By: Iyo_Embong

FEW sights are lovelier than a multicolored butterfly fluttering in nature’s garden. Butterflies are not only pretty but also have the enviable ability to fly from beautiful rose to sweet gardenia, skipping the unruly weeds in between, unmindful of the ugly caterpillar crawling up on the rose’s thorny stem.

It’s a pretty sight, a real tonic to tired eyes and perhaps to an even more weary soul. It is so pretty we cannot help but pity the caterpillar that is not only as ugly as the butterfly is beautiful but also as slow and tied to the ground as the butterfly is fast and free. Indeed, at first glance, we see the butterfly and the caterpillar as two different creatures.

They are and they are not. They are different because the butterfly is not a caterpillar by any stretch of the imagination. The caterpillar survives by devastating the garden, eating leaves and preventing flowers to bloom. A butterfly, on the other hand, propagates flowers and helps a field of flowers to bloom. Yet, they are really not different because the butterfly came from a caterpillar and was once an ugly and crawly caterpillar.

How does a butterfly get to become a completely different being? How does it get to be so pretty? How does a butterfly gain its freedom to fly? The caterpillar has to die. The caterpillar builds a cocoon that it enters as if burying itself on its own tomb. It spends dark nights inside the cocoon where it slowly morphs into a beautiful butterfly.

Growing up to become a different person involves a dying to the old self that the personality dominated. Attaining the freedom of a mature human being means going through dark nights of struggle with one’s lower nature. This means struggling to give up (die to) everything that the personality holds dear such as power, self-gratification, the urge to win, the urge for revenge, etc.

There’s the rub. Ordinarily, most men do not want to give up the selfish ambitions, desires, thoughts and actions of the personality. Most of us would be afraid to lose something in the process. It is as if the caterpillar, if it had a choice, was afraid to fly and then fall to the ground. So, he’d rather stay a caterpillar and keep safely crawling on the ground.

But anybody can crawl. Any primitive creature can crawl. Only developed creatures can fly! To give a concrete example, anybody can love a friend. Only a free person (free from all selfishness), hence a divine being, can love an enemy.

We are afraid to change into a being that loves one’s enemies because we are afraid to lose the safety of loving our friends. But loving our friends only is to crawl like any primitive creature such as a caterpillar or a worm. When you have gained the freedom to love your enemies, you would have gained the freedom of having become a different being, a divine person, a child of God!

If you have always loved your friend and now you have gained the capacity to love your enemies, what else is there that you cannot love? And if there is nothing anymore that you cannot love, then there is nothing anymore that can prevent you from being happy. The freedom to love even your enemies is the essence of true human happiness. And, if it is truly human, then it can only be really divine!

By: Iyo_Embong