Most of us think of the transformation process as caterpillar to butterfly. Luckily there are other forms of transformation and I see client after client going through this process without having any idea what is happening. They haven’t been taught anything other than the caterpillar symbology. But many people don’t go through an ooze stage. They go through something less dramatic and more life affirming. They go through a shedding like a snake. First, let’s talk about what snake does. Snake lives a full and eventful life up in the trees, going through the grass, swimming in the water depending on the species, maintaining the balance and doing all the wonderful snaky things it does. No they aren’t slimy. They are dry and scaly and their skin actually feels like what a dragon would feel like if you could actually touch one. They are a little bit of fire on earth helping goose things into moving when they are wanting to stay still.
In the life of a snake there comes a point where it’s time to replace the old with the new. We humans do this constantly. We have a cloud of sluffed skin cells and hair constantly floating away from us. We are continuously regenerating in every moment, until we finally stop. Snakes are more into “peel the onion.” Waste not want not is their motto so they wear their old skin until they outgrow it, until it’s no longer useful; meanwhile they grow a new one underneath. It can seem like a complete duplicate of the first one and indeed it incorporates everything in the old one which was good and useful and supportive, but ditches what didn’t work and adds in new features including renewed strength and vigor. Plus it’s bigger.
Then the snake starts doing something rather wonderful. It starts shrugging around to detach the old skin. It starts working from the inside out, loosening things, tying up loose ends, getting everything ready to go. Eventually it’s wearing an old snake suit and a brand new one underneath. And when the entire thing is loose, it walks right out of it. Well, not exactly. It has no hands, no feet, no nothing to start removing the suit, so searching for something around it with a sharp edge. A rock or a branch or something. And it scrapes a bangs it’s head against it. Rams it’s nose into something over and over again. It struggles and bashes and rips until the front of it’s skin is all torn up. Then it drags itself against that sharp thing to drag the skin off. It’s a bit like birthing, the old from the new and so you’ll hear the owners commenting the snake makes a “mess” in its cage. Yep, it’s a “releasing” kinda process. Out with the old, in with the new as it were. Don’t tease a snake while it’s down. Well don’t mess with it while it’s shedding or directly after. Not only is the new skin brand new, never having been touched by anything, but snakes shed a layer off their eyes as well and so have severely limited vision and feel very vulnerable during the process. It can take a few hours before they are up and running again with their new skin and seeing through new eyes.
Something to remember is snake does this more than once in a lifetime. It does it often. Snake skin isn’t elastic. It has to be replaced each time it’s outgrown. If you think back through your life, more than likely you will find this is a rhythm in your life rather than a butterfly “all or nothing” transformation. Your life goes chugging along for a while, but then it seems like you get bored or you accomplish what you were there to do and things just don’t fit any more. It’s like all the color goes out of things, they get dull, you get distracted, you can’t be bothered, there’s just no juiciness in what you were doing but you can’t figure out why. Must be a personal failing, right? The problem is nothing else seems interesting either. Just nothing seems to fit or to call you and it’s frustrating and you just can’t see your way forward and everything is wrapping up around you and you have no idea what to do next. You flail around trying this and trying that which just makes you feel like you’re banging your head against the wall and all you get is torn up. So you do something temporary, something which will get you through while you wait for a universe which doesn’t seem to want to help at all. Finally there are just the remains of a life all around you. Sound familiar?
Once your life is in shreds that’s when things start to open up again. There’s always this downshift and despair and then something comes. Yep. The difficulty isn’t in the process. As you can see the process is actually quite beautiful and efficient. There’s a bit of a lead up to the event, the skin comes off, rest a bit and then move forward with a beautiful, renewed, and improved self. The problem is in not understanding what is going on. If a snake didn’t understand this is what they were meant to do and how to work with it to make it happen in the best way possible, it would probably be horrific. But they do. And so should you.
You can recognize when this process is happening because of three main things: 1) You’re restless and wanting to move on to something new. 2) Everything still outstanding in your life starts wrapping up. Either escalating to an ending or simply falling away. 3) Your life seems to be in the pause when your car is shifting gears. The engine is running but no foot is on the gas because the gears need to move before they can reengage and start moving you forward at the new speed. When these things become obvious it isn’t time to panic it’s time to celebrate. Yes, you won’t be able to see your way forward yet. That scares the crap out of most people because we have significant trust issues. If we can’t see what is coming we tend to panic and try to make something happen. Trust in Creator? Sure, as long as we know what the plan is. LOL As long as we can get some answers, see the path ahead, get a map we’re fine. But snake doesn’t see the way ahead. Part of this transformation is to gain new ways of seeing through removing the old vision. It’s like taking the blinkers off. You can’t see clearly with them on so how can you see the path ahead until they are off? It’s silly to try. And then once their off your eyes need to adjust to the light and the range of vision. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes trust in yourself. It’s in your nature to see clearly; all you have to do is wait. Besides, all the maps and the plans and the foresight will do you no good because your old eyes can’t understand what they are seeing. It’s only with new eyes that any of it will make sense.
I see so many clients going through this process. They feel hopeless because they don’t recognize what is going on and so they think they are spiraling down, breaking under the pressure of a life which no longer fits, if it ever did. They know they need something new, they need to move on, but they don’t realize they already are. They don’t recognize they first need to set themselves free, not from the outside world, but from their old lives, their old identities. The thing is, we automatically want to know what we can do to facilitate the process. What can be done to hurry it along, to make it smoother and easier, to make it be what we need it to be. What we have no connection to, because we’ve learned not to trust and to “make things happen,” is the understanding that by the time we recognize this process it’s already fully underway both outside and in. What we can do for ourselves is rejoice rather than succumb to depression or random flailing. There is a rhythm to this process and everything but our brain knows exactly what to do and how to do it. Our soul has chosen this method and has been/is guiding us through. What can you do when all you want to do is explode into action? Get grounded, get centered and review what is going on in your life. Not from an emotional or judgmental or lack perspective, but from the skin shedding perspective.
Yes, things are ending. Good, they need to. Guaranteed not everything is. Part of why the snake shedding process is so wonderful is we don’t become something completely different, we become a better version of who we were before. We’re the 2.0 or 3.0 or 20.0 version of ourselves. We aren’t doomed to repeat everything again. We’re walking completely out of that life, hence the winding up of old business. We won’t go back to it again. Snakes don’t walk back into old skin or mourn for it. They leave it behind for others to marvel at.
A big thanks Teri. I just read it and and every word affected like a strength of pillar to me right now.