Hidden Wings: Emerging from troubled times with new hope and deeper wisdom - part 5

Hello, and welcome to the latest 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. You can find Day 5, the final instalment, below. 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 a caterpillar 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 even more 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.

Imagining the future

I’ve just laid the last of my eggs. I hope I’ve given them the best possible chance, placing them on the choicest milkweed. It’s a bittersweet moment. It’s such an amazing thing, to be able to give life to the future. But for me it’s also laced with sorrow, because soon I will die. I have fulfilled my purpose and now I must hand the baton of life to the next generation.

In the short time that still remains to me, I find myself reflecting on the hopes and dreams I have for these children of mine. Perhaps you will be kind enough to indulge me, as I explore them, because I imagine that these reflections would be even more poignant for you, our human cousins, when you give birth. And of course you don’t have to be physically a parent to be both fearful and hopeful for those who will come after you.

When you lay an egg, or birth a baby, you are committing a new life into a completely unknown future. It’s a daunting prospect. Small wonder that so many new parents are terrified by the thought. In today’s world that fear is very much amplified by global events and dangerous political directions that seem to be developing. It would be easy to see why fear might greatly outstrip hope. This kind of musing leads me to ask myself: What do I hope for my descendants? What kind of future do I imagine, with my imaginal cell? What guidance would I want to give them to help them along the way ahead – a way that includes both nectar and wasps? It leads me also to invite you to ponder these questions for your descendants and the future inhabitants and custodians of our shared home.

I would want to warn my offspring that they will hatch into a world where there are many other creatures out to get them and that natural defences will be required. Every living creature soon learns that the rest of creation does not necessarily mean well. And I would have to mention that they will grow into greedy little grubs who will recklessly consume the very environment that supports them, that they will expand beyond all reasonable limits until they realise that they can’t keep up this rapacious lifestyle. I will have to point out that this will lead to a terrible meltdown, in which they will think their entire universe is going to hell in a handcart.

So far it doesn’t look much like a dream to be handing on. It looks more like a nightmare. So from the very beginning of their lives I would also tell them, if only I could, the great secret – that they hold within themselves - the promise of a very different kind of world, curled up inside their imaginal cells. I would teach them to trust that promise, and by way of evidence I would show them my wings and tell them the story of my amazing journeys. I would assure them that if they dare but risk the flight they will be sustained along the way, dazzled by the sunlight, intoxicated by the sweetest nectar, cherished by humankind as bringers of hope. I would teach them that obtaining what you desire must go hand in hand with giving life to others. I would urge them never to harm a flower by force but always to wait for the right moment to be invited in.

I would tell them all of this, if I could, but before they hatch I will be gone. For you, my human friends, it is not so. You have the great privilege of time in which to get to know your children and grandchildren and to teach them the wisdom that life has placed in your own hearts. What are you dreaming for them?

They won’t need you to show them how destructive human life is of this planetary home we share. They will see that for themselves. They won’t need any instruction on the deadly effects of greed, reckless consumption, violent speech and action, ego-centric leadership or ruthless conflict. They will see it every day on television. They will be bombarded with it on social media. But by the same channels they will also pick up messages of protest, of hope and the possibility of change. Where they will need you is to provide wise guidance on how to navigate these perilous waters you call human life. Only from you, their elders, will they learn, as they grow up, how to choose between the destructive and the creative paths through life.

They may or may not listen to what you say, but they will be far more profoundly influenced by who you are. If you are to convince them that there is a better, more life-giving way, you will need to show them your wings! Don’t you believe you have wings? Then let me ask you: How did humanity fly this far? How did you move beyond the horrors of the medieval period? How did you discover the importance of education and universal health care? How did you (albeit very slowly) learn the importance of tolerance and the art of listening to those who may not share your opinions, of debating important issues, leading to the beginnings of democratic government? How did you learn to respect minorities in your midst, and protect their rights and to cherish the welfare of the planet itself? Who taught you to reject all violence as a solution to your problems and to strive for peaceful and civilised solutions instead? Who urged you to open your borders to those fleeing persecution, and even to question your right to erect those borders in the first place, given that you first took the land you now call yours from other peoples who had settled there long before you arrived?

You did all this, my friends, by becoming the change you longed for. You will pass on this transformative potential to those who come after you by demonstrating its power in your own lives, your own generation, your own place and time. Of course the process of your spiritual evolution is still woefully incomplete, but the call is there, moment by moment, tightly enclosed in your own imaginal cells. They not only know the future fullness, but they already contain it. Don’t ridicule them or call them trouble-makers. Listen to the prophetic voices within you and around you. Shun the evil wasps who get under your skin and lay the seeds of discord, conflict and hatred in your hearts. I think you know who they are, and what they look like and sound like in HumanWorld. I think you recognise the tone and menace of their rhetoric.

The future you dream of for those who come after you may seem as remote and unimaginable to you today as the butterfly seems remote and unimaginable to the caterpillar. Look at me and you will see that it is actually closer to you than your own next breath, waiting only for its moment to unfurl its wings in a world that lives by very different values from those that prevail at present on the planet we all call home.

The great secret, known deep in the heart of the imaginal cell, is that new life emerges out of great turbulence and that the only way to discover it is to plunge into the turbulence and trust it to bring forth its fruit. This secret is hidden in plain sight, in human experience, in physics and mathematics, in the natural world and in ancient wisdom. There, for example, we find a strange story about a pool of water in the old city of Jerusalem. Those who were sick believed that every so often the waters of the pool would become agitated by the touch of an angel. A person who entered the waters during these stormy periods would be healed and restored. Perhaps this is also a story for our times. The storm angel is here in force, but there is a great gift hidden in troubled times, and, like a treasure on the ocean floor, it will only be found by those who have the courage and the trust to enter the waters.

So this would be my last word to my still unhatched children: ‘Don’t be afraid of the turbulence, for it holds new life. You can’t stay in the egg. You can’t remain in your caterpillar form. You can’t be a chrysalis for ever. Trust your imaginal cells. Plunge into the waters of transformation because you are born to fly.’

This is the chrysalis challenge - to hang on in there, to wait, but also to invest more energy than ever in the task of growing and giving birth to our own wings and becoming who we were born to be. It won’t happen just by passively waiting for the universe to shift us back into gear, although this will be an important component. It also requires our active, intentional and intelligent co-operation. We too face a birth struggle.

We are co-creators of humanity’s future, so what do we want that future to look like? What kind of world do we truly desire? And how can we live in such a way that those dreams move a little closer to fulfilment? The question that now confronts us is how to play our own part, both individually and collectively, in this great work.

If any of the issues and possibilities raised in this book have fired your imagination, and you are wondering how to turn the promise of transformation into a practical reality, you might like to take the journey further with the follow-up companion book:

Born toFly: A Handbook forButterflies-in-Waiting

  

Talking Points

These weeks and months of Corona Lockdown are a space for new beginnings to come to birth. As I make my daily permitted walk outside, I hear stirrings I have never heard before. All traffic noise is stilled. I listen to the silence of the surrounding countryside. I hear the birdsong. I hear the planet breathing a sigh of deep relief.  I look up to the skies and, although we are near two airports, I see no vapour trails. On a sunny spring morning it can feel like a walk in the Garden of Eden, and yet there is a serpent in the garden …

…. Many are grieving for loved ones lost too soon and for whom there was no time or place for ‘Goodbye’. Many health workers on the front line will lose their lives to help save ours. Millions of people may lose their livelihoods or see their life savings badly diminished if not lost. Whole countries may slide into debt, and all of us may experience a global recession. Things will never be the same again.

The serpent is there, for sure, but a serpent is not just a symbol of harm but also a symbol of health. In the midst of the devastation that this crisis is causing, where are the gleams of hope? The serpent that threatens to poison us also calls forth springs of kindness and compassion right across the globe.

·       How can we draw on these springs, and make the healing flow of compassion and love into a permanent reality of what it means to be human on this planet?

·       How can we change our lifestyle permanently so that we all learn to live more simply, really grateful for what we have and far less wasteful of our resources? How can we live in such a way that Nature will see the change in our behaviour, and ‘let us out of our rooms’ again.

·       In this time of crisis there are calls to set aside political one-upmanship and work together for the common good. There are calls from the United Nations to make a permanent ‘cease fire’ in all global conflict. How can we add our weight to these aspirations, so that the post-Corona world will be a very different place where conflict and competition give way to compassion and co-operation?

·       There is another virus circulating. It’s the kindness virus and it is very contagious. If you smile at the next person you meet, that person is much more likely to be friendly to the next few people she meets. If you are gentle with the next person who irritates you, that person is more likely to be reasonable with others in his turn. Just as inspirational stories go ‘viral’ on the internet, so each of us can spread the kindness virus, even, and perhaps especially, when we are ‘socially distanced’.

·       Huge upheavals such as the one we are living through frequently lead to permanent changes in the way we live and relate to each other. The year 2020 could truly become the point when human beings move into a relationship of inter-dependence  and mutual respect with each other and with all creation. Our world is in the throes of radical rearrangement. What kind of world do we want to pass on to those who follow after? What do we want the legacy of 2020 to be when the story of humanity is told?

For all of this to happen we are now challenged to do what the caterpillar does in its own terrifying meltdown. It literally becomes the change it longs for. No less is being asked of us.

The best of times, the worst of times?

Breaking news, this weekend

You probably tune in  to the newscasts each day with trepidation, wondering what has happened overnight. Every day there will be both inspirational and ‘dispirational’ stories.

Try spotting your own ‘breaking news’ from now on and asking yourself what is inspiring you, and all of us, to help shape a better world, post-Corona, and what is warning us against what is luring us into ‘the worst of times’. The warning stories are sometimes horrifying, but we need them. They show us the worst we could become. The inspirational stories may seem like impossible dreams, but they are our stepping stones towards the best we can become.

A helpful ongoing exercise might be to reflect back for a few minutes each day on what has warned you of the worst of times and what has inspired you to live and work towards the best of times.

Finally, may the Irish, who perhaps understand more than most on this planet how to harvest wisdom from the fields of hardship, bless our striving with Celtic wisdom:

May the sun enlighten us with daily renewed hope

May the rain of peace and justice fall softly upon our hearts

May the winds of change be ever at our back,

May the road towards a better future rise to meet us,

May the universe mean well with us,

And may the Sacred Spirit grow us into the best we can be 

Holding us gently in the palm of her hand.