transformation.
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