Jiminy Cricket!

On Pinocchio, Awakening and Self-Rebellion

I opened the front door to my house last night and all hell broke loose. A cricket leapt in just as a huge spider took off at high speed and a thumb-sized chrysalis dropped down through the air to land directly at my feet. It felt like I'd created or interrupted a real insect to-do, perhaps a townhall meeting about the homemade bug spray I'd dispensed around the doorway earlier that day. I had to laugh because I spent a decent amount of time researching, thinking about, procrastinating, and finally making this non-toxic bug repellent which then brought even more bugs to my doorstep.

We'd also just attached an insect screen to the bottom of our doorway, so it felt like all the fear and control attached to keeping the bugs out was brought to a head in that dramatic moment. If I was a sage burner, I imagine it would be like trying to cleanse the air of bad energy only to find myself coughing on the residual smoke for days. I've been experiencing a dynamic shifting between opposites quite a lot lately - desiring or experiencing one thing and then having the exact opposite experience land at my feet.

This shift often involves my tendencies or preferences, saying out loud that I like one thing and then “accidentally” experiencing the other thing and realizing my preference is no longer true (if it ever really was). I've also just emerged from a period of needing to rest my brain, to exist free from story in silent energy for a while; I'd declined Holiday invitations so that I could do as little as possible and sit with my interiority. Then, out of nowhere, came an urge to start my brain back up again and use it to write a blog about the story of not using it.

It was as if the moment I decided I was becoming someone who is less of a thinker, experience said, ha! Think again! It feels like a rebellion against selfhood is taking place, like I'm unconsciously contradicting myself to see that I'm the whole coin, experiencing both sides so that I can be no sides. In my last post, I wrote about my curiosity naturally shifting from the world “out there” to my internal world; then I opened my front door to head out to my first social event in a week and a chrysalis fell at my feet. Is there a more on-the-nose metaphor for awakening process than a chrysalis? In order to transform into a butterfly, the caterpillar's body must first break down into a cellular soup. Sounds about right.

I also have a fear of spiders and a love of crickets, so a spider running away from my house and a cricket jumping in felt like a heightened call for attention. I'd just decided that my attention was better focused inside than out, then the outside reminded me that inside and out are one. I view the apparent outside world as both me and a reflection of my inner states. I use things that trigger me to learn about myself and cultivate compassion and love for myself and apparent others. I've been working on my fear of spiders for a while now and have come to love the cellar spiders in my house and even feel sad when I find one that's died.

One of my greatest fears, though, is still that a widow spider will bite and poison my tiny cat, and in the past couple weeks, I've found three widow spiders in my house - an extremely rare and thus noteworthy occurrence. I've also often asked my husband to kill dangerous spiders because it sends my energy surging when I do it, so I was very proud of myself for instead capturing and releasing the latest widow spider I found. Crickets, on the other hand, need protection from my cat, so I'm happy to catch and release them. My love for crickets is twofold - their chirping at night sounds like heaven to me, and I have a special kinship with the story of Pinocchio.

In Firenza, Italy, where the author of Pinocchio is from, they have an annual cricket festival on Ascension Day. Their Festa del Grillo celebrates the story of Jesus’ physical ascension to heaven, with crickets freshly emerging from the ground symbolizing rebirth and the start of Spring. To Florentines, crickets represent new beginnings, good fortune, and also protection for the home. In Pinocchio, the cricket is a guide, the boy's higher intuition or conscience steering him towards growth. I'm more familiar with the Disney cartoon than the original story, but both stories of Pinocchio seem to be Christ-like tales about maturity, transformation, sacrifice and rebirth.

Awakening process can feel like a Pinocchio-esque adventure, as well. “Pinocchio” in Italian means pine-eye, or perhaps even “third eye” in its connection to the pineal gland, thought by some to be the seat of consciousness. In the original Italian story, Pinocchio is carved from a piece of magical pine wood that is already alive, which is why Pinocchio is animate. The wood is quite mischievous and it screams and cries in pain when it's transformed into a human-controlled marionette. Like Pinocchio, so much of our individual human identity is born in the pain of separation from what we truly are. Perhaps an answer lies not in Pinocchio's rebirth as a real boy, but in how perfect he was in the first place, as a magical talking piece of wood.