Given a safe environment and proper nutrition, the caterpillar turns into a butterfly. The potential for the beautiful butterfly is already in the lowly caterpillar. It takes time for the transformation to take place. We call that change metamorphosis.
Metamorphosis is also the word used in the passage “be not conformed … but be transformed…” The change that is encouraged does not require you to become something you are not. The potential for a beautiful person is already in you. Given a safe environment and the proper nutrition of your spirit, the change will take place.
You are simply becoming an adult version of you. An adult is someone who has finished changing or adolescence. Usually we think of this change as a physical transformation but it should involve much more. When we grow past the conditions that limit or stunt our growth and when we struggle to be free from our cocoons then we become mentally, emotionally and spiritually more fully human and more fully in touch with the divine.
While we recognize that the potential for physical growth is largely determined by our DNA, we don’t see that the potential for a transformed spirituality is also already within us. There are plenty of people who tell you to conform to their ideas or systems by telling you how to act, think, feel, and believe. However, they cannot know what kind of butterfly you will become. Only you can discover that by becoming fully you. And that is you in your greatest beauty.
Having recently crossed over a lot of the markers of adulthood, I feel uneasy about the idea that “an adult is someone who has finished changing.” I sometimes get the feeling that “OK, I’ve grown up. Now what?” At least in the spiritual sense, I hope that I will grow and change and become that butterfly over and over again. Have you experienced particular moments of becoming “fully you”? Are these transformations cumulative?