The Awareness Path: Unraveling the Secrets of Conscious Evolution

Join host Julia Marie as she unravels the intricate symbolic connections between the life of a caterpillar and the human awakening process. 

The episode covers the three levels of consciousness, the lifecycle of the butterfly, and the concept of "imaginal discs" that hold the patterns for a person's future spiritual transformation. 

The key points are:There are three stages of consciousness: asleep, awake, and aware. [12:18] 

The "aware" stage represents an expanded spiritual perspective. [16:41]

The butterfly's lifecycle is used as a metaphor for the spiritual transformation of humans, where the caterpillar represents the asleep/material state, the chrysalis represents the awakening process, and the butterfly represents the aware/spiritually expanded state. [08:06]

The speaker suggests that humans contain "imaginal discs" similar to those in caterpillars, which hold the energetic keys and codes for our spiritual awakening. [19:12] 

These are being activated now to facilitate the collective awakening of humanity. [20:52]

The speaker invites the listener to consider if they are one of these "imaginal souls" carrying codes for the activation of mass consciousness. [20:09]

SPECIAL THANKS to Pixabay's Pravajithk for Together-119002 for the music bed for today's episode.

Thank you for listening to Evolving Humans!

For consultations or classes, please visit my website: www.JuliaMarie.us

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You can find my book, Signals from My Soul: A Spiritual Memoir of Awakening here:

https://tinyurl.com/Book-Signals-from-My-Soul

Transcript

Julia Marie (00:00):

You're going to hear about three levels of consciousness, the lifecycle of the butterfly and imaginal discs on today's show, and I'm going to ask a question only you can answer, so stay tuned. Welcome to Evolving Humans, the podcast for awakening souls. I'm your host, Julia Marie. Settle in and get ready for another spirited conversation. When my spiritual awakening happened back in 1989, the invisible people who showed up in my living room and taught me how to live a spirit guided life gave me what can only be called a homework assignment, and yes, I was surprised They gave me homework to do. That required me going back to my middle school days science class and a lesson about the life cycle of the butterfly. When they gave me this assignment, I'd already been interacting with these unseen teachers for months, so I had a grasp of how my unique spiritual communication style worked.
(01:26)
The first thing I did, because I hadn't yet mastered that when the universe asks me to do something, it's because there's something for me to become aware of that will help to expand my consciousness. Well, the first thing I did, I argued with them. At that time, there wasn't any internet, so I had to go to the library to do the research and I really wasn't in the mood, decides I already knew the basics about the lifecycle of the butterfly. First there's the egg, then the caterpillar, then comes the chrysalis stage, and finally the butterfly emerges from the cocoon transformed. Besides I argued, I can hear you, so why don't you just tell me what you want me to know. Again, I hadn't yet learned the truth that wisdom comes only through experience. Knowledge is something that you can be told. The gentle request came again, study the lifecycle of the caterpillar I gave in, and in this case a simple assignment evolved into a major reframing of what I perceive to be happening on the planet at this time. Yes, I had to apply some of the other principles they gave me to figure it out, but eventually I did. I came to an understanding of what their message was, what the metaphor of the butterfly lifecycle meant, and why they wanted me to do my homework.
(03:14)
The primary principle I applied to this project was the one about you are a microcosm of the macrocosm. In other words, if I could understand the lifecycle of the butterfly, I could then apply that understanding to the evolution of consciousness on the planet. Here's how that awareness on unfolded. My understanding of consciousness in general was and still is pretty basic spirit's homework assignment gave me a new understanding of things. Up to this point, I'd only identified two levels of consciousness in my world. People were either totally asleep and very oriented to the 3D experience of life or they were awake and on their spiritual path seeking a greater understanding of the unseen aspect of our existence. This model fit nicely into the polarity theme anyway, light, dark, good, bad, asleep, awake ones and zeroes. My own awakening process had led me to understand there was more to life than this physical dimension.
(04:23)
Prior to my wake up call, I was focused on bettering myself just like many others are in this world and my primary motivation was also like everyone else's. My awakening happened slowly over time until the actual spontaneous activation of healing ability and the likely kundalini awakening happened in 1989. Prior to that, I just had this uncomfortable feeling that my life just didn't fit somehow anymore, and I'll talk a little bit later about how that's one of the signs you can look for. That usually means you're headed for an awakening of your own. My consciousness shifted subtly over time, and it started with the pervasive feeling that something in my life didn't fit anymore, but I couldn't articulate what that something was. If you asked me, I believe our dominant brainwave patterns undergo a transformation during this awakening process. It's very similar to how our brainwave patterns change when we sleep.
(05:30)
Remember that as we sleep, they cycle through alpha, beta, theta and delta states we're either a little asleep or very profoundly asleep. It's the same in my experience with states of waking consciousness. We are either deeply unconscious or in the process of awakening. In my original model, people are either asleep or awake, and if someone is making the transition from asleep to awake, there are certain things that are often indicators of an awakening in progress. I told you a moment ago that I would share some of those with you, so here's a quick list. One of the first things that can signal an awakening is a sense or a feeling that something's different, but you can't pinpoint what that something is. Some of the other signposts that your consciousness is awakening are your life begins to rearrange itself and that can often be uncomfortable. There can be a change in or frankly, the loss of your job.
(06:45)
Sometimes friends change because some people will shift with you and others will not. If your friend group starts to dissolve, don't worry too much new people will come into your life to support your journey. This awakening process often involves your family members too. Your shift in awareness will affect them because everything vibrates and as your vibration changes, they will sense that, but because they're still asleep, it will likely be an unconscious understanding. Sometimes if they can shift as your vibration changes, they stay and if they cannot, they'll fall away because they're uncomfortable and don't know why. It's not you. It's the process. If any of these things resonate with you, congratulations, you are officially awake.
(07:48)
Now, I had two major insights about my consciousness model. After reading about the lifecycle of the butterfly again, first I realized there must be another stage to the process because there were three stages in the transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Therefore, there must be three stages to the awakening process. Otherwise, why would spirit even give me this homework assignment except to lead me to an insight? At this point, I added the principle of as above, so below to the mix. I knew that in many cultures worldwide the butterfly is a symbol for the soul, so it seemed logical to me that spirit wanted me to apply what I'd learned about the caterpillar to the evolution of the human soul. Comparing the caterpillar to our current state of human awareness, most of us are caterpillars focused on our status and our survival. Like the caterpillar, we spend most of our time consuming or looking for things we can acquire and most of the time we don't even need these objects.
(09:01)
We want them and we expend tremendous amounts of time, energy, and effort in the pursuit of acquiring them. Now the caterpillar eventually reaches a point in its development. When a transformation begins, it enters the chrysalis or cocoon stage. While in this state, the caterpillar's body liquefies, it dissolves and rearranges itself into the body of a beautiful butterfly that eventually emerges from the cocoon. Now, while the wings are still wet, the butterfly is not capable of flight, so there is a time when there's a danger of crippling the butterfly. If you try and help, it either extricate itself from the cocoon or you touch the wings before they're dry, the butterfly will never fly. If either of these two things happen, like the caterpillar transforming itself into a butterfly, we also have the potential to undergo a transformation. Moving from a 3D oriented existence to a being with multidimensional awareness, and though we don't literally go into an isolation stage, some of us do withdraw from our regular routines until we sort out our new life. What is an awakening like you might ask like that caterpillar dissolving in the cocoon? As I said before, your life will sometimes undergo some radical changes and we may need help to understand it. You may even start to think there's something mentally wrong with you or that you are imagining things.
(10:53)
This transition often brings up a lot of fear around what's happening and how your life may be totally falling apart. Your best course of action is to find some support, either an online community or a spiritual teacher, maybe something in between. When all this happened to me, there weren't the resources available that an awakening soul has today. There wasn't an internet. There was only the library, you know that building with a lot of books in it and a card catalog and a librarian that was there to help you if you couldn't find what you were looking for. So the once upon a time Caterpillar emerges from the cocoon and waits for its newly acquired wings to dry before it can fly. This creature now has an entirely different perspective on the world where once its vision extended only to the ground directly in front of it, the butterfly now sees with a much broader perspective, and so it is with us as well.
(11:59)
Once we awaken, we begin our journey to full soul level awareness. At that level of consciousness, we navigate the world with an expanded perspective, the perspective of our soul while still living grounded here in this dimension. So back to those three stages. I labeled the first stage asleep and the second stage awake. This final stage I call aware. First we're asleep involved in our material world existence. Then an awakening comes. Sometimes it's a gradual wake up call and sometimes it comes suddenly once we're awake. The work, the walk becomes our new journey, the journey of what I call the awareness path. This path guides us for the remainder of our lives here and ushers us into even greater expansion of consciousness when we graduate this physical existence and return to our soul's home. Now, I've been talking about and teaching basically the awareness path in an informal way for years.
(13:16)
I wanted to take a few moments today to explain the concept behind it and why I believe we are all on a path to awareness. Once we've experienced an awakening, if I follow the analogy of the caterpillar to butterfly transformation, then this final stage is the butterfly newly emerged from the cocoon waiting for its wings to dry before testing its ability to fly. You'll be testing your newly open spiritual senses and learning how to operate from an expanded perspective while navigating this 3D world of dropping the kids off at school, paying the bills, going to work, meeting friends for coffee, all the normal stuff that makes up our usual day. The biggest difference you can make in your routine is so simple. It might seem it's too simple, but here it is. Practice what I call active awareness. As you go about your day, start by paying attention to what you notice and ask yourself why your attention is being drawn there.
(14:28)
You might be surprised at what begins to happen. The more aware you are and the more you acknowledge what you are noticing, the stronger your intuitive or soul senses become, and here's an exercise for you to practice. If you're interested in strengthening your awareness, you can do this anytime, anywhere. When you find yourself in a new location, be it a room or other space, take a minute, literally 60 seconds to scan the room visually and consciously notice everything you can now step out of that space and write down everything you saw. When you're finished writing everything down, go back into that exact same space and make a note of everything you missed in that place. Don't beat yourself up. If you missed a lot, it's normal in the beginning. Just keep practicing. Your awareness will improve, and as your awareness improves, your spiritual senses will also sharpen.
(15:42)
You'll become more sensitive and thus more able to recognize the signals your soul is sending you. Remember, the universe is interactive. The more you engage with it, the more it communicates with you through your expanding awareness. This material world is only the tiniest fraction of our reality, and there are people out there who say the material world is not our reality at all. I tend to agree with that viewpoint. If you commit to just this one thing, you can totally change how you experience life, and when we operate consciously from that expanded awareness place, our entire life experience as well as our understanding of what it means to be alive expands as well.
(16:41)
So how can you tell if you're in the awareness phase of your spiritual development? Well, you'll understand clear that there is so much more for us to learn and then our journey begins again. I believe our learning journey continues for the balance of our lives and beyond. Your expanded viewpoint gives you greater understanding of life situations because you start to see life from a different perspective and you understand your existence is greater than what you experience in the third dimension. The awareness path is not one of instant enlightenment. It's more like the dawning of the sun, the ray of the sun or visible first lightning, the night sky to a jeep indigo and deep blue warming to the pink golden tones that signal the beginning of another day. When you first explore the awareness path, you'll have to remind yourself to pay attention and to acknowledge all that your attention is drawn to.
(17:46)
Eventually, you will integrate this level of awareness into your daily life. One last thing I want to talk to you about before I finish today. It's actually the most important thing I learned from the Caterpillar research assignment and it took years before I applied it at the mass consciousness level. That didn't happen until 2023 when I finally made this final connection, oh, final. For now, at least according to my own understanding, the last piece of the puzzle was found in the description of the caterpillar itself. The caterpillar's body contains collections of cells that hold the pattern for its future butterfly existence. These cells are called, interestingly enough, imaginal discs. For example, there are four imaginal discs that contain the pattern for the four sections of the butterfly's wings. The caterpillar has no awareness of its butterfly self. It goes about its day living to consume as much as it can oblivious to its future butterfly potential.
(19:00)
These imaginal discs activate when the caterpillar enters the chrysalis stage and in the silence of the cocoon, the transformation happens. I believe that in many ways we are like the caterpillar. I believe we have something similar in our energetic makeup, and I call it the imaginal disc, like the caterpillar. I feel we contain certain energetic keys and codes that are activated at the appropriate time, and like the caterpillar, for the most part, we're not aware of our own butterfly potential. Then as we begin our spiritual transformation, those keys and codes activate and that starts the awakening process. I mentioned earlier that it took years to expand the concept of an imaginal disc, a container for the keys and codes that lead to our awakening as incarnated souls having a human experience to include the whole of humanity as a collective. Has I contemplated the possibility?
(20:09)
My awareness was drawn to the principle of how we are a microcosm of the macrocosm, and I started thinking of the possibility that there might be souls incarnated here who carry keys and codes for the activation of the mass consciousness. In effect, these souls would be the imaginal disc containing the pattern of the future of the mass consciousness, and they are being activated now in preparation for the transformation of mass consciousness from asleep to awake so that we can collectively walk the awareness path of expanded consciousness as a species. Remember I told you at the beginning of this episode that I'd be asking you a question only you can answer. Well, here it comes. Are you a part of that collection of souls? Are you one of the cells in humanity's imaginal disc that carries some of the energetic keys and codes that will lead to the activation of humanity's collective awakening? Take a moment here if you can close your eyes, if you can safely do so and take a breath. Exhale. Now, feel into the question I just asked you. How does your body respond to that?
(21:44)
So as a potential imaginal soul, a member of humanity's imaginal disc, is there anything you need to do? No, just be who you are, a carrier of light and energy that's contributing to the planetary ascension process. From time to time, I offer guided activation meditations. You're all welcome to join in. Just go to my website, Julia marie.us and sign up to receive the monthly newsletter so you'll learn when the next guided activation meditation will happen. So here's what I covered today, the three levels of consciousness that are represented by the three stages of development from caterpillar to butterfly.
(22:33)
Remember those three levels are asleep, awake, and aware. I offered you a straightforward spiritual path that is easily integrated into your daily life. I call it the awareness path, and I suggest that a simple exercise you can do anytime you choose to help strengthen and expand your spiritual and physical awareness. I invited you to join future activation meditations if you're inspired to do so. Hopefully I'll see some of you there next time. Well, that's our time for today. Thank you for continuing to support evolving humans. If you found value in this episode, please share it with two other people so that together we can bring more light to this world. And now here's a quote for you to ponder as you go about your day. The journey of spirituality is not about becoming someone else, but about unveiling the truth of who we already are.