The 4 Stages of Butterflies & Humans
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
The tiny cluster of atoms destined to become a butterfly goes thru 4 stages: The first is called the egg stage; the second, the larval stage; the third, the pupal stage (a/k/a: the chrysalis stage); the fourth, the metamorphic stage. We are little different. In the egg stage, the butterfly-to-be is basically the same as we are in the wombs of our mothers. In the lar¬val stage, the butterfly-to-be is an ugly, creepy, slimy bug crawling around on dirt and plants seeking whatever intake shall allow it to survive what the chrysalis stage shall thrust upon it for as long as it takes it to morph into a butterfly—namely: impris¬onment so con¬fining, one is wholly unable to move. Finally comes the metamorphic stage in which it be¬comes the very opposite of what it was: From an ugly, creepy, slimy earth-bound slug, it is suddenly an incredibly beautiful work of art able to soar above the earth and to ply the air waves of the sky flying thou¬sands of miles from the USA to Mexico and back. . . . . . Greetings again, EK: You make much ado about denying that the caterpillar is ugly. You miss the point, do you not? In doing so, you clearly but inadvertently (by a kind of Freudian slip?) make yourself an example of what I’m trying to tell you: So beautiful is the metamor¬phic stage—whether of the butterfly or the human—it doesn’t make any difference what the larval-stage self is. Whether or not it’s ugly is mean¬ingless be¬cause of how excellent the metamorphic stage of one’s self is. At least, that’s the way it is as long as one is not so hung up on one’s lar¬val-stage self, one can’t tolerate seeing it as inferior to one’s metamor¬phic-stage self. Judging by the way you jump to deny the caterpillar is ugly, you are blindly hung up on the current larval stage of your own self—so much so, it leaves you a slave to its ego. Every knowledgeable person knows what that entails: a compulsive need to sing the praises of the larval-stage self and to be obsessed with denying anything seriously inferior in it. How different it is for those confident they are on the path to a fu¬ture metamorphic-stage self of infi¬nite beauty and consequence! They couldn’t care less what might be the truth re-garding their larval-stage selves and, thus, couldn’t care less how ugly that truth might be. All that remains for them is to stay on that path until the day when death brings to pass the ultimate metamorphosis. In them alone is found what can¬not be found in those hung up on the larval stage of their selves—namely: . . . . the peace from God which goes beyond all understanding. ——ST. PAUL: Phillipians 4:7 (My transla¬tion – ENH) From time to time, I have been involved in charitable work with convicts, ex-con¬victs, alcohol¬ics, dope addicts, and various kinds of social drop-outs. Long ago, I noticed in virtually all of them a compulsive need to believe they have an unusually high mental abil¬ity in the art of so using words as to impact others in precisely the significant way they im¬ag¬ine they have. It’s clearly an ego-defense mech¬anism designed to de¬liver their egos from a grave terror which generally haunts all who have reason to feel they are a kind of leper shunned by the mass of society as abnormal and dis¬eased. That terror is this: They are complete zeros, which is to say individuals who have lived their entire lives without being of any real con¬sequence what¬soever to anyone who¬sever. The root of their problem is fixa¬tion upon their current, larval-stage selves. With no conviction they shall someday, in death, become met¬amorphic selves with no less glory and beauty than anyone else, they become helpless slaves of their larval self’s ego. Driven by such a mer¬ciless master, they must then find life a living hell, unless they can believe their current larval-stage self has some¬how had so great an impact on the world around them as to leave them no reason to feel in any way inferior. The result is so desperate a need to accomplish the ex¬traordinary, “to be all you can be”, and to be widely noticed and applauded (or at least fiercely hated), their sanity is gravely threatened if they cannot re¬alize their fantasy. As psychiatrists and psycholo¬gists are accus¬tomed to express it: They’re struggling with an in¬feriority com¬plex—a complex which af¬flicts only those driven into the hands of their egos by an obses¬sion with the merits of their larval-stage self rather than with the merits of their metamor¬phic-stage one. Prison authorities are fond of attributing the criminal behavior of their charges in large part to low or no self-esteem. That’s just the lesser half of the truth. The much more important half is this: They have low or no self-esteem, because they look for it in the wrong direction. Like those in hell and all who “lead lives of quiet desperation” (Henry Da¬vid Thoreau), they are so obsessed with finding self esteem in—and with being of great consequence thru—their larval-stage self, they insist on finding it there or no place at all. In most cases, they are not even aware there is a metamorphic-stage self, let alone aware that, by the grace of God, that meta¬morphic self is of infinite consequence and, there¬fore, the source of a self-esteem which no one else can surpass. Since the metamor¬phic self is the only self of real consequence—and the only source of the only self-esteem which counts—those who pay little or no attention to that self often wind up with far more than a lack of self-esteem. Unless loudly applauded (or at least hated and dreaded), their egos often leave them “eaten alive” by hatred of self, hatred of God, hatred of everything around them, and by a com¬pul¬sive need to attack, and hopefully crush, whatever implies thinking contrary to their own. Nothing, though, will the wise man be ob¬sessed with in his larval-stage self, save clear knowledge of what he must do to bypass in death the two versions of the chrysalis stage and to be trans-ferred immedi¬ately to the metamor¬phic stage. And what is that but clear knowledge of Catholic Doctrine coupled with acceptance of every part of it and a deathless effort to live by such?
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
This book’s verbalization of its main theme is perhaps best called an exercise in Depth Psychology. In elaborating on the larval vs. the metamorphic stages of the human self, it proposes first to set forth the origin of the human ego. It then moves on to how the larval stage self allows the ego to acquire a dangerous bit of control over the self vs. what the self must do to prevent such a disaster. It further divides that dangerous bit of con¬trol into three levels of intensity. At the first level, the self lets the ego keep it ignorant of its meta¬mor¬phic stage. At the second level, the self lets the ego make it hate its metamorphic stage and to be ad¬a¬mantly opposed to moving on to it. At the third level, the self lets the ego duplicate the second level’s ef¬fect and let’s the ego add to it some degree of infatu¬ation with criminal behavior. In some cases, the re-sult is an inveterate addiction to mass murder in an attempt to take re¬venge on everyone and everything for failure to make the ego equal to God from birth.
About the Author
Born April 13, 1936, in New Orleans, the author graduated from Jesuit high school in 1953. After a single, fruitless semester at Loyola University, he joined the Air Force Dec. 7, 1955. Honorably discharged April 1960, he underwent 2.5 years of floundering so severe he nearly went insane. Desperate, he gave away everything and, for 13 years, lived as a wandering hermit. Seeking as much time as possible for inner reflection upon self, God, and the nature and purpose of reality, he criss-crossed the US on foot 4 times. At first, he lived on whatever food and clothing he could beg. After learning how to live on $1.00 a day, he turned to working at monasteries in the winter for the money to feed and clothe himself during the next spring, summer, and fall of walking. The monasteries also provided libraries in which he could read, and extract notes from, the great writings of the Catholic Church. In August of 1975, his father lost his mind, and it fell to the author to tend to his parents in their hour of need. Thus, after 13 years, his preferred lifestyle ended. Dire poverty gave way to economic independence and total seclusion to what little privacy can be enjoyed by bachelors who prefer to avoid partying, to stay mostly at home, and to bury themselves in as much reading and writing as the world will allow. After his father's death in 1981, the author cared for his mother until her death in 1996. In this book, the self-educated author of 17 self-published books seeks to share with others some of the chains of thought down which his mind was led by 13 years of heroically intense introspection followed to date (2008) by 33 years of moderately intense introspection.