realising potential: nothing about the caterpillar tells you it's going to be a butterfly

They’re one of my favourites…. if you couldn’t tell already with all my consecutive posts about them haha but the whakapapa of transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly is incredible. Nothing about the caterpillar tells you it's going to be a butterfly?! Yet it goes about its business, doing caterpillar things until chemicals are released in the brain, signalling that it’s time to build a chrysalis. It does the cocoon and chill, isolation life for up to two weeks, then wriggles on outta there to fly off and do butterfly things. Just like that..

However, when we consider anuhe (caterpillar) whakapapa (genealogy) and how their koro is Urutengangana, the eldest of te ira atua (the gods) — it’s enough of a hint that anuhe could and would make such a transformation. Urutengangana is a tricky one to track down kōrero (info) about, but some of what I know that’s relevant to this topic, is his rank as the eldest of Ranginui and Papatuanuku’s children, and his close connection to Te Whānau Marama, the heavenly bodies, the moon and stars — light.

We could also look at the word ‘uru,’ which means to enter* and how anuhe literally and metaphorically,

enter different spaces and emerge as something new during each part of their evolution.

Now let’s get selfish and think about ourselves for a sec. It’s been a minute lol but what different spaces have you entered into that have contributed to your evolution and transformation? Of thinking, of comprehension, of perspective, of behaviour, of doing, of being..

This is a perfect analogy of our classic creation whakapapa, of kore - pō - ao; formless potential - confusion and coming together - physical manifestation, enlightenment; anuhe - tūngoungou - purerehua; caterpillar - chrysalis - butterfly.

So perhaps in a physical observation, nothing about a caterpillar tells you it’s going to transform into a butterfly.. but look a little deeper at it’s whakapapa and you’d probably be more surprised if it didn’t.

The same goes with us.

What we see on the surface, in te ao mārama, might give us a glimpse into our potential.. but pales in comparison to what is waiting for us in the depths our whakapapa.. of ourselves..

Remember, Urutengangana, and all the rest between him and us.. they’re our tupuna too and they live on in us. They contribute to who we are today, they provide us with the blueprint, but they do not determine who we might become..

That’s our contribution to the whakapapa line.. to those who’ve come before us, and those still yet to come… will it be caterpillar things or butterfly things you put your name to?

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.

*it has other definitions and meanings too, click here