Why Do I Pray?

Or

Why do I do Yoga?

Or

Why do I meditate?

Why does the caterpillar make the effort to emerge from her cocoon?

Because

One night she had a dream that she could fly and that she drank nectar from delicate flowers. It was a beautiful dream and it caused her to long for impossible things like wings. The longing made her struggle and suffer within the deepest part of herself. Why, she wanted to know, did she have such a deep longing for impossible things? Why could she almost taste the nectar from fields of bright orange poppies? Why did she have the recurring dream of sipping from the delicate blossoms of a potted lavender in an herb garden where a stone fountain poured water into a lotus pond. Why, she wondered, would a worm dream of being so light of foot that she could walk on the fragrant, velvety petal of a midnight blue petunia?

***

More and more she grew discontented to crawl along the branches of her tree. Her body felt heavy and slow and made her suffer in a way she did not understand. More and more she found it important to grow still and to recall the impossible feelings of flying and of dancing on daffodils until finally she lost the drive to crawl. She chose instead to rest in one spot, close her eyes and dream. To her surprise and delight she noticed that her dreams were sharp and clear; more intense than they’d been before. At first the increased clarity of her dreams was pleasant. But then she began to be discontented; she longed to move about—to stretch in ways she’d never stretched before. But she had sat still for so long that a tight cocoon had enclosed her entire caterpillar body.

She was trapped!

She panicked.

 Eventually though, she realized that if she tuned into and listened to the sound of her own breathing that she felt a little calmer.

That was good.

***

 She settled into a pattern of resting on the rise and fall of her breathing interspersed with periods of deep sleep.

One day she woke up and noticed that if she thought about it she could imagine stretching, first one way, and then another and that even though it was barely more than a thought; barely more than a wish, she could actually feel herself stretching and moving in ways she’d never moved before.

What a thrill!

It so happened that the effort required to move in this way began to feel more and more pleasant in and of itself. It began to be as rewarding, if not more so, than sleeping and dreaming of riding the current of a rose scented breeze. In fact, it seemed that making the effort to stretch and move made her dreams of flying all the sweeter. So she fell into a new pattern

of stretching,

of resting in the rise and fall of her breath,

and of dreaming impossible beautiful dreams.

She carried on in this way for just the right amount of time.

 Then…

One day she woke up, and after resting in her breath for a moment she began to stretch…And

Pop!

    A beautiful yellow and black wing unfolded from around the core of her body. And then

 Pop!

Another wing emerged on the other side. “I can’t believe this!” She gasped

 as the whole shell of her cocoon fell away.

And she rose above the tree branch

and into the air.