Metamorphosis

This article is drawn from a talk which is available freely here: https://www.barrylong.org/podcast/metamorphosis

Nearly everyone who comes to me is ready for a metamorphosis — a fundamental, radical change. Like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. You are all butterflies. Only you've retrograded — fallen backward — from that butterfly state into the cocoon. This body you’re in now is the cocoon. And now it’s time to come out. Time to transform. To reveal your beautiful colors. Your sweet, natural self. Not for others—unless they can see it—but for you. So you can feel your own sweetness, your rhythm, your beauty, your untroubled-ness.

Isn’t that why you're here? Isn’t that why you go to teachers, to therapies, to holidays? Because you hope you’ll feel yourself again. You hope for some relief from the constant pain of existing. Because existence is pain — continuous, unrelenting pain — with moments of relief in between. Everything is living off everything else. The crow takes fledglings from the nest. It works well — for the crow – not for the fledglings. And it goes on like that. The blackbirds with their beautiful coats, their sharp beaks — digging into the lawn all year, pulling out those fat worms and consuming them. Pain, everywhere. And yet—somehow — it’s beautiful.

That’s how nature works. Born in pain, whether it be by egg or by the birth of mammal – and in between is this extraordinary beauty. The backdrop is beauty. And in between is this constant pain, this battle to survive.

There was a time when man was natural. Not anymore. When man was natural, he did not think. He was a butterfly — to himself, and to anyone who could see. He had rhythm. He lived on the earth and died on the earth. And it didn’t matter. He had nothing to defend. No position. No identity. And if he died—so be it. But he didn’t always die. Just like some fledglings survive, and life goes on. So did man. He had no fear of death. Unlike man today — trapped in the cocoon. Just like you.

Because today, our greatest fear — every man’s and every woman’s — is death. We think about it constantly. But does anyone think about metamorphosing?

Look at the newspapers. Look at the TV. They're filled with death—not just people dying, but ideas, opinions, commentary. What the President thinks. What the news caster says. That's all death. That’s your cocoon. You are cocooned in what other people think.

“How many people were killed in the jumbo jet?”

“The Ethiopians are starving.”

You’re cocooned in it.

How do you break out? How do you return to what you were — what you are? How do you make this fundamental, extraordinary change back to what you were? You become natural again. You shed the skin, like the snake. Like the caterpillar that emerges, radiant as the butterfly.

Now ask yourself: what is your cocoon? The President? Tonight’s news? The starving children, the serious newscasters, the next crisis on the screen? That’s all cocoon. Are you hearing me, man and woman? I want you to listen with your guts, because that’s where the unhappiness is. And that’s where we’ve got to go. We’ve got to penetrate the guts of unhappiness.

Everything you think is important—all those projections—none of it matters. Not a single thing on this earth matters, except what’s happening right here. Because this is where you are. Where you are is what matters. But where are you?

If your mind is with the president and his problems, you’ve already left yourself. But you are demonstrably here. And when you leave this space, you’ll have to live this. You don’t have to, of course. But if you don’t — if after you read this you forget about it — you’ll live through more pain.

The natural world works because it is natural—even when it eats itself. That’s the earth. And I shall never die—because I am natural. This body may die. Maybe in thirty seconds. It doesn't matter. It’s natural. Because I have metamorphosed. I am my beautiful self.

But the world—the jumbo jet, the job, the money, the house, the car—that’s death to the natural self. That’s the death of me, when I start to think about it. The moment I attach to those things, I leave this moment.

And when you leave the moment, you can't even see the flower in front of you. Try it. Think about your grandmother while looking at a flower — you can't do both. You'll be split. And being split brings emotion. Tension. Being with your kids while wishing you were at the pub, being with your partner while wishing you were somewhere else — that’s the split. And the split causes want. You want both things, and that’s not natural. That’s the world.

The world is emotional. The world is lost. The world is unhappy. It feeds on itself but not in the way nature does. The world doesn't work.

But your body? It’s not of the world. Your body is of the earth. Your body is natural. And you—you are even more natural than your body. You are the life in your body. You are the life in life on earth—so long as you don’t think.

Think — and you’ve left the earth. You’ve left life. You’re dead. You’ve re-entered the cocoon.

That’s why every person is split. Every child starts whole, starts natural. But soon enough, we get them thinking. We pull them out of the moment. We teach them to know, instead of to be.

This is the great dichotomy in man: the part that is eternal, beautiful, holy — and the part that's been invaded by the world like a sickness.

Once you leave here, no one else is going to talk to you like this. The world will talk to you. And you’ll believe it. You’ll believe that it’s important. You'll believe in presidents and that wars are important. But why do you think that’s important? You don’t even know who else is starving or dying — the reporters are selective because the reporter didn’t go to all the places.

You’re relying on someone else’s version of life. You’re being conned. Utterly and completely. Because no one else can tell you about life. They can tell you about life forms — but not about life.

Because you are life.

It’s crazy, really. Imagine someone trying to tell water what water feels like.

Would you deny that you are life? Would you deny yourself?

So—how do you know you’re alive?

It’s a good question. Maybe we should ask our children that every day. “How do you know you’re alive?” The real answer? “Well... you just feel it.” Don’t you?

But not where I come from. Because to know you're alive is not to be alive. Are you listening?

To know you’re alive is not to be alive. The knower knows nothing about life.

Isn’t that extraordinary? The whole damn world is based on knowledge. And yet I’m telling you—the knower cannot know life.

Because life is felt.

You don’t feel life by touching your lover. But when you feel the beauty that moves through that touch—then you feel your own life. That feeling is you. That is life. You are the feeling of life on earth.

So—do you feel alive?

Let me tell you what life feels like. And yes, it's a presumption, I know. But I’ll take that presumption and say it anyway.

Life on earth—which I am—is sweet. It is beautiful. It is blissful. It is the feeling of myself. It never ends. It doesn’t change if I lose my car, or my lover, or my son. That cannot change the life that I am.

Is that true of you?

Because it is true of you. I’m not special.

Is it true of you?

Is life singing in you every moment: “I am alive”? Because if it’s not—you’re dead. You’re in varying degrees of death. And I don’t mean the death that comes when the body dies. I mean living death.

There are two deaths. The one you read about: “50 people dead.” That one’s easy. Don’t be surprised when it happens to you or to someone you love. But we are, aren’t we? We’re shocked. Flummoxed. “My love is dead.” “No one told me Mum was going to die.”

Have you noticed the newspapers never say, “Hey—you’re next”?

Someone should say it: “Excuse me—did you know you’re going to die?”

Because the world will never tell you. The world needs you alive—just enough to use you.

Nature devours to live. But the world devours to take the life out of you. It sucks you dry. It sucks the life out of our children as they walk into the same trap.

They start to disappear—ankles, knees, chests—sinking deeper every few years. Not feeling alive anymore—just knowing they’re alive.

Until they think that landing a man on the moon was the pinnacle of life. When it was the pinnacle of death. A triumph of knowledge, not of feeling.

Except... a couple of those astronauts—they saw the earth. They felt it. And they came back never the same again.

That’s rare.

Because mostly, the scientist goes home:

“Hello dear.”

“Hi kids. Go to bed.”

And he can’t wait to get back to work. He lives through science.

He says, “You know I love you, darling.”

Yeah—but do you bloody feel it?

That’s what I’m saying.

We’re dead.

And that’s why you’re here.

To come to life.

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