Imaginal Cells — How a Caterpillar Transforms into a Butterfly
This quote by legendary Buckminster Fuller is among my favorites:
“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”
We all know that a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, and it’s wondrous to anyone that a slow-crawling critter could eventually transform into a majestic flying creature with beautiful wings. Yet people are generally not familiar with how this happens (from my very informal survey of people I know). I only recently learned about this process, and it was one of those moments when I thought — How come I never knew this?! There’s so much to learn here in the way nature works! The magic is in the imaginal cells. We’ll get to this shortly.
The caterpillar at some point in its life stops eating, hangs upside down from a twig or leaf and molts into a chrysalis. When we think of a process of “in-between-ness”, of moving from one state to another — such as a caterpillar in a cocoon, or a bear hibernating — we’d more likely envision rest and quiet, rather than movement and activity. However, if you’ve watched a video of the caterpillar’s transformation in the chrysalis, it can seem like it’s wriggling to get out of a strait jacket — and can evoke a whole range of sentiments. Struggle, dance, pain, wonder and awe are among those that friends of mine noted. I see all of them simultaneously, and it reminds me of the intensity of both light and dark that we’re able to contain within our bodies as vessels, and as we transform by shedding the old and allowing the new to emerge.
Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar digests itself and effectively turns to a mushy caterpillar soup . And here’s where we meet the imaginal cells, which hold the blueprint for the butterfly. They remain intact from the time that the caterpillar was just an egg. The imaginal cells initially function independently, each as a single-cell organism, and use the protein-rich caterpillar soup to propel them to divide and multiply into clusters. The caterpillar’s immune system even attacks the imaginal cells, perceiving them as threatening foreign bodies.
With their drive for life, they continue to multiply and cluster until they start to resonate at the same frequency and exchange information with one another. At a certain point, they stop behaving as individual single-cell organisms and become a multiple-celled organism — the butterfly.
What’s miraculous is that the caterpillar and butterfly share the same exact DNA, yet they have completely different blueprints. The imaginal cells hold the potential for the future form of a winged insect capable of flight, just as the acorn is the seed of potential for a magnificent oak tree. It leads me to wonder — what essence does each of our blueprint hold that’s wanting to be expressed in form? As we evolve through life and move from one stage to another, how do we listen and create space to allow our metaphorical imaginal cells to cluster and animate our full potential for aliveness — both individually and collectively?
Just as Fuller noted there’s nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly, there’s clearly more to us than we can perceive at this given time. I encourage us all to open up our imaginations to the vast possibilities and opportunities for who we may become — and actually feel the sensation of having wings of our own. Because we do!
