struggle to grow

The past few months…years even, I’ve been struggling with life’s difficulties. I know I’m not alone in this struggle. Everyone has their problems, their fights…as Miley would put it…their “climb.” I heard a great story/lesson yesterday in the Kabbalah Dallas class. I’ll try my best to retell the story.

How does a butterfly come into existence? We all know the basic concept of an egg hatching into a caterpillar and at some point in its life, it decides to make a cocoon out of its own body. Inside the cocoon, the caterpillar is transforming into a butterfly.

When the butterfly is ready, it starts to break through the cocoon. First a hole appears. Then the butterfly struggles to come out through the hole.

If you try to “help” the butterfly by cutting the cocoon, the butterfly will come out easily but it will never fly. Your “help” has destroyed the butterfly.

The butterfly can fly because it has to struggle to come out. The pushing forces lots of enzymes from the body to the wing tips. This strengthens the muscles, and reduces the body weight. In this way, the butterfly will be able to fly the moment it comes out of the cocoon. Otherwise it will simply fall to the ground, crawl around with a swollen body and shrunken wings, and soon die.

If the butterfly is not left to struggle to come out of the cocoon, it will never fly.

If we do not have struggles and challenges in our lives, we will never grow strong and capable. If life has no difficulties, we will become weak and helpless.

This really had a lasting impression on me and I wanted to share it. I can bitch and moan all day long about the struggles of everyday life…or I can learn from my climb and hurdles that I leap and better myself.

i close my eyes and breathe

what a week.

its funny how things can be so complicated that we just don’t really care anymore.

i don’t mean to say that i’m careless because i feel i am far from that. i’ve been careless in the past and i continue to take strides to not be that way towards anything or anyone. maybe that is what has been so complicated…figuring out how to care.

i was reading a book by Jack Canfield (the Chicken Soup guy) and its on the law of attraction. and though i never read it, it was what The Secret book was all about. the few pages i read essentially reiterated some of the principles that i’ve learned in my studies of kabbalah, most notably the fact that “like attracts like.”

at first it was a hard concept to grasp since throughout all my school years i was taught that opposites attract…not the case in the cosmos, only in magnetics apparently. so, essentially, it boils down to we as people will get back from the world that which we give to it. if i desire joy, happiness, and camaraderie, i must give it in every aspect of my life. easy as that.

so as i was reading these paragraphs, reaffirming my lessons, it dawned on me that i don’t really know what i want. of course i want the essentials: to be happy, to have joy in my life, friends, a lover, success…and on and on. but what is it that i really desire? deep down?

i can’t answer that right now. i know what i don’t want. i don’t want to be careless.

so i close my eyes and breathe.