A symphony of animal voices composes a vivid soundscape accompanied by the constant patter of water drops splashing on leaves. Humidity and heat combine to create the perfect sauna effect. The smell of damp earth and decomposing wood fills the air. Sunlight filters through the rainforest canopy and makes its way through the crowd of leafy vegetation. Occasionally, it lands on a large, winged insect.
The rays of light reach the tops of its outstretched, achromatic wings. The photons’ unwavering progress is suddenly interrupted as they crash onto the ridges and crests which form the tiny scales that make up the butterfly’s actual wing. These scales cause the light waves to refract or split. A spectrum of color emerges, like a rainbow, however, only a brilliant, iridescent blue survives the impact and causes the Blue Morpho to broadcast its signature, breathtaking color.
Being is a Somewhat Ephemeral Concept, Much Like the Color of the Blue Morpho
The manner by which the Blue Morpho butterfly achieves its azure brilliance, which transforms and shifts with every wingbeat, is the epitome of the effortlessness of being.
As the wings of the butterfly move up and down, the color appears and disappears, beguiling any would-be predators. Similarly, Being effortlessly shape-shifts into, and through, Doing.
Just like those confounded predators, we, too sometimes lose sight of Being’s true nature. The effortlessness of Being escapes our mental grasp like the Blue Morpho winking in and out of view in the forest.
The surprising truth is, that effortless being is an inherent aspect of life, as innate as breathing. You don’t need to pursue and capture it since it is always quietly waiting within.
You can find it in flow, which positive psychology describes “as the zone, the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process.” We are in flow when we experience complete absorption in what we do and we lose our sense of space and time.
What Does Flow Have To Do with a Butterfly’s Wing Structure?
Nothing. And everything.
The Blue Morpho doesn’t think to itself, as it flutters its wings, ‘up, down, up, down, raise, lower, raise, lower.’ It doesn’t mentally calculate how to capture the light at just the right angle in order to reflect that amazing blue color. It didn’t, in its chrysalis phase, strategize how to construct just the right size and shape of the scales in relation to the size of the wavelength of light in order to be the perfect refractor and producer of that specific blue.
It is simply Being. Itself.
The Blue Morpho’s ability to construct its wings with the EXACT destructive and constructive interference patterns required to allow, out of all the colors on the spectrum, ONLY that blue to emerge is a metaphor for that wordless, harmonic center within you. This is the place that’s safe from the storm of questions. “Am I doing this right?” “What if this doesn’t work?” “Who do I think I am?”
This marvel of Nature is a metaphor for connecting to and consciously awakening to your own ‘wing structure,’ your true nature. You don’t need to look outside of yourself, nor do you need to fix anything inside. You have within you that very, exquisitely designed, perfectly harmonized structure with which you capture light and flash your unique and extraordinary brilliance and color.
It’s Standard Equipment
This splendidly designed ability to be “fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process” is intrinsic to you as a human. And, fortunately, this state of Being can show up spontaneously as a result of something you’re doing.
You’ve had these moments where time and space seem to disappear. That is the effortlessness of Being. Whatever you were doing when you experienced this, do more of it, because that was you, flying through the tropical rainforest, brilliance and beauty flashing amongst the trees. That was you capturing the light with your perfectly designed wings in exactly the way that allows your remarkable hue to have its effortless, celebratory moment in the sun.