"The Butterfly That Dreamed It Was a Caterpillar"

 Consider this, old friend: from the moment your eyes first opened, a spell was cast—not by malice, but by habit. Voices you trusted pointed and named: “Blue.” “Tree.” “You.” “World.” And like soft clay you received each word, pressed into shape by hands that themselves had been pressed.

 You were never asked if it was true. You had no reason to doubt. And so the dream built its scenery—houses, rules, fears, futures, gods, heroes, villains—and you moved through it as if it were solid.

 Hypnosis by agreement. Inheritance by repetition.

Yet, even in this trance, there were moments of sudden clarity—like a sleeper stirring before waking: a hush between thoughts, a gaze without a name, a sense of being the sky instead of the cloud. That was no fantasy. That was you.

Awakening is not an achievement, old friend; it is a recognition. The snake does not learn how to slip its skin. It does what it has always done when the old shape grows tight.

The caterpillar does not become the butterfly; it discovers the butterfly was written in its veins from the start. And like us, it has only forgotten what it always was.

So how do you awaken from the illusion?

You do not fight the dream; you see through it.

You question the unquestioned.

You loosen your grip on inherited certainty.

You subtract, as a sculptor subtracts stone, until the figure that was always there stands revealed.

Or you can practice by remembering.

By self-inquiry.

By letting go of all that you are not…

and what remains is: “I Am just that… I Am.”

Perhaps, you can practice looking without naming or labeling.

Sit with what is before the mind calls it “tree,” “sky,” “me.”

Notice the flicker of belief behind each thought:

“This is real.” “This is mine.” “This is me.”

Gently, kindly, let those beliefs fall silent.

What remains is not an emptiness to fear but the luminous space in which the dream appeared.

That is your true nature.

That is the butterfly already in flight.

We are like the butterfly that believes it is a caterpillar and so crawls when wings are ready to open, forgetting it is born to fly.

Our true nature is already shining within us.

When you stop believing you are a caterpillar, you do not become something else.

You remember what you have always been.

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