Hello,
and welcome to the first instalment of the DLT eBook Club, a virtual book study
group from Darton, Longman and Todd designed to help us connect, interact, read
and reflect together during this time of social distancing and self-isolation.
Each
week on this blog, one of our brilliant authors will present five extracts from
one of their DLT books, followed by some prompts for reflection and online
discussion. We will post a link to the blog on Facebook (@dltbooks) and Twitter
(@dlt_books); if you use either of those platforms, please follow us and feel
free to post your thoughts there in response to each day’s reading. Not all of
our authors use social media, but when they do they will drop into the
discussion from time to time to add some further thoughts or answer any
questions.
It
is not essential to have read the full book in order to take part in the DLT
eBook Club, but we hope it might make you want to do so. Please look out for
links to our new eBook site, www.dltebooks.com,
from where you can buy that week’s featured book and many others, all at half
price until further notice.
The
first title to be studied in the DLT eBook Club is Hidden Wings: Emerging from troubled
times with new hope and deeper wisdom by the wonderful writer and
spiritual explorer, Margaret Silf. Margaret started writing Hidden Wings at a point of deep concern
for our world, not long after the result of the UK’s Brexit referendum and the
election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. She anticipated some of the
chaos and deep social division that would follow and, through the analogy of acaterpillar
entering the devastating, world-altering stage of the chrysalis, before
emerging – transformed – as a butterfly, considered what it might mean for us,
spiritually, to enter a similar phase of chaotic transformation. How might we
emerge at the end of it all?
Now, her book seems evenmore prophetic than
we thought at the time.
If you wish, you can buy an eBook copy of the
book here, or a physical copy (supply chains
allowing) here. We hope you enjoy the DLT eBook
Club.
If we didn’t have caterpillars
…
… we would have to invent them, because they provide a
perfect metaphor – more than that, a model
– of our own spiritual journey from all we are now to all we can become. This
humble creature transforms, through metamorphosis, from a potentially
destructive, all-consuming pest, to a beautiful and life-giving butterfly,
taking flight, spreading life to all the flowers it pollinates and joy to all
who see it. The metamorphosis of the caterpillar sounds incredible, and yet we
see the evidence of it all around us every summer. It’s rather harder to
believe that we too are in process of transformation, but unlike the
caterpillar we have choices. We can work with
the dynamic of transformation, or against it. The way we make our choices
will determine the future of human life on planet Earth.
The ’more’ in metamorphosis
There is more
to this mystery of metamorphosis than we could ever guess. In fact, there is a quantum leap right at the
heart of it, as one creature changes physically into quite another. What begins
as one that crawls becomes one who flies. What begins as an all-consuming grub,
destroying the very plant that feeds it, becomes one who touches creation
lightly and pollinates the plants on which it alights. The potential
death-dealer becomes the life-giver. Some people call that 180 transformation.
Religious traditions might call it metanoia,
or conversion from a lower to a higher state of being. Spiritual explorers call
it the emergence of higher levels of consciousness in the human family through
the process of spiritual evolution.
What changes this from mere intellectual speculation
into a roadmap for the future of all creation on this planet is that this more is revealing itself precisely in
the times when it feels as though everything is falling apart and collapsing in
on itself. We are living through such times right now and we have never been
more urgently in need of a spiritual roadmap.
The ‘more’ in metamorphosis is nothing less than the
human potential for spiritual, as well as physical, evolution. And the secret
is already latent deep inside us. It may, however, be willing to reveal itself
if we coax it into a conversation. So, this is where our story begins. And to
get the true inside story, we will invite an imaginal cell to be our narrator.
What, you may well be asking, is an imaginal cell?
Before we embark on our journey of discovery, it’s
important to appreciate a bit of biology that stunned me with its significance
when, not so long ago, I was introduced to it by a friend in Australia. Some
readers will be well aware of the role of the imaginal cell in the caterpillar
story. To others it may come as a complete surprise, as it did to me. The
biology is relatively simple to grasp. The wider significance of such a
phenomenon may direct us to a much bigger story than the drama being played out
in our gardens every summer.
Here’s the biology story …
Some cells within the caterpillar, although sharing
the same DNA, differ from the majority of the cells in significant ways.
Biologists report that they ‘resonate on a different frequency’ from the others,
and that they hold the blueprint for what will become the various parts of the
future butterfly. These are the imaginal cells. They are called ‘imaginal’ not
because they are in any way ‘imaginary’ (they are very real indeed), but
because they hold the blueprint of the imago,
the Latin term for the mature insect – for that very particular mature insect
that will emerge from that particular caterpillar. They are also known as
imaginal discs, because of their flat structure.
Initially the imaginal cells operate independently as
single-cell organisms, but the caterpillar’s immune system regards them as a
threat, attacks them, drenching them in juvenile hormone to suppress their
activation during the caterpillar stage of the cycle. The imaginal cells persist,
however, multiply and begin to connect with each other forming clusters, and
start to resonate at the new frequency of the emerging butterfly, sharing
information among themselves. In the chrysalis stage, they reach critical mass,
and begin to function as a coherent multi-cell organism as, in the fullness of
time, they become the butterfly.
This is the biology. The wider implications, however,
are very far-reaching indeed, which is why an imaginal cell will be our
narrator of this unfolding story. Our imaginal cell carries a deeper wisdom
that we need if we are to embrace the invitation to transformation that our
times are pressing upon us, and for which most spiritual traditions seek to
prepare us.
This imaginal wisdom warns us that the path to transformation
will not be an easy one. It will bring us up against serious opposition; just
as the prophetic voices all down the ages have been vilified and suppressed.
But it also assures us that the call to a transformed life will always prevail
over all the odds that are stacked against it. Opposition can kill the dreamer,
as history repeatedly reveals, but it can never kill the dream. How urgently we
need this reassurance in our present deeply troubled times, but it needs to be
an authentic reassurance and no mere
morale-boosting rhetoric from either politicians or pulpits. The caterpillar
story is as real as it gets, literally growing in our own back yard. What can
we learn from it? How might it bring genuine encouragement into our present global
distress and disillusionment?
The imaginal wisdom also knows that, although we are
currently groping our way through threatening, adversarial and deeply-divisive
and dangerous situations, the time will come when the forces of such extreme
opposition (the ordinary caterpillar cells) will become the very means of
nourishing and enabling the new possibility. So profound is the change into
which we are being invited that what appear to be its enemies will in time
become its enablers.
The imaginal cell knows that the promise of
transformation is both true and possible, as it carries the still unborn future
deep within it. It also knows that the emergence of the new beginning only
happens through the catastrophic meltdown (in the chrysalis) of the old order.
It knows that this new order also depends on a change of attitude away from ‘I
can do this on my own’ in favour of ‘To make this a reality we need to work
together’. It trusts what it knows deep inside itself, all through that
breakdown, even when everything seems to shout the opposite message. It trusts
the hidden wings it already contains but that it cannot, as yet, even imagine.
Doesn’t that sound rather like ‘faith’?
Finally, the imaginal cell knows, against all the
evidence to the contrary, that there is more
to the caterpillar than even the caterpillar can guess. It will come as no
surprise, therefore, to learn that the term imaginal
cell is also sometimes applied to visionary leaders who imagine a better
future for life on our planet and strive, with others, to make this future a
reality. You may well think there is a conspicuous absence of such leaders in
our world today; in fact, they could probably be counted on the fingers of one
hand. But consider these possibilities:
·
What if each of us is potentially an
imaginal cell, carrying the still hidden seed of the best possible version of
who we can become?
·
What if each one of us carries
within us a fragment of a bigger story – the best possible version of humanity
we can become, on this beautiful fragile planet we call home?
An
invitation to evolve
The miracle of metamorphosis in one species is just
one facet of a much bigger story. All creation is in process of transformation.
We call that process evolution. I
once saw a sign in the Evolution section of the Paris Science Museum that
stopped me in my tracks. It read: ‘The process of hominization is probably
still ongoing, but the process of humanisation has barely begun, and is still
very fragile.’ ‘Hominization’
describes the course of physical evolution. ‘Humanisation’ is something else.
It is not unreasonable to call it spiritual evolution. This book is about that
process of humanisation – the challenge to become more and more fully human,
ultimately transcending everything we think we are.
The bad news is that such transformation, such
evolution, happens mainly through periods of apparent total breakdown. This is
the pattern that the natural sciences clearly reveal. It is also the dynamic of
change and growth that runs through our ancient spiritual traditions. What we
have known, and grown used to, is no
longer. Where we are going is not yet.
There is no way to make the journey from no
longer to not yet without going
through chaotic breakdown.
Never has this process been more clearly in evidence
than right now in our own times, when even the most phlegmatic and conservative
citizens have been dramatically forced, by the power of a microscopic virus,
into a realisation that enormous changes are happening that will affect us all
in ways we are quite unable to predict. The climate has become seriously
unstable. The planet is threatened. Our economic systems are failing. Brutal
conflicts are precipitating mass migrations. Our politics are turning the world
upside down in ways that may terrify and dismay us. And now, what none of us
could see coming – a global pandemic of a potentially killer disease.
While the imaginal cells do share the general
caterpillar genes, they have this additional characteristic of resonating on a
different frequency from their peers, which is what tends to lead them into
trouble. You probably know a few human beings in your circle of acquaintances
who do the same. They are the ones who ask the awkward questions. They are the
people who hold politicians, economists, clerics and all manner of
‘authorities’ to account for their decisions. They are there on the internet,
energising protest movements. They are downtown, organising food banks, and
asking why rich countries need food banks. They are on the streets, campaigning
for ceasefires in war-torn regions, and claiming that no problem is ever
resolved by violence. They are prophetic voices, but the big news is: deep down
there is a prophetic voice in each of us, just as there are imaginal cells in
every caterpillar. The music that is resonating through these cells is the
music of a future yet unborn. But it is everyone’s
future, and everyone, every single one, every single cell, is a part of that
embryonic future. What kind of future do we want that to be?
For the caterpillar, the future is already right
there, sleeping inside the imaginal cells. What if such a future is already
being dreamed in you?
Tomorrow
we will let the imaginal cell take us on a journey of exploration through
Caterpillar World. Later in the week we will venture inside the chrysalis until
we discover the hitherto unimagined potential in ourselves and our world.
***
Talking points
Deep
within the caterpillar lie the imaginal cells that hold the hidden potential of
the butterfly it is destined to become. Could this be a pattern of potential
transformation for human life? Do we too hold deep within ourselves the seed of
everything we have the potential to become? Christian teaching tells us that
‘the Kingdom is within you’. How do you feel about this possibility?
The
imaginal cells come up against fierce opposition from the caterpillar’s immune
system. How does human society tend to react to prophetic voices; for example,
the doctor who warned the world about the coming of the coronavirus in Wuhan.
The
first three months of 2020 have brought sudden and dramatic changes to the way
we live: devastating fire and flood to
many regions, and a planetary pandemic to us all. And we are only up to March.
The caterpillar will also disintegrate before it can move into the next phase
of its transformation. No one wants, or expects, such terrifying dislocation.
Is it just bad news? Or might it be the state of chaotic breakdown from which
new possibilities are already arising? Could homo sapiens be on the cusp
of a whole new chapter of our destiny?
What
new possibilities for human behaviour and relationships are already being
revealed through our reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic? Crisis can draw out our
best and our worst? How can we nourish the emergence of our ‘best’ and work
against any tendencies towards our ‘worst’? The choices we make will determine
whether the future of humanity will be something amazing or something horrific.
Every choice - personal, national or global - will make a difference.
The best of times, the worst of times?
Breaking news, March 25th
· 500,00
volunteers sign up to help the NHS effort in the UK by delivering food and
medication to vulnerable people, driving patients to appointments and speaking
with those who are isolated.
· An Oxford
landlady forces a hospital surgeon out of her home where he is lodging, in case
he brings the virus home. Elsewhere people have attacked health care workers,
to steal their ID cards in order to access priority slots in supermarket
queues.
What
can we learn from these news items to help us reflect on how we would want
humanity to evolve in the future?
Margaret
Silf, March 2020
***
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