Spirituality

My Brother the Butterfly

Our intellect blinds us to the wonders around us

“A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.”

— Emily Dickinson

I wasn’t alone as I sat appreciating the morning light even though there was no one else around.

I sat by the edge of our pool looking out over the river ravine. The sun was just beginning to peak over the distant Balinese hills. Early morning is my favorite time of the day. The world hasn’t awoken so my mind and heart are most at peace. I can think and feel clearly with no distractions.

As I sat there, a butterfly fluttered next to me. At first, I thought he was wounded as he flew low to the ground and a bit erratically. I reached for him to place him on a nearby tree branch out of harm’s way. But each time I did, he would flutter away.

This wasn’t the first time he had come around. I have seen him for the last twenty years in different parts of the world.

My brother was just checking in on me.

Whether spirits exist is a matter of debate.

For me, it doesn’t matter what others think. This is one of those topics not left for science or the opinion of others. It falls into the same category as the existence of god, the afterlife, reincarnation, ghosts, demons, and higher powers.

Our world disregards almost everything that sits beyond the intellect. This makes sense as we spend twenty years in school memorizing information and then being awarded and congratulated for how well we use our heads.

We aren’t given degrees for kindness, only for the retention of data.

We take children who intuitively understand they are comprised of spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and kinesthetic realms, and then strip them of their wholeness. All that is left after decades of schooling and working is a being who struggles to regain spiritual and emotional balance as they are only driven by their intellect. This abandonment of the spirit, the true self, is tragic.

We cannot see and understand the world only through our heads. Even the greatest scientists understand that there is more than what science can explain.

But we so desperately want to be omniscient that we grab onto the one aspect of our being, our intellect, that we can most easily understand.

We then wonder why we constantly feel out of balance as we do jobs that we don’t love, live by other’s expectations, and follow lists that don’t include any of our priorities in life.

It isn’t until later in life, once we have gone through this realization, that we then come to understand who we are.

Whether I believe in spirits has no negative bearing on the world.

It is frustrating for some that others sense and feel aspects of the world that cannot be explained by science. Science was a reaction to religion, driven by the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement in the 18th century that emphasized reason over superstition and science over faith.

I believe that blind faith is a problem. Countries go to war over religious beliefs, people have been slaughtered in the name of a god, women and children have been sacrificed, and hate has spilled out of houses of worship.

But this is not true spirituality. This is intellectualized spirituality that operates within a manmade construct.

And there is an easy way to differentiate between intuitive spirituality and intellectualized spirituality: no one gets hurt or harmed.

My brother first visited me in Japan right after his death.

What was unusual was that there were never butterflies where we lived in Japan. We had a small garden outside our apartment but in a city of ten million people, there is not a lot of nature.

He landed on a plant, slowly waved his wings, and then fluttered off. In our seven years in Japan, I only saw one butterfly in our garden.

I am not the only one who believes this. Butterflies are universally seen as a powerful symbol of rebirth. Native American tribes view butterflies as messengers from the spirit world.

In Japanese folklore, the butterfly is believed to carry the souls of the deceased to the afterlife.

I found this comforting to discover that others had similar beliefs as me. And it made me quite happy knowing it was part of Japanese folklore as this is where I lived when my brother died.

Butterflies are not the only place I see and feel him. I believe my brother is with me as I stand in a river fishing with my younger brother. Or when I walk through a forest and place my hand on a tree that my brother had passed under.

Some will argue that I am just rationalizing my brother’s death by making up beliefs to make me feel better.

That may be true.

And I am OK with that.

🙏 🦋 🙂

I wrote a fictional memoir for my two children centered on my belief that my brother returned as a butterfly. And I often write about my brother as I know he is around me. As are all of those who have passed: