We are six and two. Six humans and two caterpillars, who arrived the second day of our journey to Teotihuacan (the pyramids outside Mexico City), on the tree outside the salon and entombed themselves to die and be reborn. They were huge and furry and black with yellow stars down the length of their backs. We are doing the same, on an inside space we retreat into the layers of our beings and our pasts that we still carry to transform these slow caterpillar bodies into lightness and colour and wings.
As we enter the salon every morning for yoga and evening for talks I look at the two white bundles underneath the branch and I wonder what is happening to the skin and small caterpillar bones inside the cocoon. How are they stretching and pushing and forming and tightening. Is it painful for them? Or do they sleep and then wake with a new body and brand new wings?
My insides are stretching and reforming, new energetic muscles are testing their boundaries and there are butterflies in my stomach as I prepare to leave here and go to Tepoztlan for the second half of the journey. I find myself impatient to be home to plan my new life already and get things moving and change and tell my partner all my new plans but now is not time for movement, I am still the caterpillar in the cocoon and this journey is the tree with its roots in the earth drawing substance and sustenance from the earth and giving it to us, all six cocoons receiving the love.
I discovered that I have love for myself, I want to be happy, I want to create my own dream of happiness that includes everything I want for myself. My relationship with Paul, my life with him and living somewhere beautiful and also I want to be successful at my art and sell and make money doing what I love doing, creating. Find a balance between the two, I need to find an agent, someone who knows how to sell and promote so I can concentrate on making and creating.
Universe, I want all this! So now I can move forward and keep my eyes open for opportunities.
If there is one thing I have learnt for certain in doing this work is that you pull towards you what you hold inside. If you hold fear and limitation that is what you will find, if you hold trust and openness that is also what you will find.
We finish the journey with a marriage. A couple from Belgium decides to get married in Tepoztlan. We scurry round the town the day before buying flowers and a gift for them and wondering what to wear and the next day we gather in the small chapel on the property and listen as they speak love to one another. I think of my own wedding last January and smile and send some love to Paul where ever he is. We go outside and in a traditional Mexican ceremony shout their names to the four directions and watch as they feed each other cake and hot chocolate. Yellow flowers everywhere.
It is the day of the dead in Mexico, families watch vigil at graves all night and yellow flowers line the streets and pave walks. They celebrate death to welcome life, to honour those who have gone before to honour the life that is living right now.
I allow a piece of myself, the old self that lived in limitation, to die every time I do one of these journeys and it brings space for something new to be born, something new and fragile, that I don’t recognize at first but I watch it and shelter it until it is strong enough to walk on its own.
We emerge from our cocoons as butterflies, wings still wet and weak but growing stronger in the sunlight and colours emerge, reds and blues and silvers and golds…. And we fly.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can also subscribe to cliodhna's wave by Email Thanks for visiting!












