When the cocoon is also the secret place – Cocoon Conclusions in 2018

There is an agenda that presses toward the end-game in the cocoon.  In addition to anchoring in, being still, night prayers, there is a letting go and there is a secret place agenda.  I don’t think it is coincidence, rather syncretistic that the new year of 2018 is upon us as I arrive to a settling close of butterfly insights.  There is a butterfly crescendo on the horizon. This final work takes place in the Secret Place and is accomplished through a final act of bravery and surrender.

Surrender to the initially affronting idea that this darkness is not inherently bad is hard to reconcile because it feels so bad sometimes. It is also hard because the darkness involves the eating away of what we are…the caterpillar’s whole self must dissolve. 

There must be an agreement with the Lord to this plan of decompensation – we have to say yes to this night prayer.  We have to be overwhelmed by these imaginal cells so that the new thing can be birthed.

But the moment of surrender, I recognize as I have experienced it myself, it feels like death.

In this metaphor, by imaginal cells I mean the new thing that we have not yet laid hold of, that we may not even have an outline or perception of, that thing on the other side of our liminal space that calls us into the cocoon in the first place. It’s that unfulfilled desire to lean into the next right thing for us or to become the next healed layer of our being…this is the substance of imaginal cells in my discussion here.

Jan Richardson links dark emotional or circumstantial experience with newness it like this: “I believe that Christ came not to dispel the darkness but to teach us to dwell with integrity. The one who grew in the fertile darkness of Mary’s womb knew that darkness is not evil of itself. Rather, it can become the tending place in which our longings for healing, justice, and peace grow and come to birth…with a perception that goes beyond visual sight, we re called to know and to name the gifts of the night and to share the visions that emerge from darkness.”

What do we see with our night vision in the cocoon?  What affections to we become aware of?  What do we host on a regular basis – thoughts, fears, desires? What corner of our emotional experience cries out for healing? What desires have we tucked so deep we dare not become aware of them for fear of disappointment? What whispers the cramp of labor pains…what wants to be born in us during this season of darkness?

These answers cannot be known in the light, in the of scurry of life activity, where we live uncocooned and where our eyes know all the answers.

Once we stop railing against the “imaginal cells” we find our way into the secret place. It is in this secret place that we begin to make out the form and outline of the “butterfly” – of the thing God is leading you to that is the new place, the next provision, the emerging identity that will support the thriving that is our next plateau to run across. The Secret Place is where we get clarity on those questions above. 

We all have our own unique road map to this Secret Place.  Very incomparable from person-to-person, inimitable and matchless are the practices that we become faithful to, that lead us to our Source, our Secret Place. The point is to pursue them.  Daily.  To live into them until they breathe the life into the potentials we long for.

He who takes refuge in the shelter of the Most High will be safe in the shadow of the Almighty. (Fill your name in here ___(Mandi)___ will say to the Eternal, “My Shelter, my mighty fortress, my God, I place all my trust in you.” For He will rescue you from the snares set by your enemies who entrap you and from deadly plagues. Like a bird protecting her young, God will cover you with His feathers, will protect you under His great wings; His faithfulness will form a shield around you, a rock-solid wall to protect you. Psalm 91:1-3

Guys, a shadow is dark.  By definition. Under the great wing of a mother bird light doesn’t burn bright.  Our experience of dark can take on two different tones…the first is an experience of fear, abandonment, inadequacy, and lostness.  That same moment in the darkness can alternatively be experienced as a sweet wrapping, a holding in the Presence of God sealed around us closer than the air in our lungs.  What makes the difference is the intention and awareness we daily choose to define our darkness with and our faithfulness to spend cocoon time in the Secret Place, laid open for God to re-order our form.

In that environment we find the vision and courage to let our new form and outline emerge with security and surefootedness.

I think it is making peace with the goodness of darkness that has been my greatest point of resistance through my cocoon experience…and I have found pressing into the sweetness of it is the only way to exist in it and the only way to find the exit without sight.

*Spiritual Practices Workshop offered on 2/10 in hopes of providing some practical tools to find your unique road into the Secret Place*

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