Chrysalis – Potential:

If This Card Chooses You – You are standing on the edge of possibility. Imagination tells us what COULD be. In the multiverse, physicists assure, everything is happening somewhere. Potential alerts us to the possibilities. The stick-colored, dead-seeming chrysalis contains nature’s most beautiful sprite, the butterfly. The invisibility of potential discourages predators by daylight, but at night, the chrysalis opens and we are free.

You Contain Multitudes – Whitman describes us, as well as himself. Be wary of the “restrictions” others place so confidently upon you. Question them. Be the first in your family to — do something. Because you ARE the first in your family to be you. You are unique. In day dreams and night dreams, on conscious and unconscious levels, you explore all the odds and contingencies.

People we love, need and admire, keep trying to pin us down. They want to get to “know” us so they can “rely” on our sameness. They want us to stay where they left us, like a coat or umbrella. We willingly place limits on ourselves, just to be accepted. But you are unrestrained in your wild and dreaming imagination. Think of the story of Max, who voyaged overnight to play with the Wild Things until he finally decided he wanted to return to his safe, warm, familiar bed. Every action you perform, every thought you think, suggests and then creates its opposite or “shadow” as Jung would say. Free yourself to consider all the alternatives. Warriors fly above them.

Warriors Are Warmed by Inner Fire – Warriors don’t listen to the limitations others have set on them. Who would believe that dried up chrysalis is going to turn into a magnificent butterfly? Yet it will. You have the butterfly within you. When you concentrate, you can feel its wings stretching and expanding.

Can we lose ourselves? Will we become Peter Pan who was replaced and now can never come home? Fear is a valid reaction when danger is about. But danger is triggered by lack of escape. Keep all your psychic escape hatches open.

What fantasy do you cherish? Harry Potter, Narnia or Marvel? Expand it outwards. Insert yourself. So many discoveries have been made from and through fantasy fan fiction they are too numerous to mention here. But allowing yourself to dream is key. Imagine you are outfitting your inner butterfly. What colors? How about all colors, constantly changing?

Warriors Are Quick-Change Artists – Warriors might become a butterfly or a snowflake or an orchid or some new form that hasn’t been created yet. Warriors are avatars. We keep ourselves in peak readiness to accept the universal challenge. We realize life is a dance, we can adapt to its steps and offer steps all our own.

Warriors Protect Their Potential – Others will constantly try to constrain and define you and herd you into their enclosure. Don’t go. What you will become is not up to them, it is not even up to those who mentor and love you. It is up to you.

Warriors Protect The World’s Potential – The young, the aged, the helpless, the teacher, the crossing guard, the medic, the harvester – these are people who shepherd the universe Into its positive becoming. They are occupied with vital work and can’t protect themselves or those they help. Life’s warriors will protect them. The forces of destruction are all around us, the universe can’t afford to waste a scrap of its positive potential.

Models & Mentors – “The only person you are destined to be is the person you decide to become” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Consult not your fears but your hopes and dreams. Think not about your frustrations but your potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed but with what it is still possible for you to do.” – Pope John XXIII

“Our essential nature is one of pure potentiality” – Deepak Chopra

“Accept whatever comes and meet it with the best you have to give” – Eleanor Roosevelt

#Haiku: Chrysalis – Potential

Unrecognizable:
Disguised –
Prototype
Unbeing
Becomes
You