Imaginal Cells and Impostor Nutrition

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There’s the caterpillar. There are imaginal cells.  These seen, material imprints of the unseen world line up with this essential-self calling us.  It parallels with what G. K. Chesterton calls “Divine Desire”. 

As the small still voice whispers to us from behind (1 Kings 10:12), so the caterpillar starts hearing this different frequency. This frequency is that of one tiny imaginal cell within. This foreign cell gets his attention:  



“The caterpillar’s new cells are called imaginal cells. They resonate at a different frequency.  They are so totally different from the caterpillar cells that his immune system things they are enemies…and gobbles them up.”  Imaginal cells survive liquefaction of very nearly all other cells of the caterpillar when once inside its chrysalis.  (From Norie Huddle’s children’s Book Butterfly)

Eldridge writes: “Our desire, if we will listen to it, will save us from soul-suicide, the sacrifice of our hearts on the altar of “getting by” The same old thing is not enough. It never will be…Life as usual is not the life we truly want” (2007).

This is the point the caterpillar comes to.  Life stuck to the branch is not enough.  There is this stirring frequency to fly.

Impostor Nutrition

Then there is the misreading of the cue. Instead of the authentic nutrition we need for transformation, our predispositions lead us impulsively to… TV? Exercise? Sweets? Relationship? Sleeping?  Work?  Accomplishment? Preforming? Pleasing?  

In this respect, we part from the way of the caterpillar. The caterpillar knows instinctually what to feed itself with for the transition to come. We get side tracked here.

“I don’t understand why you spend your money for things that don’t nourish or work so hard for what leaves you empty. Attend to Me and eat what is good; enjoy the richest, most delectable of things.”
Isaiah 55:2

“The only fatal error is to pretend that we have found the life we prize. To mistake the watering hole for the sea.  To settle for the same old thing (p. 14) …. We try food, tennis, television, or sex, going from one thing to another, never quite finding satisfaction (p. 30). (Eldridge, 2007)

This first sense of a different frequency felt by the caterpillar, a stirring of transformation, a perception of the still small voice inviting us to get up off the floor and take our seat at the banquet table – this voracious hunger it is a signal that Something is stirring.  Something is afoot.

Pay slow attention. There is a centering that happens when we wake up and shake off that impostor nutrition—and it prepares us for the next thing to come.

“Just as the eyes of servants closely watch the hand of their masters, Just as a maid carefully observes the slightest gesture of her mistress, In the same way we look to You, Eternal One, waiting for our God to pour out His mercy upon us.”
Psalm 123:2

What follows is the “Goo Phase” …To Be Continued…

“The Eternal sustains all who stumble on their way. For those who are broken down, God is near. He raises them up in hope.”

Psalm 145:14

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