Evil Butterflies? Who Knew... How Changing ONE Thing Can Change Everything!

Why think you "aren't?" Instead, KNOW you ARE 

Believe me when I say: Imagination is creation

What we believe we become

It is often said that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in some far distant land can be the cause of a tsunami where we now stand. Could such a small thing really be the reason for the terrible storms and the torrential rains that fall into our lives?

Some years ago, a friend introduced me to a five star resort & spa southwest of Scottsdale, AZ. It’s a beautiful and serene resort and I really wanted to work there as a massage therapist. I studied it on the internet; I downloaded and filled out the application; I prepared my resume. Bright and extremely early (ten) in the morning, I straddled my motorcycle and raced over. I pulled around back to where the HR department was located. 

I strode up to the door and stopped dead in my tracks; as frozen as if the childhood game Red light, Green light had become cosmic law and some joker had just cackled out “Red light.” Just to mess with me. Or, as if I’d shifted in to Dr. Who’s reality and somehow transformed into a Weeping Angel and no one blinked.

Nothing I could do would allow me to open that door. Defeated, I thought, “Okay, maybe if I look around a bit first…” So, I toured the facilities. I looked at the spa, poking my head into where the massage services were being offered. The setting was gorgeous. I really, really wanted to work there. 

Sadly, I could not bring myself to talk to anyone. So, I looked over the pool area and wandered around some of the lounges, paths, terraces, and lobbies making up the resort. Finally, I ended up standing at an overlook peering down at the HR building. I was completely paralyzed. Three hours had passed since I’d roared up to the resort on my motorcycle. After a half hour more berating myself and flinging lots of self-directed monkey-mind poo madness in the form of unkind self-talk, I walked back to the parking lot, slumped on my bike and slunk home. It was not one of my finer moments, but it was a fine example of the fear that arises from our inner self-definitions, the fear that complicates and limits our lives. I blame it on butterflies. Evil little buggers, with their beady eyes and creepy wasp-like bodies and their flap, flapping evil little wings. 

Obviously, I don’t mean the gentle creatures fluttering about in nature. 

The evil insects I’m talking about. . .

. . .are the bugs that burrowed into our beliefs when we were children, or perhaps are burrowing still. Those are the flapping wings that create the storms we suffer through now.

Maybe it was the picture you drew and ran excitedly to show your daddy, but he was too busy to look. Flap. 

Maybe it was it was the funny looks you got when you sang out with joy and exuberance, or the shushing you got from your mother in the grocery store or at church. Flap, flap. 

Maybe it was when you got yelled at for just playing or the hundred other ways your natural, vibrant being got contracted, constricted, or controlled. Flap.

Maybe it was any of a hundred times you got the message to stop, shut up, sit down, or slow down. Flap, flap. 

Whatever it was, suddenly you felt bad, suddenly you felt small, and you grew to fear the way big people would punish you and cause you pain. Flap, flap, flap. Damn bugs.

You became less to protect yourself. From this lessening, from all the painful things that crashed down on each of us, we began to believe that there was something fundamentally wrong inside of ourselves. When we acted on that belief, by conforming, we were rewarded and our belief grew strong.

Fear crept in and rooted in our beliefs. Remember, it is our beliefs that create the way we perceive the world around us. So we began to see the world as a place to fear and walk through with care and trepidation. One after another fear-based beliefs began to fill up the container that is our soul. Every added fear-based belief clogged up our system just a little more and every one of them pushed out our ability to perceive from our pure and natural space of awareness. 

Simultaneously, we developed many healthy, self-serving, empowering and beautiful beliefs. These are the beliefs that give us fire and blast our light across the cosmos. These are the foundation of our emotional intelligence and the channel through which our love and compassion flows through us and into the world. These are bedrock beliefs that get us out of bed every day. 

The desirable and empowering were forced to share their bedroom with their evil twins  and inner conflict was born as the light side and the dark side of our self-beliefs battled for time and attention.

So there I was, standing in front of the HR entrance and all my attention was plundered by a belief that said I wasn’t good enough, or confident enough or deserving enough to work in such a commanding position at such a prestigious resort. I was focusing my attention on NOT. I was focusing my attention on a belief in what I lack; “You are NOT this,” or “You are NOT that,” my beliefs would lament, completely convinced of their own truth and veracity. Beliefs always believe themselves, or else they would pop and poof away. 

Remember, negative beliefs are just a thought that has lived in our souls for a long time and gobbled up so very, very much of our time and attention to ghoulishly cling to their own distorted, perverted life. Negative beliefs are the walking dead; the zombies that devour our brains. It is so easy to be blind to our own blind spot, to miss the negative beliefs that create our dark side; then, while peering into our own darkness, to miss the positive things that are so bright and beautiful in life.

Sometimes we hear things many, many times before the message is finally realized, and so it was for me this week when I finally woke up to the weight of my own sick attraction for all the beliefs of NOT, NOT, NOT that I have carried around with me for most of my life on this planet and all the ways I clung to NOT, NOT, NOT to protect my “self.” Yet, what is that self I was protecting all these years? It was a bunch of negative, destructive, limiting beliefs – nothing to do with the real ME at all. The real ME is pure, joyful awareness that has been buried year after year in hurtful, joyless, and self-limiting rubbish piled deeper and deeper on top of ME. 

All this flooded into my mind that morning as I rode the bus to school. “Why,” I asked myself. “Why am I spending so much time and attention on NOT?” Why don’t I spend that same amount of mental time and attention on what I AM, on what I want to be? I asked myself: “Why am I spending so much time affirming that I am not already a kind, loving, peaceful being? Why don’t I begin affirming what I want, instead of what I don’t?”

So, there I am on the bus, mulling over the message that had flowed into my consciousness from the divine source that shines equally through us all, if our limiting beliefs don’t completely clog our channel to the ALL, and I’m asking myself --- “Now what?”

I determined to first begin imagining myself as exactly the type of kind, loving, peaceful being that I wanted to be---because imagination is an act of creation--- and then second to observe and reinforce all the ways in which I was already that. I determined to notice, every time I felt like something less than that, how a negative belief had crept back into my consciousness and to then squish it like the wing-flapping, freak of a bug that started all this trouble in the first place. Finally, I reminded myself: when looking to shine the light of love and acceptance into your own darkness, don't forget to celebrate the light you already have!

Now here I am, at the end of the week, sitting not on a bus, but at my desk, looking back and looking within – not at evil butterfly thoughts flapping against my peace and well-being --- but rather at the lighthouse shinning in my center. I feel more loving. I feel more kind. I feel more peaceful, more determined than ever to more consistently embody these qualities --- and damn, if it doesn't feel good. To the extent that I remember to watch my thoughts and squish the negative ones, it is like the evil butterflies are lifting up and flying away.

It is time to stop thinking 'am not' and start thinking "AM TOO!"

With love and aloha,

Holman

P.S. My most sincere intention and hope, if my writing resonates with you, is that you will feel inspired to share this post with all your friends and social media. Together we can reach as many people as possible; Together we can all pump powerfully positive, loving, accepting, juicy energy into the world. Namaste.