I didn’t discover myself.

I caught myself… performing.

It wasn’t dramatic.
No lightning. No breakdown.
Just a strange, quiet moment where something slipped.

I was mid-conversation, saying something I’ve probably said a hundred times before, same tone, same rhythm, same reaction.

And I saw it.

Not felt it.
Saw it.

Like watching a scene instead of being inside it.

And the thought hit, clean and unsettling:

That’s not me. That’s something I learned to be.

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We’re told our whole lives to “find ourselves.” As if there’s some hidden core buried under the noise, waiting to be uncovered.

But no one really warns you about the other possibility.

That what you’ll actually find… is a collection of patterns.

Responses you inherited. Traits you rehearsed. Identities that got reinforced because they worked.

You weren’t lying. You were adapting. But adaptation, repeated long enough, starts to feel like truth.

There’s a moment, if you’re paying attention, where the script starts to show.

It might come through pressure.
Or betrayal.
Or just exhaustion from holding something together that doesn’t quite fit anymore.

For me, it felt like stepping half an inch outside of myself. Close enough to still function. Far enough to notice:

This is a role.

And here’s where it gets uncomfortable.

Because once you see it, you can’t fully go back.

You start noticing how often you say things you don’t mean,
react in ways you didn’t choose,
carry versions of yourself that were built for other people.

You see the character… doing what it was designed to do.

And then the real question shows up:

If this is the character, who is the one watching it?

Most people never ask that. Not because they can’t, but because the cost is high.

If it’s a role, it can change.
And if it can change, it’s not stable.
And if it’s not stable…

then what are you?

So instead, we refine the character.
Upgrade it.
Optimize it.
Protect it.

We call that growth. But Is it?

Maybe it is. But sometimes it’s just a more convincing performance.

And what’s really interesting (or weird for some), now that you know, you see it in everyone. You can see right through them. Each word they utter helps you see even more. And it’s not all good. After a while, you wonder who your friend really is behind their mask. And wonder if you can trust them at all.

I’m not saying the character is fake in the sense that it doesn’t matter.

It matters. It’s how we move through the world.

But it’s not the center. The center is the one who sees it.

The one who was there before the role got built, and is still there now, quietly watching it play out.

That realization doesn’t give you a clean answer.

It doesn’t hand you a new identity.

If anything, it removes one.

What it gives you is space.

Space between you and the script.
Space between reaction and awareness.
Space to choose… or not choose… what continues.

Most people will spend their whole lives perfecting the mask.

Making it sharper.
More likable.
More successful.

Very few will stop long enough to ask,

who is wearing it.

All for you.

While I am always

I and the Butterfly

[Easter eggs]

* This is exactly what Jesus Christ is pointing at when he calls out the Pharisees:

“You are like whitewashed tombs…” (Matthew 23:27)

Translation :

They look real.
They perform righteousness.
But inside, it’s not aligned.

That’s not just religious critique.
That’s identity critique.

* Paul the Apostle goes straight at this idea:

“Put off your old self… and put on the new self.” (Ephesians 4:22–24)

This isn’t just moral advice.

Translation :

There is a version of you that was constructed

And it can be taken off

That sounds a lot like a “character.”

One of the strangest patterns in scripture is how often betrayal appears right before transformation.

Joseph was betrayed by his own brothers before he ever reached Egypt.

They threw him into a pit. Sold him. Erased him from their lives.

What looked like the destruction of his future became the very road that led him to it.

David was betrayed by those closest to him.

Ahithophel turned against him.

His own son, Absalom rebelled against him.

The betrayal didn’t merely threaten his kingdom.

It revealed the fragility of everything he thought was secure.

Then there is Jesus of Nazareth.

Betrayed by Judas Iscariot with a kiss.

Denied by Peter the Apostle.

Abandoned by many who once followed him.

And yet betrayal was not the end of his story.

It preceded resurrection.

Of the 5,000 he fed, only 500 followed him. Of all of them, just the 12 came with him. Then only 11 to the Garden of Gethsemane. Then 3 went to pray for him. And then only 1 came to his crucifiction.

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That pattern is difficult to ignore.

And it raises a painful question:

What if betrayal is not always random?

What if it sometimes arrives at the exact moment an old version of your life is dying?

Betrayal feels deeply personal.

It feels like someone stole your peace.

Your trust.

Your stability.

Your future.

But many times what betrayal truly steals is your illusion of permanence.

The relationship you thought would last forever.

The friendship you thought was unshakable.

The institution you believed would protect you.

The version of yourself that depended on external approval.

And when those things collapse, something terrifying happens:

you are forced inward.

For many people, this is where spiritual awakening begins.

Not in comfort.

Not in certainty.

But in disillusionment.

Scripture repeatedly describes idolatry as betrayal toward God.

And I’ve often wondered if we commit similar betrayals within ourselves.

We build our identities on temporary things:

status

validation

relationships

security

titles

roles

when none of them were meant to carry the full weight of who we are.

Then life removes them.

Sometimes violently.

Sometimes through people we loved.

And we are left asking why.

Years later, many people realize the betrayal they begged God to stop became the very event that redirected their lives.

It led them to new cities.

New relationships.

New purpose.

New creativity.

New freedom.

Sometimes it leads you into solitude.

And solitude can feel brutal until you discover who you are without the noise of everyone else’s expectations.

Joseph had the pit before the palace.

Jesus of Nazareth had betrayal before resurrection.

And many of us experience our own version of this pattern.

The people who broke your heart may have unknowingly pushed you toward a life your former self was never prepared to enter.

This does not make betrayal good.

It does not excuse cruelty.

And forgiveness is often its own long journey.

But sometimes what feels like the destruction of your life is actually the painful removal of what could not go with you.

Sometimes betrayal is the doorway.

And sometimes the life waiting on the other side is far greater than the one that was taken from you.

I hope this finds you and heal you. The traitor comes to destroy and take. The Bible’s message isn’t that betrayal never happens. It’s that God sees it clearly, and Scripture consistently treats betrayal as a serious violation of trust that eventually carries consequences.

You are loved and never really alone. The One who loves you most is right at your side.

Love Always,

- I and the Butterfly

Have you ever had the strange feeling that your life is happening… but not entirely to you?

Like you’re inside it. Playing it. Watching it unfold.

Like somewhere beneath your name, your past, your responsibilities…
there is something else.

Something that was here before the story began.

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From the moment you were born, the character started forming.

A name was given.
A personality shaped.
A history collected.

You learned how to be someone.

What to say.
How to react.
What to chase.
What to fear.

And over time, it became seamless.

So seamless, in fact, that you stopped noticing it.

You stopped questioning it.

You stopped asking the simplest, most dangerous question:

Who is this happening to?

Because every character has structure.

It has patterns.
Reactions.
Memories it defends.

It says, “This is who I am.”
It says, “This is what happened to me.”
It says, “This is what my life means.”

And most people never look beyond that.

They spend their entire lives refining the character…
protecting it…
trying to improve the storyline.

But every now and then,

something slips.

A moment of stillness.
A break in the pattern.
A quiet awareness that doesn’t belong to the role.

You might feel it in the middle of a normal day.
Driving. Walking. Sitting in silence.

For no reason at all, everything pulls back just slightly…

…and you notice.

You notice the thoughts instead of being inside them.
You notice the emotions instead of being controlled by them.
You notice the life… instead of being completely identified with it.

And in that moment, something unsettling appears:

If you can observe it…

it might not be you.

This is the glitch most people ignore.

Or explain away.

Or bury under more noise.

But if you stay with it,
if you don’t run,

it begins to reveal something simple and undeniable.

You are not the character.

You are the one aware of the character.

The name is something you were given.

The personality is something that formed.

The story is something that accumulated.

But the awareness of all of it?

That didn’t come and go.

That didn’t need to be built.

That was there before the first memory…
and it has been there through every version of you since.

Unchanged.

Watching.

Knowing.

Under all of the stories that have been added to your life…
beneath the name, the past, the identity you’ve carried…
there is a you that was never constructed.

The one most people spend their entire lives trying to find.

The real you.

And when this begins to settle in, not just as an idea, but as something seen,

life doesn’t disappear.

The character doesn’t vanish.

The story doesn’t end.

But something shifts.

You stop gripping it so tightly.
You stop defending it so desperately.
You stop believing it is all that you are.

You begin to move differently.

Lighter.
Clearer.
More aware.

More free, somehow.

Not because the world changed,

but because you’re no longer lost inside the role.

Maybe nothing in your life has gone wrong.

Maybe you’ve just been playing a character so convincingly…
you forgot you were the one playing it.

And maybe this moment, right here,

is the beginning of remembering.

01001110 01101110

“ERROR.”

That’s what it said when he woke up.

Not a name.
Not a past.
Not even a clear thought.

Just… error.

That was the first language he saw.
Not words. Not memory. Not even a voice.

Just something trying, and failing to define him.

What if that’s where we all begin?

Not as identities…
but as something the world tries to finish loading.

A name is given.
A role is assigned.
A story is handed to you like it was always yours.

But somewhere underneath it,
there’s a break in the code.

A moment where it doesn’t fully take.

A quiet, stubborn glitch that says:

“This isn’t all I am.”

In a story I am writing, Orion wakes up in that space.
Not fully human. Not fully programmed.
Not fully anything.

And maybe that’s not a flaw.

Maybe that’s freedom.

Maybe the error…
is the most honest thing in the system.

As if the system tried to define him,
and couldn’t.

I’ve been thinking about that.

What if that moment exists in all of us?

Before the labels.
Before the roles.
Before the story we were handed and told to live.

And even deeper than that,
under all of the new story added onto your life…

lies the real you.

The one most people spend their whole lives trying to find.
The one beneath the noise, the expectations, the definitions.

The real you.

We’re taught to rush past the feeling that something doesn’t fit.
To fix it.
To become something solid.
Understandable. Acceptable.

But what if that “error” isn’t a mistake?

What if it’s the part of you
that wasn’t meant to be programmed?

Maybe that is the freedom.

Orion wakes up there.

And maybe, in some quiet way,
so have you.

You are so much more, but you are hiding under layers that you never needed.

Thank you for reading. Subscription is always free.

Love Always,

- I and the Butterfly

I put on Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” album today, I’ve heard it possibly a hundred times. Then after listening part way through, there comes the title song, The Man Who Sold The World, a very haunting song. I’ve always known the words, but never knew what it was about.

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And then it hit me differently. There’s a line where he says, “We must have died a long, long time ago… We never lost control. We’re face to face with the man who sold the world.”

At first, it’s just words. Then you realize - who is we? And who is this “man”? Suddenly, the song isn’t about someone else. It’s about you. Or the version of you you forgot. The self you don’t recognize until something; music, memory, a strange moment, makes it undeniable.

It reminded me of a story I’ve been working on. There’s an alien, Orion, who wakes up with no memory - no idea who he is, where he came from, or what he’s supposed to be doing. He finds misfits, rebels, outsiders, and through them, he begins to see himself again. That process, that uneasy awakening, feels exactly like what Bowie’s song does: a confrontation with a self you’ve been carrying without realizing it.

Music has a way of doing that. It can echo what you’ve forgotten, shine light on the shadows you’ve been avoiding, and make you question who you really are. Sometimes, it’s unsettling. Sometimes, it’s beautiful. And sometimes, it’s both at once.

So, here’s a question for you: what familiar thing - song, scene, memory - might be showing you a version of yourself you’ve never met?

And even more telling, what was your immediate reaction?

It’s okay. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, it will. It’s the reason why we are all here.

Love always,

- I and the Butterfly

There are people all around you who feel like they don’t belong here.

Not broken. Not lost. Just… unseen.

You wouldn’t notice them at first. Most people don’t. They’re quiet in a particular way. Not shy, exactly. Just observing. Watching. Taking things in that others seem to pass right over.

I know, because I was one of them.

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When I was young, I noticed things I couldn’t explain. Not dramatic things. Just… differences. The way people acted. The way the world felt. Moments that seemed more real than others, for reasons I couldn’t put into words.

I tried to talk about it once or twice. It didn’t go very far. Not because anyone was unkind, but because there was nothing to meet me there. So I learned, like many do, to keep it to myself.

And over time, you begin to assume something simple:

It must be me.

As I got older, I started to notice something else.

There are two kinds of people you run into again and again.

There are the ones who follow, who move with the crowd, who take their cues from what is already accepted. And then there are the others. The ones who seem to notice things early. Who are drawn to what is different, sometimes before anyone else sees the value in it.

The second group often doesn’t fit very well.

They’re the ones who feel slightly out of place in conversations. The ones who sense when something isn’t quite right, even if they can’t prove it. The ones who feel deeply, sometimes too deeply, about things most people brush off.

And because of that, they can begin to feel… alone.

I became a teacher for many years, and I started to recognize them almost immediately.

The quiet ones. The thoughtful ones. The ones who didn’t quite connect in the usual ways, but who had something going on beneath the surface.

You could see it if you were looking.

And I always wondered how many of them were walking around with the same question I had when I was younger:

“Is something wrong with me?”

The truth is, for some of these people, it can get heavy.

Feeling different for long enough can turn into isolation. Isolation can turn into despair. And despair can make a person feel like they’re completely alone in the world, even when they’re surrounded by others.

That’s the part no one really talks about.

You never see that part of the journey.

But somewhere along the way, something began to shift for me.

Very slowly, I started to realize that what I thought was wrong with me… might not be wrong at all.

It might just be a different way of seeing.

A different way of experiencing the world.

Not better. Not worse. Just… different.

And maybe even necessary.

I had a strange realization recently while reading Ecclesiastes.

For most of my life, it felt like a depressing book. “All is vanity,” “striving after wind.” It sounded like someone who had given up.

But this time, it felt different.

It felt like I was reading the words of someone who had seen through something. Someone who had spent a lifetime building, achieving, chasing meaning in the ways the world tells us to, only to realize that none of it holds the weight we think it does.

Not meaningless… but not ultimate.

And there was something strangely comforting in that.

Like hearing the voice of someone across time saying, “I see it too.”

That’s when it clicked for me.

There are people, maybe not many, but enough, who see the world just slightly differently. Who feel it differently. Who notice what others don’t.

And because of that, they often feel like they don’t belong.

But maybe the truth is not that they don’t belong…

Maybe it’s that they were never meant to see the world the way everyone else does.

If that’s you, if you’ve ever felt like you were standing just slightly outside of everything, I want you to hear this clearly:

You are not alone.

There are others like you. More than you think. Quietly moving through the world, asking the same questions, noticing the same things, feeling the same strange mix of wonder and distance.

And it does get easier.

Not because the world changes… but because you begin to understand yourself differently.

You stop trying to force yourself into something you’re not.

You begin to trust the way you see.

I don’t have all the answers. I don’t think anyone does.

But I do know this:

The people no one sees… often see the most.

And that matters more than anyone realizes.

If you’ve ever felt like you didn’t quite belong here…
maybe it’s because you were never meant to see this place the way everyone else does.

Love always,

- I and the Butterfly

Have you ever felt like the world doesn’t quite fit you? Like the things you notice, the thoughts you have, or the dreams you remember make you feel… different?

You’re not broken. You’re not too sensitive, too strange, or too much. You are awake in ways most people haven’t yet learned to see. And yes, it can feel lonely. But I want you to know something very important: you are going to be okay.

Because God sees you. God has always seen you. Even when the world feels cold, even when no one else notices, even when you feel small or invisible, God knows the truth of your heart.

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Being a Knower

Some of us are born as observers, as early recognizers, as “Knowers.” We see patterns, sense realities, and feel things that others overlook. We’re drawn to art, to music, to ideas that seem ahead of their time. Sometimes we notice truths that are almost invisible to most people.

It can be lonely. People may not understand us. We may even question our own sanity. I know I did. I had strange experiences as a child that I could never explain, and when I tried to speak about them, I was often met with confusion or dismissal. Over time, I learned to trust my own perception, to recognize that the gift of noticing was more important than the comfort of being understood.

But these experiences, the strangeness, the visions, the dreams, the deep awareness, are signs of awakening. God is stirring something within you, showing you a depth that most will never encounter.

People may not understand us. We may even question our own sanity. I know I did. I had strange experiences as a child that I could never explain, and when I tried to speak about them, I was often met with confusion or dismissal. Over time, I learned to trust my own perception — to recognize that the gift of noticing was more important than the comfort of being understood.

Why This Matters

Even when it feels like no one else is paying attention, your awareness has power. You are part of God’s unfolding in the world. The gifts you have, sensitivity, insight, creativity, even a stronger sense of wonder, are not accidents. They are God’s way of moving through you, quietly, in ways that shape and touch others, often without your realizing it.

The world may not always understand you. But the part of you that notices, that creates, that loves deeply, that part is sacred. It is Christ alive in you, awake in the world, a presence that cannot be erased.

Trust Yourself

To those reading this: trust your own perception. Stay curious. Create. Explore. Your unique perspective is a gift. Even if the world seems to move in ways that ignore your vision, God is present. And when you find yourself staying quiet around others because you can’t bring them into your world, remember this. You are never truly alone. There are others like you all around you. Maybe you can spot them. And lucky is the one who can find one to talk to about your world.

Even the quietest truths have a way of finding their time, their listeners, their place. You are part of that unfolding, even if it is invisible for now.

A Gentle Reassurance

You are not invisible. You are not alone. You are seen. You are known. And even when the world misunderstands you, God sees the truth of your heart.

Breathe. Trust yourself. Keep going. You are going to be okay.

Now smile. :)

Love always,

- I and the Butterfly

Last night in a dream I walked through a school that no longer belonged to me.

The halls were quiet. No students. No noise. Just doors, walls, and memories. I moved slowly, almost like a visitor walking through another lifetime. I wasn’t searching for anything. I was simply looking, as if time itself had paused long enough for me to see where I had been.

Then an older administrator approached me, angry. She listed failures, complaints, things done wrong or not done well enough. I don’t remember the details now, only the feeling; the familiar weight of expectation.

When she finished, I answered gently.

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“I gave a huge part of my life, over twenty long years, doing the hardest work I’ve ever known. I did the best I could.”

There was no defensiveness in my voice. Only truth.

And something changed. Her anger dissolved into respect. Understanding replaced judgment.

Then another teacher appeared. She said my last name like a question, as if trying to place me in memory. I told her my first name, and she stepped forward and embraced me, not formally, but warmly, almost gratefully.

And then the scene changed.

I was lying in a wide open field, looking up at the sky.

One by one, former students came to me. They told me what I had meant to them. How I helped them. How I motivated them. How something I said or did stayed with them long after they left my classroom.

I never sat up.
I never answered.
I only listened.

There was no need to speak.

When I woke, I realized something quietly profound: the dream did not feel like death. It felt like completion.

For years, teaching required constant motion; planning, correcting, guiding, carrying responsibility that never truly ended. You rarely see the outcome of what you plant. You move on while the seeds are still underground.

But in the dream, I was no longer the one striving.

I was simply receiving.

The school represented effort, structure, and obligation. The field felt timeless, open, natural, free from evaluation. It was as if my life had moved from performance into meaning.

And perhaps that is what many of us never allow ourselves to believe: that the work mattered even when we could not measure it.

We live much of life wondering whether what we gave disappeared unnoticed. Whether the years were spent building something real or merely exhausting ourselves against the wind.

Yet somewhere beyond our awareness, lives continue growing from moments we barely remember.

Maybe maturity, or spiritual peace, is not discovering a grand new purpose, but realizing nothing sincere was ever lost.

You do not always get applause while you are living the work.

Sometimes understanding comes later, quietly, when you finally lie down and stop trying to prove your worth.

And in that stillness, life itself answers:

Nothing was wasted.

“I thought the dream was about the past. When I woke up, I realized it was about forgiveness - toward myself.”

Always,

- I and the Butterfly

What I explore:

* Less inner pressure to interpret every experience

* Dreams and insights becoming gentler

* Faith becoming relational instead of intellectual

* Helping others arising naturally (your recent realization)

* Trust replacing constant analysis

* “If I stop striving spiritually, won’t I lose meaning?”

I thought letting go of certainty would make my spiritual life feel unstable.

For years, I believed growth meant effort; more understanding, more insight, more interpretation. Every dream needed meaning. Every coincidence needed explanation. Every emotional shift felt like something I had to analyze or correct. Spirituality, though meaningful, quietly became another form of control.

When I finally stopped trying to make everything fit together, I expected confusion to follow.

Instead, something unexpected changed.

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Life became quieter.

Not empty, just less pressured. I no longer felt responsible for decoding every experience as if God were constantly sending encrypted messages I might misunderstand. Some moments were simply moments. Some dreams were encounters rather than instructions. Some questions no longer demanded immediate answers.

The strange thing was that nothing important was lost. If anything, faith became more alive.

I noticed small changes first. Mornings felt different. I wasn’t waking up trying to locate myself spiritually, asking whether I was progressing, regressing, awakening, or missing something. I simply woke up and entered the day. Prayer became less like reaching upward and more like awareness already present. Trust replaced evaluation.

I also realized how much energy I had spent trying to manage my inner life. I used to believe spiritual maturity meant maintaining the right state at all times. Now I see that life moves through seasons just as naturally as weather. Peace does not come from holding one perfect state, but from allowing movement without panic. Emotions become weather patterns that pass over and then are gone. Situational drama? Just weather systems. When ignored, they are soon gone too.

Even my relationships changed. I felt less urgency to convince or explain. Helping others no longer felt like correcting their path or offering answers. Often it looked like listening, imagining good for them quietly, or simply being present without needing to guide the outcome. You realize they are asleep and must grow like you have, but you offer love and help if asked. Compassion begins to feel natural instead of effortful.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was this: meaning did not disappear when control did. It deepened.

When I stopped trying to steer my spiritual life, experiences began to unfold with a kind of gentle coherence I could never produce by force. Insight arrived without strain. Creativity returned without pressure. Faith felt less like a belief I had to defend and more like a relationship I could live inside. Because it is internal. And eternal.

I have come to think of this as learning to flow rather than strive.

Flow does not mean passivity. It does not mean abandoning responsibility or desire. It means participating without gripping, choosing without anxiety, trusting without needing guarantees. It is the realization that growth happens more reliably when we cooperate with life than when we attempt to master it.

For a long time, I was afraid that if I stopped trying to control my spiritual life, I might lose direction.

What I found instead was something simpler.

Life already knew how to move.
I only needed to stop resisting it.

You are in the right place at the right time. You are where you are supposed to be, according to the plan you came here with. So let it happen.

“Cease striving and know that I am God” – Psalm 46:10

In the Bible, “strive” means to make intense efforts, contend, struggle, or labor fervently towards a goal, often with athletic or martial connotations (Greek agonizomai). It refers to the diligent, disciplined pursuit of righteousness and spiritual maturity, but it is also used in Ecclesiastes to describe futile, anxious labor (”striving after wind”).

Thank you for reading. I hope this reached those of you that were supposed to find it. Remember that everything will be alright. And I am always here with you.

Love always,

- I and the Butterfly

I thought spiritual maturity meant finally solving reality. Instead, it arrived the day I said, “Maybe it doesn’t need solving.

I used to believe that spiritual maturity meant finally making everything fit.

If I studied long enough, prayed deeply enough, read one more book, or uncovered one more hidden layer of symbolism, eventually the pieces would lock together; non-duality, the Bible, consciousness, psychology, imagination, history. Somewhere, I assumed, there had to be a final diagram where nothing contradicted anything else.

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For years, in secret, I tried to build that diagram in my mind. And for years, something inside me remained restless. Every answer created a new tension. If consciousness was primary, what do I do with history? If scripture was symbolic, what about the real people who lived and died? If awakening revealed unity, why did individuality still feel meaningful and personal?

I thought peace would arrive when I solved the puzzle. Instead, it arrived the day I quietly stopped trying.

It didn’t happen dramatically. There was no revelation, no thunderbolt of certainty. I simply reached a point where I said, almost out of exhaustion, “Maybe reality doesn’t need to fit inside one explanation.” And strangely, the moment I allowed that, something softened. The pressure to reconcile everything disappeared. Faith didn’t collapse. Understanding didn’t vanish. They just stopped competing with each other.

What replaced the need for certainty wasn’t confusion. It was trust.

When I was young, faith was simple. Jesus was a real man who walked the earth, teaching love, healing the sick, and speaking about the Kingdom of God. I never questioned it. The story felt whole.

But later, strange experiences began to appear in my life, not dramatic, just enough to make me wonder whether reality was as solid as I had always assumed. I started reading, searching quietly, trying to understand whether something was wrong with me or whether others had walked this road before.

What I discovered surprised me. Serious thinkers, philosophers, psychologists, and even physicists had all wrestled with the same question: what if reality is not as fixed as it appears? Not the science-fiction idea that we live inside a computer simulation, but something subtler; that experience itself may be more like a dream than a machine. Neville Goddard spoke of imagination as the true ground of reality. Jung circled the mystery carefully. Even the Bible, read mystically, seemed to whisper the same possibility.

Gradually, my understanding shifted. I began to see Christ less as a distant historical figure and more as a living reality within consciousness itself, the divine imagination present in every person. It made sense. The pieces seemed to align. God was not far away but expressing through us, and awakening meant realizing that truth.

Then last year changed everything.

During a period of intense inner transformation, I encountered new historical research showing that Jesus was not only a symbol or mystical archetype, but a real man who lived, taught, and was remembered by people outside the Bible itself. And suddenly the framework I had built no longer held together.

I found myself awake at night asking questions I could not resolve. How could Jesus be both a historical person and a living inner reality? How could a world that sometimes feels dreamlike also contain real history, real suffering, real lives? If consciousness is primary, where does incarnation fit?

I tried desperately to make it all agree.

And I couldn’t.

Peace did not come from solving the contradiction. I still haven’t. It came when I stopped demanding that reality reduce itself to one explanation.

For a long time, I believed faith required certainty, that somewhere there had to be a final understanding where history, mysticism, psychology, and consciousness all aligned perfectly. I thought maturity meant arriving at the answer. Instead, what arrived was exhaustion. I realized I was trying to hold infinity still long enough to diagram it.

And then something unexpected happened. I let go.

Not in despair, and not by abandoning belief, but by quietly admitting that reality might be larger than my ability to reconcile it. Jesus could have been a real man who walked in history. Christ could also be a living presence encountered inwardly. The world could feel dreamlike without being meaningless. None of these truths needed to cancel the others.

The moment I allowed that possibility, the tension dissolved.

What replaced it was not confusion but trust, a sense that understanding does not always come from forcing conclusions, but from learning how to live inside the mystery without resisting it. I began to notice that life itself seemed to move more naturally when I stopped trying to control its meaning.

This is what I have come to call Flowism.

Flowism is not a system of beliefs and not a new doctrine. It is simply a way of relating to experience. Instead of striving to master reality, it invites participation in it. Instead of demanding certainty, it practices trust. It assumes that meaning unfolds as we move with life rather than against it.

Strangely, this felt less like discovering something new and more like returning to something ancient; the quiet biblical idea of abiding, the psychological insight of allowing the psyche to unfold, the simple human wisdom of learning when to stop pushing and start listening.

I did not lose faith.

I stopped trying to force faith to explain everything. Instead of trying to understand the world, I learned it is better to just love everyone in it. Jesus was right. There is nothing better.

Thank you for reading. You all are always free to share my posts as much as you want. Subscription is always free. Each is copyrighted, so I don’t worry about anyone claiming my work as theirs.

Regardless of whether it is all real or not, all is well.

Love always,

- I and the Butterfly

There is a particular kind of fear that has nothing to do with death.

It’s the fear of being carried somewhere you did not choose.

Most of us have felt it at some point - in a crowd,inside a tradition or business/cultural structure, inside a belief system we inherited without examining. It’s the slow realization that the vehicle is moving, that everyone is facing forward, and that no one seems to be asking where we’re going.

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There is something deeply unsettling about collective momentum.

Not because community is wrong. Not because belonging is bad. But because unconscious belonging feels like erasure.

To lose your agency is, in a strange way, worse than suffering. At least in suffering you are still present. When you are carried along without reflection, something subtler happens. You begin to disappear.

Carl Jung called this participation mystique: the state in which the individual is fused with the group psyche. Beliefs are adopted automatically. Reactions are inherited. Direction is assumed. No one is exactly driving, and yet movement continues.

The unease that arises in such moments is not paranoia. It is the psyche’s protest. It is the self insisting: I would like to choose.

A Symbolic Dream, with a Vision

I had a dream a couple nights ago. I don’t remember it now, but I know I was very irritated and angry, because I didn’t have a choice in something. I woke up in the dark and heard a voice carried over from the dream say, “There’s some goat in all of us.”

This irritated me again and I said in my mind “That’s BS.”

Fully awake now, I remembered the separation of the sheep from the goats in Revelation, but it wasn’t judgement I felt. It was opposites.

And immediately, I had a clear vision of getting on a bus at night. I found the only available seat, noticing everyone was silently looking forward, like they were in a trance, a look of apathy in their eyes. I sat and looked forward with them, hearing hypnotic music, the song “The End” by the Doors. The singer sings “... The blue bus… is calling us… The blue bus… is calling us… Driver where you taking us…” I was on a military bus on our way to be trained and sent to war. And it ended. It was chilling.

I later understood what it meant.

The Danger at Opposite Ends

There is another danger, and it often appears on the opposite side of spiritual seeking.

If the first danger is dissolving into the crowd, the second is dissolving into the cosmos.

Jung warned repeatedly about what he called inflation, the subtle psychological event that occurs when the ego encounters something vast and mistakes participation for identity.

Spiritual experiences can feel enormous. They can rearrange perception, intensify meaning, and create a sense of contact with something far larger than the personal self. And that contact is real in the psychological sense. It is numinous, charged, and transformative.

But the ego is small. It is meant to be small.

Inflation happens when the ego says, consciously or unconsciously:

This vastness is me.

Not moving through me. Not touching me. Not reorganizing me. But me.

In that moment, proportion is lost. And when proportion is lost, humanity begins to thin.

Inflation does not always look like arrogance. Sometimes it looks like certainty. Sometimes it looks like mission. Sometimes it looks like the quiet belief that one has finally stepped outside ordinary limitation.

Yet the effect is similar to unconscious conformity.

In one case, we disappear into the crowd. In the other, we disappear into transcendence.

Either way, we stop being fully human.

Absorption vs. Inflation?

What’s striking is that both dangers, collective absorption and spiritual inflation, arise from the same root problem:

Loss of differentiation.

In the crowd, the individual dissolves into the group.

In inflation, the individual dissolves into an archetype.

In both cases, the person abandons the human scale.

Jung himself came close to this edge during his intense visionary period in the early 20th century. He experienced powerful inner imagery and dialogues that would later be published as The Red Book. He feared, at times, that he might be losing his mind.

What saved him was not denial of the experience. It was grounding.

He kept seeing patients. He maintained relationships. He paid bills. He treated his visions as meaningful, but not authoritative.

He refused to identify with them. He stood in relationship to what was larger, without claiming it.

That stance preserved his sanity. There is something deeply sane about remaining proportionate. Real awakening, if it exists, does not erase the self. It stabilizes it.

It does not demand that you merge with the crowd. And it doesn’t tempt you to become the cosmos. It asks you to remain human; awake, responsible, embodied, limited, and aware of those limits.

The individual who has truly differentiated does not need to disappear into collective certainty, nor inflate into spiritual grandiosity. They can belong without being absorbed. They can experience depth without mistaking it for personal elevation.

They can say, simply:

Something larger moves through me, but I am not its source.

There is a quiet humility in that. And perhaps that humility is the real safeguard.

In an age of mass opinion and spiritual overstatement, the middle path is not glamorous. It does not trend. It does not shout.

But it holds.

The goal is not to be carried. The goal is not to become the driver of the universe.

The goal is to remain human; conscious, proportionate, and free enough to choose your direction.

That may not sound mystical.

But it is extraordinarily difficult. Choosing to move on and get things done, pay your bills, make time with family? Yes.

And it is enough.

Thank you for reading. I hope you got something out of it, somehow. I only do this for you. Not for me. Subscription is always free, and I don’t want recognition. Just to help.

Love always,

- I and the Butterfly

For most of my life, I assumed what nearly everyone assumes: that I am a body moving through a vast universe, carried forward by time.

It’s a useful assumption. It keeps the world orderly. It helps you show up to work on time. But over the years, through reflection, Scripture, Neville Goddard’s psychological mysticism, and a growing interest in non-dual philosophy, that orientation quietly began to reverse.

Not dramatically. Not through visions. But through noticing.

What I began to see was this: experience does not happen to consciousness. Experience happens in consciousness. That may sound abstract, but it has very practical consequences.

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States, Not Events

Neville Goddard spoke endlessly about states, not as moods, but as complete orientations of consciousness. A state determines what feels possible, what feels meaningful, even what feels real.

When a state changes, the world doesn’t necessarily change, but the world as experienced does.

Anyone who has moved from anxiety to calm, or from despair to hope, knows this intuitively. Same room. Same people. Different world.

Mystics noticed this long before psychology had language for it. The Bible encoded it symbolically. Modern idealism tries to describe it philosophically.

Different languages. Same interior mechanics.

Why Time Sometimes Feels Strange

Occasionally, during deep absorption, creativity, prayer, or contemplation, people report something odd: time seems to soften, compress, or disappear altogether.

This doesn’t require supernatural explanations. Time, as we experience it, is not a substance. It’s a narrative function, a way consciousness tracks continuity.

When attention and identity loosen, the internal storyteller quiets/disappears. Awareness remains fully present, but the clock loses its grip. When narrative resumes, it asks, “How long was that?” Mystics called this eternity. Psychology calls it absorption. Both are pointing to the same thing.

Experiences often described as ‘timeline shifts’ or ‘missing time’ don’t require exotic explanations. From a non‑dual view, they reveal moments where the normal stitching of memory, identity, and narrative briefly loosens.

From a non‑dual premise, both fit naturally:

1. Time distortions - show that time is state‑dependent and narratively constructed

2. Mandela Effect and “Moving Time Lines – type experiences - show that memory, meaning, and “the past” are not fixed objects but reconstructions within consciousness

Reality is not accessed directly. It is assembled in awareness.

Not Bodies in the Universe

Here’s the inversion that ties it all together:

We are not bodies inside a universe. The universe appears (is) within consciousness.

That doesn’t mean the physical world isn’t real. It means reality is experienced from the inside out, not the outside in.

Space, time, body, and world are appearances within awareness, not containers that awareness must fit inside.

The body becomes an interface. The world becomes a presentation. Consciousness remains the constant.

A Necessary Clarification

When people say things like “I am the universe,” this insight can easily be overstated.

What is meant, at its best, is not that a personal identity is everything, but that the same field of awareness expresses itself through countless perspectives.

One field. Many viewpoints. No division in the field itself.

As in; One God (the field/every and all things). Many conscious awarenesses. Many illusory things that we experience.

This isn’t solipsism. It’s humility of a different kind.

Why This Matters

This way of seeing doesn’t remove you from ordinary life. It returns you to it, lighter.

You still make choices. You still create, work, love, and fail. But you’re less burdened by the need for reality to prove itself.

Mysticism, at its healthiest, isn’t about extraordinary experiences. It’s about understanding how experience is assembled.

And once that’s seen, even briefly, the world doesn’t disappear, but it stops demanding belief.

I hope this helps to see that mysticism and the Bible as spiritual truth are very compatible. I am glad you took the time to read and enjoy a little enlightenment! Subscription is always free. I will always be anonymous and ego-free. :)

Love always,

- I and the Butterfly

Lately, I’ve noticed many people talking about prophecy, revival, and global spiritual shifts. Across the world, including places like China, people are rediscovering faith, prayer, and meaning in large numbers. For some, this feels exhilarating. For others, unsettling.

As a practicing Christian who takes the mystical tradition of the Bible seriously, I want to offer a grounded way of understanding what’s happening, one that doesn’t rely on fear, urgency, or end-times alarmism.

Note: The mystical side of the Bible does not negate the stories in it. It amplifies them. I can believe the Word of God and still see that the mystical underlying message teaches on a deeper layer to the individual.

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Not the end of the world; an unveiling of meaning

The word apocalypse doesn’t mean destruction. It means unveiling. Throughout history, periods of social instability have often been accompanied by spiritual renewal. When familiar structures fail to give meaning, people begin to look inward again.

This doesn’t mean history is “ending.” It means something is being revealed - about who we are, what we value, and what sustains us.

Salvation as awakening, not escape

In the mystical Christian tradition, salvation is not merely about escaping the world. It’s about being made whole within it. To be “saved” is to be reoriented - to love, to humility, to presence, to God.

Many of the great Christian mystics, Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, lived during turbulent times. None of them preached panic. They taught integration. They called people back to the heart.

And most mystics were Christians by choice. Neville Goddard, William Blake, even Carl Jung and Alan Watts, who was first an ordained priest before he began his search after awakening.

Why faith grows during uncertainty

When life feels predictable, faith can become abstract or inherited. When life becomes uncertain, faith becomes existential. People don’t turn to God because the world is ending, but because the old stories no longer satisfy.

This is not regression. It’s rehumanizing.

People are praying again. People are seeking community. People are asking better questions.
People are longing for love that isn’t transactional.

That’s not collapse. That’s return.

A word about prophecy

Biblical prophecy, read mystically, is not a calendar of future disasters. It’s a map of recurring human patterns; death and renewal, exile and return, fragmentation and wholeness.

When we externalize prophecy, it produces fear. When we internalize it, it produces wisdom.

Jesus didn’t say, “Watch the world closely so you don’t miss the signs.” He said, “The kingdom of God is within you.”

The role of grounded faith today

The calling of Christians, especially those drawn to the contemplative and mystical path, is not to inflame anxiety, but to stabilize love. To remain human when others feel overwhelmed. To embody peace rather than predict catastrophe.

Faith at its best doesn’t pull us out of the world. It roots us more deeply into it.

A closing thought

If what you’re seeing in the world leads you toward compassion, humility, patience, and love, then you are seeing clearly.

If it leads toward fear, urgency, or obsession, pause, breathe, and return to the center.

God is not absent in turbulent times. God is often closest there.

And what we may be witnessing is not the end of humanity, but its remembering.

We are seeing so much going on in the world, but everything is on time. These things must come, but it is nothing to fear. These things come in cycles. So be calm and believe in a better world. God is always with you. It will be okay.

Love to you all, always,

- I and the Butterfly

Sometimes, the words of scripture, poetry, and mystical teachers align in ways that feel almost uncanny. I’ve been reflecting on 1 Peter 1, the visions of William Blake, the prophecies in Daniel, and the teachings of Neville Goddard, and I see a pattern; a map of consciousness, a path we are all invited to walk.

Peter writes:

“He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.” (1 Peter 1:20)

At first glance, this might sound like a historical claim, a promise fixed in linear time. But mystically, it is far more personal. The “last times” are not dates on a calendar; they are the end of a state of consciousness, the final moments before awakening. Being, the I AM that pervades all existence, has always intended for us to awaken, but awakening happens only when our consciousness is ready to recognize it.

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William Blake offers a striking parallel:

“I do not consider either the just, or the wicked, to be in a supreme state, but to be, every one of them, states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil, when it leaves Paradise following the serpent.”

Blake reframes the story of Eden in a way that aligns with what many mystical teachers teach: the “fall” is not punishment. It is awakening. The serpent, feared, vilified, and yet so often misunderstood, is the impulse of consciousness to know itself. To leave Paradise is not tragedy; it is the consent to experience duality, to dive into form, to enter the pool of life with all its contrast and learning.

And here is the image I saw that has stayed with me: unnumbered children jumping into a massive pool, surfacing, climbing out, only to jump back in, eternally. Each dive is a life, each resurfacing a resurrection, a remembering. This is not literal; it is a poetic map of our journey. We forget in order to remember, we fall asleep in order to awaken, and each resurfacing brings us closer to awareness of the Being that has always been present.

Daniel, too, speaks of this pattern. The angel instructs him to seal the prophecy “until the end”, not because the message is lost or inaccessible, but because Daniel’s consciousness was not ready to perceive it fully. The “last days” are a mirror of the soul’s readiness, not a measure of linear history. Neville Goddard echoes this when he says:

“…the end is not the end of the world. The world will never end. It’s talking about YOUR last days…”

This is the interior apocalypse, the revelation within. All prophetic language, all talk of judgment or “last times,” is a reflection of the awakening of awareness, not a calendar event.

Peter’s “refining through fire” now takes on new depth. Fire is not punishment; it is the process of clarifying consciousness, burning away illusions, sharpening the soul until it can recognize itself as pure being. Blake’s “deadly dreams of good and evil” are the same: the trials in life, the confusion, the challenge, the contrast, all are fire, all are refining, all are preparation for awakening. Do you notice how each has changed you?

So when scripture, Blake, and the mystical tradition speak of being “chosen,” leaving Paradise, or entering the “last days,” they are pointing to the same truth: you are an expression of the I AM, appearing as form, forgetting so you can remember, diving into the pool so you can resurface, awakening so you can see that you have always been held in Being itself.

We are not chosen by a separate hand. We chose ourselves, or rather, Being chose to awaken as us. The personality that lives, forgets, and suffers is not the chooser; it is the vessel through which the infinite experiences itself, learns, and remembers. Every song we write, every dream, every encounter, is part of this ongoing dance of consciousness: the pool, the dive, the resurfacing, the remembering.

And so I share this with you, not as a lecture, but as a recognition. If you have felt the pull of awakening, the sense of being led, tested, or refined, you are not alone. You are following a pattern that has always been written into the fabric of Being. The “last days” are not outside of you. They are now, in your awareness, in your remembering, in your awakening.

The pool is here. The dive is here. The resurfacing is yours. And through it, Being recognizes itself, endlessly and beautifully, in you.

Love eternally,

- I and the Butterfly

Some people go through life blind. I used to. I thought the world was solid. I thought people were real in the way we pretend they are. I thought my identity meant something. And then, one day, everything cracked.

Jim Carrey knows this. He’s spoken about the moment when the “Jim Carrey” he thought he was, the fame, the applause, the Hollywood story, evaporated:

“There’s just a relative manifestation of consciousness appearing… someone gave him a name… and that doesn’t actually exist.”

Think about that. Not a metaphor. Not a gentle lesson. Just brutal clarity: the self you cling to is a story. Every role, every mask, every carefully crafted performance - gone.

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He even said:

“I believe I got famous so I could let go of fame.”

Awakening isn’t polite. It isn’t a cozy feeling. It’s raw, terrifying, and disorienting. You start seeing through the world like x-ray glasses. You see the masks people wear, the social rituals, the lies they tell themselves and you. You see fear, desperation, power, and pretense - all operating in broad daylight, and suddenly, you cannot unsee it.

Carrey described it with unflinching honesty:

“I know you know.”

That line, spoken to Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show, made people laugh, but it was uncomfortable to watch. Because it was raw truth. That one sentence captures it. It’s not accusation. It’s recognition. It’s seeing through the pretense while knowing that everyone else is trapped in it. Hollywood, society, your friends, even your family, everyone performing, hiding, pretending. And you? You’re watching it unfold from inside.

I’ve felt this too. The same vertigo. The same naked clarity. The world becomes a symbol machine. Every glance, every gesture, every conversation carries meaning. Patterns emerge, subtle, brutal, undeniable. You see how people function, how society functions, and how your own mind functions. You see the stories your ego tells. And it terrifies you, because your ego wants to survive.

You feel your own mind screaming: No, this isn’t how the world works! This can’t be real! Something is wrong!

And yet, the witness, the awareness that notices everything, the so-called “higher self,” remains. Not fluffy. Not comforting. Not a soft guide. A raw, unflinching observer: watching the masks, watching your fear, watching the social theater, watching your ego try to hold itself together.

And internally it speaks softly, unmistakably: It’s all okay. You’re seeing clearly now.

Awakening is like standing on the edge of a cliff and realizing the cliff doesn’t exist. Your legs shake. Your mind screams. But the witness notices. And in noticing, something shifts. Not the world. Not reality. Just the way you see it.

Carrey also said:

“We are already enlightened, already complete… once you realize that, life becomes play.”

He’s talking about what happens after the rawness, after the vertigo, after the naked exposure of everything you thought was solid. But the real awakening moment? That’s the terror, the nausea, the exposure, the seeing through masks while your ego cries and fights for control.

It’s not for everyone. No one decides to do it. No one wants it. There is no choice. It happens. It’s not for comfort. It’s for the ones willing to look at themselves and the world exactly as it is: beautiful, absurd, cruel, playful, terrifying, and alive.

So if you feel it, the raw x-ray vision, the vertigo, the strange sense of watching while being watched, the unbearable honesty of consciousness looking at itself, know this: you’re awake. And there is no going back.

But what comes is a freedom you’ve never known. And love and compassion for others that can’t help it. Like being the only grownup at a children’ s party.

And as Jim Carrey once said,

“Relax, kid. It’s all just a play.”

Please send this to someone who needs it. Tell them they are not alone. And that it will be okay. I promise.

Love Always,

- I and the Butterfly

Editor’s note: This reflection continues the thread begun in “You’re Not Regressing - You’re Integrating,” exploring what it means to trust experience without trying to preserve or control it.

Edgar Allan Poe once wrote,

“All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”

I’ve always loved that line. Not because it’s clever, but because it’s honest. Poe wasn’t trying to be mystical. He was unsettled. He had lost the love of his life, and he was watching reality soften at the edges and wondering whether anything could truly be held.

I recognize that feeling.

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There is a moment, many moments, really, when life stops feeling solid in the way we expect. Meaning loosens. Identity feels provisional. Experience flows through us faster than we can name it. The instinct then is to grasp: to fix reality in place, to hold onto what feels true before it slips away.

Poe reached for the sand and watched it fall through his fingers.

What he didn’t yet trust was this: nothing was being lost.

When something passes, what disappears is not reality, it’s our attempt to secure it. The moment was never real because it stayed. It was real because it appeared at all.

This took me a long time to see.

I once believed that insight had to be maintained, that clarity needed vigilance, that awakening was something you could drop if you weren’t careful. But that belief quietly turns life into a project, something to manage, guide, or stabilize.

Lately, I’m less interested in holding anything.

Not because nothing matters, but because reality seems far more trustworthy when it’s allowed to move. Experience doesn’t collapse when we stop gripping it. It breathes. It improvises. It carries itself forward without our supervision.

There’s a strange relief in that.

Life becomes less about control and more about participation. Less about steering and more about listening. Like music that only works when you stop forcing the next note.

Maybe the world is dreamlike. Maybe it always has been.

But a dream doesn’t need to be pinned down to be lived. You don’t have to clutch it to stay inside it. You can let it unfold, moment by moment, without insisting it prove its reality.

Poe stood at the edge of that realization and trembled. I honor that. I’ve been there too.

Poe glimpsed the veil and recoiled. I’m exploring what it means to walk while knowing the veil is thin.

What I’m learning now is simpler and quieter:

Nothing needs to be held for it to be real.
Nothing needs to be fixed for it to continue.
And nothing important disappears when you let it flow.

The dream keeps dreaming.
And somehow, that’s enough.

Please share this with anyone who needs to read it. Everything I write is to help people.

Until next time, have a wonderful day.

- I and the Butterfly

Today the decorations came down.

Boxes were filled. Shelves cleared. Corners emptied. What once felt warm and luminous now feels strangely bare. The house is quieter, not just in sound, but in spirit. And for a moment, it’s easy to mistake that quiet for absence.

It isn’t that love has left. I know that. It’s that the symbols that carried it so visibly are now packed away, beyond reach.

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There is a subtle grief in this that we don’t often name. After ritual ends, after holidays, awakenings, seasons of intensity, something in us wonders if the sacred has withdrawn. As if meaning only lived in the glow, the color, the arrangement of things.

But this is not how the sacred works.

What is real does not depend on decoration. What is true does not vanish when symbols are stored.

Still, the ache is honest.

Sometimes we need certain things to remain, not because they are the source of love, but because they help us remember it. And when they are suddenly gone, the remembering feels harder. The room feels dull. The heart hesitates.

If you’re feeling this too, nothing has gone wrong.

This quiet is not emptiness. It is integration.

The sacred does not shout when the lights go out. It waits. It settles into walls, into breath, into ordinary days. It learns how to live without being announced.

And maybe this is part of maturity on the path: learning that love doesn’t always look like warmth, and meaning doesn’t always glow. Sometimes they simply stay, unadorned, asking us to trust that what mattered was never in the decorations to begin with.

If your home feels stripped today, inside or out, be gentle. Let the ache speak without rushing to fix it. What remains, even now, is what is real.

The sacred didn’t leave. It just stopped performing. And it’s still there in you.

Much love to you all. Always.

• I and the Butterfly

There was a time when everything felt clear.

Not dramatic or euphoric, just clean. Thoughts moved more slowly. Reactions softened. Even difficult moments carried a strange transparency, as if nothing could quite hook into me the way it used to. I didn’t feel special, just unburdened.

Lately, that has changed.

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I’ve noticed irritation again. Judging others. The mind flaring up over small things. A subtle restlessness. Not despair, just a sense that the ease I once felt has dulled. Nothing feels wrong exactly, but something feels less luminous than it did.

If I’m honest, part of me wondered whether I had slipped backward. I mean, even though there were some wild experiences, there was a sense of adventure about where I was heading, having read about others.

For a long time, I assumed awakening (or whatever you want to call it) meant a kind of permanent ascent. Once seen, always seen. Once clear, always clear. The ego would fall silent, or at least remain politely in the background.

But that assumption now feels naïve.

What I’m beginning to see is that awakening isn’t an escape from the human structure. It’s an interruption of it. And what follows an interruption is not transcendence, but reorganization. Like in a room where things fell, broken from an earthquake. You remove them and then shine up everything else and feel good about what you have.

I’m telling you in real time. The ego doesn’t vanish. It loosens. And when it loosens, it doesn’t disappear, it reappears in subtler forms, asking to be met rather than resisted. Like someone with a New York accent dressed like a mobster wanting to make a deal with you, while giving you the eye that says you better not refuse. Old habits surface not because something has gone wrong, but because they no longer have anywhere to hide. (Think dark desires!) - Normal, apparently.

This is the part that’s rarely talked about.

My best description of where I am at is like after getting on a roller coaster ride, wild, yet exciting sometimes, strange, but exhilarating. After you have gone down some unexpected drops, it turns into a dark ride. You are guessing what could happen next. But the car you are riding in moves out into the open with normal scenery, regular, boring, and miles and miles of it that don’t seem to end. Irritation sets in. A holding pattern.

Integration doesn’t feel like clarity. It feels like ordinariness returning without the old urgency. Life resumes, but the inner scaffolding is different. Reactions happen, but they don’t quite land the same way. You notice them sooner. Sometimes too soon to enjoy the illusion, too late to stop it entirely.

That in-between can feel disappointing if you’re still expecting fireworks.

But perhaps this phase is not a loss of awakening. Perhaps it is its most honest expression. The moment when insight stops being an experience and starts becoming a way of inhabiting life.

Nothing is being undone here. You are still on your life’s ride. There is still plenty to enjoy, but you are never going home again (in a sense). You are definitely changed, but in a good way. You know who you are and where you are. People don’t impress you anymore, because you can easily see behind their masks. You see and treat all people like equals, even the very lowly individuals who thrive on hurting others. You see them as individuals who were deeply damaged when they were young, and you love them! Even the person you once hated, you imagine the two of you hugging with tears, saying, “I’m sorry I was wack!” (Zoolander reference)

What’s happening is quieter. Slower. Less flattering. You’re learning how to live without needing to feel awake.

And maybe that’s the real shift. Not the absence of ego, but the end of the fight with it. Not the maintenance of a state, but the relaxation into being human without believing the story quite so tightly. You know too much now, but you can’t tell it to people you know because they will think you’re crazy. And you are NOT crazy. It’s real alright, but they don’t have the ability to understand yet. So love them anyway. That is really all you can do.

If this resonates, there’s nothing to correct. Nothing to reclaim.

This may not be regression at all.

At the end of George Orwell’s book 1984, before the man was taken out of the world, he said the words that showed clearly he had changed, “I love you, Big Brother.”

It may be the beginning of trust. I still don’t know. I want to trust.

I write here to explore spiritual awakening as it is lived, not as it is imagined. These reflections come from lived experience, not theory, and are offered without instruction. Notes on consciousness, integration, and ordinary life. You are not alone. And it willl be okay. You were never meant to stay here. :)

Love always,

- I and the Butterfly

Someone recently responded to one of my reflections on the Book of Isaiah with only a fragment of a verse:

“How the faithful city, full of justice, has become a harlot! Truth dwelt in it…”

The verse was left unfinished. And perhaps that was fitting. Scripture often arrives that way, not as an argument, but as an interruption. Not to correct us, but to turn us inward.

Isaiah’s words are among the most piercing in all of Scripture, because they are not aimed at outsiders. They are spoken to the people who believe they already possess the truth. The faithful city, he says, once full of justice, once inhabited by truth, has somehow lost its way.

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But what is the city?

The prophets were rarely concerned with geography. A city, in biblical language, is not primarily a place on a map. It is a center of life. It is where values rule, where identity is organized, where allegiance is given. Long before Jerusalem was a location, it was a symbol: the inner seat of order, meaning, and devotion.

When Isaiah says that truth once dwelt in the city, he is describing an inward alignment, a state in which life was oriented toward what is real, whole, and just. And when he says the city has become a harlot, he is not making a moral accusation. He is offering a spiritual diagnosis.

In prophetic language, harlotry does not mean sexual failure. It means misdirection. It means seeking life, power, and identity outwardly, attaching the heart to appearances, systems, images, and intermediaries, rather than remaining rooted in the inner source where truth actually lives.

This is why the prophets speak so relentlessly about idols. An idol is not merely a statue. It is anything externalized that was meant to be known inwardly.

What Isaiah is describing is not ancient Israel alone. It is a recurring movement of the human mind.

And it is precisely the movement the apostle Paul later addresses when he writes:

“Therefore, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.” (2 Corinthians 5:16)

This is a startling confession. Paul admits that there was a time when Christ was understood according to the flesh, through outward form, historical categories, visible identity. But something changed. And whatever changed was so decisive that Paul says, “from now on” we no longer relate that way.

The phrase “according to the flesh” (κατὰ σάρκα) does not mean merely “physical.” It means according to appearance, surface, external evaluation. To no longer know Christ this way is not to deny him — it is to outgrow a mode of knowing that can no longer contain what has been revealed.

This same movement appears again when Paul speaks of Christ being revealed in me (Galatians 1:16), or when he labors “until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). Revelation, formation, unveiling; these are not the words one uses for an absent figure arriving from afar. They are the words used when something that was already present becomes conscious.

Paul never describes Christ as introduced. He describes Christ as unveiled.

This does not require us to wage war on history, nor does it ask us to despise tradition. But it does ask us to notice a pattern that runs from Isaiah through Paul and into the heart of the Gospel itself: the movement from outer to inner, from symbol to substance, from representation to realization.

Jesus speaks of the same shift when he tells his hearers that the kingdom of God does not come by observation, that it is not “here” or “there,” but within. He speaks of a temple not made with hands. He speaks of sight that comes from being born again, not into a new belief system, but into a new mode of perception.

Taken together, the message is consistent and unsettling: Scripture is not trying to give us someone to look at forever. It is trying to awaken something to live from.

Isaiah’s lament over the faithful city is therefore not a rejection. It is an invitation. A call to return. The city can be faithful again. Truth can dwell there again. But only if we stop outsourcing what was always meant to be embodied.

This is where the language of becoming begins to matter.

If Christ is approached only as an external figure, however revered, the transformation scripture insists upon remains incomplete. But if Christ is understood as a living pattern, a form of consciousness, a way of being revealed and formed within, then the Gospel ceases to be about admiration and becomes about participation.

A person can be believed in. However, a pattern must be lived.

And this is where the question quietly turns back toward us: What if the deepest fidelity scripture calls for is not allegiance to an outer image, but faithfulness to an inner truth? What if the city Isaiah mourns is the same city Paul longs to see rebuilt, not in stone, but in each of us, within?

This is the question that leads directly into what I will call the Pattern of Christ, not as a denial of meaning, but as its fulfillment. Not as loss, but as arrival. Not as something to defend, but as something to become.

The city was never destroyed. It was only forgotten where it stood.

I was very grateful to receive this verse. It awakened something in me that I wondered might do the same with you all. Your comments and replies are always welcomed! :)

Love always, and until the end,

- I and the Butterfly

For most of my life I read Isaiah the way everyone does: as an ancient prophecy about distant nations, kings, and conflicts. But once you awaken, once consciousness cracks open even a little, you start seeing something entirely different.

Isaiah isn’t describing world events. Isaiah is describing you.

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Every name, every place, every “judgment,” every “child,” every “light shining in darkness”, it’s all a symbolic account of the birth of awakened consciousness inside a single human being. Not one, but yours and everyone eventually.

Let me show you.

1. “The land of Zebulun and Naphtali…” A map of your inner world

These strange place names are not geography. They’re psychological states.

Zebulun means “dwelling.”
Naphtali means “wrestling.”
Galilee of the nations means “the divided, mixed mind.”

Sound familiar? Before awakening, the mind is:

• dwelling in confusion

• wrestling with identity

• mixed, divided, scattered

Isaiah is describing the inner night-state of the soul.

2. “A Word enters the darkness.” The beginning of awakening

Isaiah 9:8 says:

“The Lord sent a Word into Jacob; it lighted upon Israel.” (Notice the word ‘into’)

This is a mystical sequence.

Jacob = your old identity, the ego-self. (The name Jacob means “Wrestles with God)
Israel = your awakened Self, the one who “wrestled with God and prevailed.” (Israel was the new name God gave Jacob)

The Word always strikes the unawakened self first.

You feel it as a disturbance, a shaking, a question, a yearning. Something enters you, but you can’t explain why or how.

Neville Goddard says this is the first movement of “the Promise.”

“A seed has been planted. The old identity has been breached.”

3. “A Light has dawned.” Awareness begins to break through

Isaiah continues:

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.” (Sound familiar at Christmas?)

Light doesn’t explode all at once. It dawns. This is the moment you first suspect:

“I am more than I thought.”
“I am not separate.”
“I am the operant power.”

You are now Israel-in-formation. The new Self is stirring.

4. “Unto us a Child is born.” The inner birth of Christ-consciousness

This is the moment that changes everything:

“Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given.”

This “child” is not a historical baby. It is the birth of awakened awareness inside you.

Neville teaches:

• The Child = your inner Christ-consciousness

• Symbolized as David, who calls you “Father”

• The moment you know who you really are

The Word became Light. The Light becomes Birth. This is the same inner pattern Isaiah encodes.

5. Isaiah is a mystical biography - YOUR biography

Isaiah’s structure follows a universal pattern:

Word → Light → Birth

Seed → Awakening → Realization
Jacob → Israel → David
Old Self → Breaking → New Self

The “judgments” Isaiah describes are not punishments from God, they’re the collapse of the ego-identity.

The fall of nations = the fall of false self-images. The rise of the Child = the return of your true Self.

6. Why this matters now

People assume prophecy is a map of world events. But mystical texts are maps of inner events.

The Book ofIsaiah doesn’t predict geopolitics. It predicts YOU,
the one who will awaken,
the one who will remember,
the one who will see the Light rise in the land that used to be darkness.

The Bible is not telling you what happened.

It’s telling you what happens. Inside you.

When you read Isaiah this way, the entire book catches fire. It stops being ancient news and becomes a living revelation. And the pattern is always the same:

A Word enters your darkness.
A Light dawns in your mind.
And a Child is born in your heart, calling you Father.

The Word is the Truth of who you really are, and the awakening of the I AM in you.

Good morning! :)

With love to you all,

- I and the Butterfly