Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Reaching for Stars

by

The star you are reaching for will always elude you

One day, several years ago, I was thinking about a print I remembered seeing on a friend’s living room wall. I have no recollection of what brought it to mind, but the print was an illustration of a man standing tiptoe on a mountaintop reaching for a star, stretching so earnestly that he was on the verge of falling.

My friend was a very ambitious person, and I could see why she would have this on her wall; she seemed like someone who was reaching for the stars. And while I think it’s great to want to excel and be all we can be, as I remembered the print all these years later, what I remembered most was how off balance that poor fellow was, how obviously out of reach the star was, how utterly futile his effort was.

Later that same day I was taking a walk in our neighborhood and I passed by a used bookstore not far from our house. And, wouldn’t you know it, on display in the front window was a book with that very print on the cover. So I went inside and took the book from the window to take a picture of it, thinking I might want to use it in a blog someday.

The Folly of Looking Outside Ourselves

This past year, as we have been weathering this odd reclusive time of COVID, I have experienced a lot of inner shifts and insights. One of them is that I have seen at a much deeper level than ever before what folly it is to look outside of ourselves for our fulfillment.

To be reaching for a “star,” whatever that star might be for each of us, means that we believe there is something we are missing, that there is some way in which we are incomplete or inadequate, some void that can only be filled by something outside of ourselves.

But, as A Course of Love points out, we are already the Accomplished. We are already whole in ourselves. There is nothing lacking or inadequate about us.

And yet, we are so conditioned to reach for things outside of ourselves and to believe that only they can bring us ultimate fulfillment and happiness. In fact, billions and billions of dollars are spent each year trying to persuade us to look outside of ourselves for happiness and completeness.

The irony is that it is the reaching itself that keeps us in a state of dissatisfaction. It is the seeking that keeps us separated from that which we seek. It is the belief that our destiny is beyond us that prevents us from opening to the destiny that is already within us, the destiny that we already are.

So what about you? Is there a star you are reaching for, something you believe is lacking in your life or inadequate about you—something that you believe can only be fulfilled by something outside of you?

If so, take a moment now and just let yourself notice what it feels like to be constantly reaching for that star. Let yourself feel how the reaching leaves you off balance, dissatisfied, perhaps at times even despondent.

Here is what I would like you to understand: that star you are reaching for will always elude you because it is a mirage. It doesn’t exist outside of you. It is your projection onto the “external” world of the light which is already within you.

When you really dig down, what you discover is that what you have been seeking is nothing other than your Original Self, who has always been present within you, and whose brilliance can never be dimmed.

Can you let yourself accept this truth? Can you let yourself accept that you are the star you have been reaching for?

Like what you read?

Sign up for more.

Sign Up Now

Reflections on the George Floyd Case

by

Dear One,

I know you would like insight into what wants to be said about the verdict rendered this week in the case of George Floyd’s killing.  As you know, there are various levels from which to observe this world. One is at the literal level of events themselves. Another is a higher and wider vantage point from which one can see the symbolic meaning of the events.

On the literal level, this verdict reflects what your world thinks of as justice. A great wrong was committed, and the person who committed it was held accountable. Therefore, justice has been served.

This is a variation of the eye for an eye story. In this understanding of justice, a wrong is answered with a corresponding punishment, and the belief is that this restores some sense of balance, some sense of rightness.

And yet, even from this level it is obvious that no punishment can undo what was done. No punishment can ever return George Floyd to his life and to his loved ones. In this sense, justice is never and can never be achieved.

Your own mystical experiences have shown you that this world is a dream, and as you know, dreams are symbolic. Therefore the events in your world are symbolically depicting beliefs held in the mind. This is not to say that, because it is a dream, there is no suffering. As you know, the mind that is experiencing a dream is experiencing it—all of its anguish, all of its elation.

Knowing this world to be a dream you can see that this event is revealing a belief held in the mind, and that this verdict, which sets a new precedent for your society, is a turning point because it signals that the mind has begun to change. It is beginning to divest from the erroneous idea of racism.

On the literal level, Derek Chauvin was on trial, and beyond him as an individual, the idea that police can act with impunity toward Black people was on trial, and from a broader perspective still, the idea of white supremacy was on trial.

Now this is where a distinction is to be made when it comes to the concept of judgment. Within the domain of the ego mind, judgment is that which deems something “bad,” and this idea of judgment is a crucial keystone in the ego’s thought system.

And yet you know that in right-mindedness this sort of judgment does not exist. What does exist is the ability to discern truth from falsehood, Reality from illusion. From the vantage point of Love, white supremacy isn’t “bad.” It is illusory. An error in the mind. Something that has no basis in Reality, which is absolute Love.

One of the driving desires of ego is to be special, and white supremacy is the belief that an entire “race” of people is special. (Please understand that the idea of race is yet another illusion.) This belief in specialness is what the mind is now moving away from. This is the erroneous fallacy the mind is beginning to see through.

As you also know, in dreams each element and character depict an aspect of the dreaming mind. In this sense, Derek Chauvin is a representation of this erroneous idea in the mind. His actions were not merely the actions of an individual, but an enactment of a belief. The fact that the mind is now rejecting this belief, rejecting the fallacy of white supremacy, is a hopeful sign to you that egoic consciousness is indeed waning and its grip on the mind is loosening.

So how then are you to hold this situation? As always, you are to hold it in Love. To hold the Floyd family in Love. To hold all the people of color who have been repeatedly traumatized because of this fallacy in Love. To hold the Derek Chauvins of the world in Love, for they are lost sheep who are alienated from the truth of themselves.

You and all the others who are here on the planet at this time to fortify the presence of Love are doing a great service, greater than you know. By holding Love in your Hearts you are enabling the dreaming mind to awaken to the truth of Love.

Always remember that the realm of Spirit is with you, holding you in the greatest esteem, and with unbounded gratitude.

Eternally,
Your True Self

Like what you read?

Sign up for more.

Sign Up Now

Spring at the Penitentiary

by

It’s time we rejoin the community of Life.

In the heart of my neighborhood here in Philadelphia stands an imposing building that looks like a medieval fortress complete with turrets.

Eastern State Penitentiary, which is now a museum dedicated to raising awareness about the criminal justice system and mass incarceration, was built in the early 1800’s and was originally conceived as a visionary reform to the criminal justice system of the time, which used various means of corporal punishment as the sentences for crime.

The idea that was envisioned and which took on form at Eastern State Penitentiary was that a person found guilty would be removed from society for a period of time to contemplate, without any distractions, what they had done. The belief was that, by contemplating their wrongdoing, inmates would reform themselves. They would become penitent, hence the name penitentiary.

It was the first time that time became the sentence for a crime, and people doing time at Eastern State Penitentiary when it first opened had absolutely no contact with other human beings. They were kept in their own cells, handed their meals through small openings in the wall, provided a Bible, and given lots of time to think.

What the people running the penitentiary discovered, though, was that rather than becoming penitent, the inmates started going insane. They were subjected to what we now know as solitary confinement, something that is completely unnatural for human beings, social creatures that we are. (After a year of COVID, some of us had had a glimpse of the toll isolation can take.)

Frequently, when I pass by Eastern State, I think of how the penitentiary is a carefully architected depiction in stone of our story of separateness. Most of us, most of the time, live inside a sort of prison of the mind, believing and perceiving ourselves to be cut off from one another, from the Earth, from the Source of our Being, even from our true Self. This perception, even though it is illusory, has resulted in us feeling an existential displacement from the community of All Being.

Many years ago I got an inside glimpse into what actual incarceration is like when I was sentenced to a week in federal prison for engaging in civil disobedience when the US launched its invasion of Iraq. It seemed symbolic that I and the dozen others protesters who were sentenced with me, had to report to the Federal Detention Center on Earth Day.

Walking into that prison, leaving the spring sunshine and blossoming trees behind and stepping into the completely artificial environment of cinderblock walls, florescent lights, cell blocks and locked doors, was one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had.

While I was there, I reflected on what it would be like to be in this environment year after year.

Earlier in the day I had stood with my eye glued to a tiny pinprick of clear glass I had discovered on the frosted window of our cell. Smaller than the head of a pin, it was my only view to the outside world. Looking through it I could make out the basic outlines of buildings, cars, a distant highway. I realized that for me the cruelest aspect of imprisonment would be to live months and even years never seeing a moonrise or a flower opening to the sun, never feeling the breeze on my skin or breathing in the smell of the woods after a rain, never hearing birdsong or touching the rough bark of a tree or walking a beach and feeling the sand beneath my feet. Ripping people away from the web of life and caging them in a world of artificial lights and unyielding surfaces was inhumane, the antithesis of the spiritual truth of interconnection. [ excerpt from Beyond Jesus: My Spiritual Odyssey]

This is the month when we celebrate Earth Day, an observation that calls us to renew our relationship with the Earth and to restore the damage done by our dream of separateness. It is a time for us to bring down the walls of isolation that we have built within ourselves so that we can know our oneness with all life on the planet.

The other morning, I took a walk around Eastern State Penitentiary. It was a gorgeous April morning, and the flower beds in front of the prison were brimming with hundreds of daffodils, tulips and iris. Along one of the towering walls the air was full of birdsong, as birds flitted in and out of cracks and crevasses between the stones where they had found safe places to build their nests.

That this historic site, such a graphic symbol of humanity doing time in our story of separateness, should now be a place where birds can hatch new life and daffodils and tulips open their petals to the sun moved me. It reflected the shift so many of us sense is happening on the planet right now as we move beyond the egoic consciousness of separateness and into an awareness of the truth of Love.

And just as moving was coming upon a gathering of toddlers and their parents sitting on the grass, in the community garden that has been created on the penitentiary grounds, under a canopy of flowering pear trees. They were being led in song by a young woman reading a story to them that had a recurring chorus, a story titled One Love.

Like what you read?

Sign up for more.

Sign Up Now

Cruci-Fiction: Awakening from the False Story of Judgment, Sin and Separateness

by

The resurrection is a proclamation of the impotence of the ego story.

I recently had the great delight of being interviewed by a couple of wonderful young women, Amy Breeze Cooper and Lauren Coglianese Keck, who host the Soul Path Parenting podcast. They had invited me back on their show to speak about the themes of the crucifixion and resurrection as I understand them.

You can listen to the entire interview on the Soul Path Parenting podcast. Below are a few edited excerpts.

If we think about the cross symbolically, it’s a symbol of that whole egoic story, that is, the idea of the other, the idea of enemies, the idea of dominating, controlling, attacking, violence. The cross was a tool of the empire, which is all about domination and control. So if we look at the cross symbolically, it is a symbol of that story of separateness, it’s a symbol of the ego mind.

I might have talked about this when I’ve been on the show before, but in an awakening experience that I had, it culminated with this realization that we are in a dream, that this world we are enacting is a dream, we are enacting our unconscious beliefs. And so things that are happening in the world have a symbolic content, a symbolic meaning.

So in the case of Jesus, someone who saw through the dream, he was like a lucid dreamer on the planet I guess you could say, he’d awakened from that dream state. So how do you snap people out of the idea of of separateness? How do you show them that it’s just a story?

Well, one way is you experience the cross. You go to the heart of the symbol of that story. You enact that story and something happens on the other side of it that totally negates the whole story, which is the resurrection.

So the resurrection is the evidence that the cross is our own fiction, and that separateness and judgment and sin is our own fiction. It’s a story in the human mind, that’s all it is, and he was attempting to help us awaken to our own divine nature.

What happened, though, is that when you’re working with dreams you can interpret them in many different ways, and symbols can be interpreted in many different ways.

So this event of the crucifixion and the resurrection became interpreted by the egoic mind as evidence that we are sinful. Look at this, God’s son had to die because we’re so sinful.

So it got twisted and interpreted according to the consciousness state that Jesus wanted to dissolve. . .

In a sense, you could say that the resurrection is a proclamation of the impotence of the ego story. It is impotent. It has no ultimate power.

I’m remembering this dream that I had a few years ago, where I’m visiting this convent that is closing up. It’s like all the sisters are passing on, the convent is dying, and I think it’s going to be turned into a restaurant. . .

I walk into this room—it’s part of the convent—and this room has grass. It doesn’t have a floor, it has grass, and the grass is covered and the room is filled with butterflies of every conceivable color.

Now I know that the nuns have kept this alive all this time, like at the heart of this tradition is this profound transformation. And it was hidden away. It was nurtured. It was kept safe.

And now I feel like the time is coming when when the butterflies are coming out of that room.

At the core of it all, there is something deeply transformative. And what what can be more symbolic of complete transformation than a butterfly, the total metamorphosis of a creature?

That deep, absolute transformation is at the core of this message, and it has not been understood. It has been misconstrued, again, because it was seen through the lens of the ego mind. But it’s there.

And I feel like more and more people are pulling back the curtain, pulling back the the misunderstandings and the misinterpretations and discovering what is really there, which is absolute transformation.

It is the emergence of really a new human. That is what Christ Consciousness is about. It’s about the emergence of a new humanity. And we’re in the time when this is happening, this consciousness is arising.

Listen to the entire interview here.

Like what you read?

Sign up for more.

Sign Up Now

Gratitude: Portal to Unitive Consciousness

by

Gratitude acknowledges our interdependence with all Life.

I’ve been appreciating lately the uncanny power of gratitude to be a portal into unitive consciousness. I first became aware of the power of gratitude when it precipitated a kundalini awakening in me many years ago.

It’s an experience I write about in my memoir in much more detail, but suffice it to say that I sensed that some profound shifts I was undergoing at the time were due to my web of relationships. When I surrendered to what was happening and began to give thanks for the people in my life, the realization hit me like a lightning bolt: “I” am not a separate self.

With that, the energy chakras of my body opened, surges of energy cascaded through me, and when I came out of the intensity of the experience I saw a world I had never seen before, one in which everything is sentient, everything is interconnected, everything is Love.

In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about the practice of the people of the Onondaga Nation of beginning each day acknowledging all the life forms and gifts of Mother Earth that sustain them in their bodily existence. As Kimmerer notes in her book, cultivating such gratitude and living within a culture of gratitude is revolutionary because it undermines the scarcity model upon which our capitalistic economic system is based.

The scarcity model focuses our attention on what we believe is lacking in our life (or, more often, are told is lacking), and it is this focus on lack that has caused so much unhappiness in people and led to so much devastation to the Earth.

Gratitude is a powerful antidote to this mindset because it places our attention on the overwhelming abundance that is already present. Gratitude, in other words, not only holds the key to our personal happiness; it can open the way for the healing of the planet.

The other morning, before I began my journaling, I did a practice similar to the Onondaga. I began to express my thanks to the trees, the rivers, the birds, the air, the creatures, the clouds.

I didn’t get very far into my recitation before I was in tears, overcome by the gratitude it evoked in me.

Many times I keep gratitude at arm’s length for this very reason: I know its power to transport me into an awareness of unity and Love that is almost more than I can handle. And since I have laundry to do and bills to pay and a website to maintain, and I don’t yet know how to do all of that while in a state of bliss, I let the mind retreat into its distractions, stepping away from gratitude’s blazing portal into the infinite presence of Love.

Maybe someday I will learn to stand in that fire of Love and still manage to remember to take the car in for inspection, but for now I settle for stepping back and forth across the threshold.

I experience gratitude as the language of the Heart. It’s as though, when I am in a state of gratitude, the Heart has picked up the phone to a party line (remember those?) and is in direct communication with All That Is. I feel the Heart participating in the Communion of the Cosmos, which is unmistakably filled with joy and delight.

I suppose gratitude is such a powerful portal into unitive consciousness because it acknowledges our interdependence with all Life. It also, for me at least, contains a hint of humility in it because it recognizes that this existence we participate in, that we are all part of, is a gift that is freely given. There’s nothing we need to do or even could do to earn it.

How, then, could we be anything but thankful?

Like what you read?

Sign up for more.

Sign Up Now

The Return to the Feminine

by

Our return to the Feminine holds the key to our healing.

Each February I take about ten days away to go on spiritual retreat. It is a time when I step away from the daily routine to listen more deeply. I never go with an agenda; I allow whatever wants to arise to do so. I have been doing this annually for almost twenty years, and I am always amazed at what unfolds. Often my time is guided by dreams, and always by intuition.

This year I had been immersing myself in a book I had just received, Mirari: The Way of the Marys, which recounts a prolonged dialogue between Mother Mary and Mari Perron, who also channeled A Course of Love.

As soon as I began reading Mirari in the days before leaving on retreat I felt a deep sense of relief, and of homecoming. Having grown up in mainstream Protestantism, in which the Divine Feminine is completely absent, it was like arriving at a spring of life-giving water. My thirsty spirit was being quenched.

Decades ago, when I was in seminary, I had to grapple with how the Feminine had not only been suppressed, but demonized in the religious tradition that formed me. This exile and vilification of the Feminine had profound implications for how I saw myself and my worth as a woman.

This is a struggle that I know many, if not most, women have had to deal with, and, because all of us, no matter our gender identity or biological sex, have both the Feminine and Masculine within us, the repression of the Feminine has had devastating effects on men as well.

Thankfully, that is beginning to change. The patriarchal beliefs of the past are crumbling, the Feminine is rising, and the balance between the Masculine and Feminine is being restored.

In this moment of return and re-balancing, we are coming back into the awareness of our intrinsic, reverent relationship with all Life, including ourselves. This understanding of the inherent truth of relationship is at the core of the Feminine, and it holds the key to the healing of our species and our planet.

While I was on my retreat, I felt Mary’s presence profoundly, which was a new experience for me. I felt her guiding me, encouraging me, holding me in the gentle embrace of the Mother. Since I was already experiencing her presence so keenly, it isn’t surprising that she was also referenced in a dream I had.

I’m riding on horseback with a few other people through an open, expansive landscape of scrub brush and rolling hills when we come to a place overlooking a village. Down in the village, the people, who are also on horseback, are riding out in a procession to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe. One of the riders is carrying a large banner of her on a tall, upright pole. As I watch the processional, my own horse drops her head, and when she does her bridle falls off.

One of the most intriguing things about this dream for me is the horse dropping her head, causing her bridle to fall off.

A horse’s bridle is the means by which a horse is placed in service to a human, directed by something besides her own will. As a friend of mine noted, Horse, in the I Ching, is a feminine symbol, and bridle sounds exactly like bridal (my dreams often use word plays). In traditional patriarchal culture, bridal indicates the ownership of a woman by her husband.

Mother Mary, by contrast, is often referred to as Virgin Mary, and the deeper meaning of virgin is a woman unto herself, a woman who is her own person, not owned or controlled by another.

As I listen to this dream I see that it is depicting a movement underway in which the Feminine is being honored (the processional) and released from the legacy of patriarchal control (the falling away of the bridle/bridal).

But the symbolism of the horse dropping her head goes deeper still. To drop the head is to be released not only from being controlled, but from the need to control.

For so long, western civilization has exalted the head, has sought to control the world through the intellect: dissecting, categorizing, compartmentalizing, seeking certainty and dominance over all things. In the process, we have alienated ourselves from Mystery, and from the direct knowing of the Heart and unmediated wisdom of the Intuition.

Yet, as Mary says in Mirari, The New that is now arising emerges from the Unknown. It is not something the intellect can plan, or strategize for, or make happen. The New gestates within us, is nurtured by us, is birthed through us. It is an act of creation, not fabrication.

As we return to Feminine ways of knowing and of being, we drop the head. We release our need for certainty; the old thought patterns of domination and control fall away; we experience our reverent relationship with All That Is; we bow before Mystery.

This is Women’s History Month, a time when we acknowledge the countless contributions women have made throughout history. But at this moment of global transformation, what interests me even more than women’s history is the contribution the Feminine is bringing, even now, to our future and our mutual survival on this beautiful planet.

Like what you read?

Sign up for more.

Sign Up Now

QAnon and the Mind’s Illusion

by

Human history is one long conspiracy theory

“An idea shared grows stronger.” ~A Course in Miracles

Over these last few years we have witnessed the truth of that statement, that an idea shared grows stronger. With the rise of QAnon and conspiracy theories we see that it doesn’t matter whether an idea has any basis in reality. What matters is how many people embrace it. If an idea is shared by enough people it gains a momentum of its own, takes on a life of its own, and actually begins to influence the world of form.

I suspect that many of us who are witnessing what seems to be a growing mass delusion are wondering what can be done to stop it. Clearly, reasoning with those who have embraced conspiracy theories in hopes it will snap them out of the spell doesn’t help. If anything, it causes them to become more resolute, doubling down on the falsehoods.

As someone who sees this world as a form of dream, I frequently look at what is happening in the world from that perspective and do dreamwork on the events of the world, engaging with them at the level of symbolic meaning to discover what the events can teach us.

Having worked with my own dreams for decades, I know that dreams come to help us understand something about ourselves that we need to know, something we need to integrate or heal or release. Given the epic moment we find ourselves in as we transition from the egoic consciousness of separateness into unitive consciousness, I also see that our collective “waking” dream is offering us essential information that can support us in this shift.

So I ask myself: What is this QAnon dream showing us that can support us in our awakening?

What QAnon Is Revealing

The most obvious thing about the QAnon phenomenon is that it is revealing how capable the mind is of believing things that are simply not true, things that may in fact be quite absurd. Just as Donald Trump has hyperbolized the ego mind, showing us what it looks like so we can recognize and release it within ourselves, QAnon unmasks the mind’s capacity to embrace illusion and take it to be reality. It also shows us how stubbornly the mind holds onto its beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence.

This phenomenon is nothing new. If we step back and look at human history, we can see that it is one long episode of the human mind believing things that are not true: believing the gods are out to get us, believing the Earth is flat, believing sickness is a form of divine punishment, believing we can be condemned to eternal damnation, believing we can decimate the Earth and continue to survive as a species, believing people with certain skin tones, sexes, gender identifications, cultural backgrounds, investment portfolios are superior and deserve to have power over others, believing that any of us, ourselves included, could be unworthy of love.

To put it bluntly, human history is one long conspiracy theory, and at the core of all of these beliefs is an erroneous idea: separateness. This is the idea upon which our world has been built and it is the essence of the egoic consciousness that is now passing away.

A Mind-Blowing Realization

Many years ago I had an experience that I write about in my memoir Beyond Jesus in which the veil between the worlds was torn away and I saw clearly the interconnectedness and absolutely loving nature of Reality.

In that moment, I was shocked to see how deluded my own mind had been, how I had actually believed myself to be a separate self (aka ego), isolated in my own experience. I was stunned to see that I had been living my entire life within that illusion, never having the slightest inkling it was an illusion.

That awakening experience, which culminated with the mind-blowing realization that we are in a collective dream, turned my life and my understanding of the world on its head. It also colors how I see the followers of QAnon. You see, I, too, have believed ridiculous things.

One of the most remarkable things that experience revealed to me was that judgment doesn’t exist. Judgment is just part of the egoic illusion. And so to abide in unitive consciousness one must be willing to let go of judgment (a stance that is utter blasphemy to the ego mind) and to see all from the vantage point of Love, which encompasses all and rejects none.

Working with this QAnon dream I gain a great appreciation for how we humans must look from the vantage point of the divine realm: a species caught up in a story, an illusion, that causes us such great suffering.

Our Reality-Check

So if the mind is this gullible, if it is this capable of believing things that are illusory, how can we know what thoughts we can trust? How can we discern truth from fantasy in our own minds?

There is one way, and it is this: Reality is interconnectedness, mutuality, reciprocity. It is Love. So any thought, or theory, or story that points to anything other than Love is not Reality-based.

This is the Reality check we can apply to our own mind’s thoughts and beliefs. Every story the mind harbors of enemy, of fear, of exclusion, of attack, regardless of whether it is enacted in the world of form, is illusory.

What has played out on the world stage for millennia is the outward enactment of the human mind’s story of separateness. But now the jig is up. Our eyes are being opened to see the absurdity of it all, and more and more of us are coming to realize that nothing we ever do or believe can change this one simple fact: only Love is real.

Like what you read?

Sign up for more.

Sign Up Now

Chrysalis Wisdom in a Time of Polarization

by

Metamorphosis happens.

In this moment of global transition it seems as if we are witnessing the divergence of two realities. One expresses the idea of separateness, which gives rise to all manner of exploitation, fear and domination, and the other embraces interconnection and interdependence, which prepares the way for a world based in mutuality and reciprocity.

Watching these realities diverge into increasing polarization can be disheartening. And yet I am always reminded of what occurs in the chrysalis as the caterpillar undergoes its metamorphosis into a butterfly.

As you probably know, in the chrysalis stage, the structure of the caterpillar completely dissolves, and then, from the soup of its former self, its previously latent DNA, which carries the encoding to bring forth a butterfly, becomes activated.

Once activated, this DNA causes imaginal, or organizer, cells to arise, and these imaginal cells begin to find each other, coalescing into what are called imaginal buds, the nascent organs of the butterfly.

But an interesting thing happens as these cells begin to emerge and imaginal buds begin to form. Enough of the caterpillar’s old immune system is still intact to be able to respond to this emergence, and, determining that these new cells and buds are alien intruders, it seeks to destroy them.Continue Reading