CHICCHAN: SERPENT

One of the great gifts of the serpent is its ability to outgrow its skin and to leave it behind. We human beings tend to cling to outmoded parts of ourselves. We are afraid to let go of what has served us in the past but no longer has a use. We are afraid that we might need it to keep us safe and secure in the future. We are afraid to risk the danger of being vulnerable and raw. We are afraid to be without what once protected us, even though it is worn out and unable to meet the needs of the present. It takes great courage to go to the edge of what we know and to choose to venture out beyond it.

In the process of shedding, the serpent is at its most vulnerable. For a time it must become immobile and almost completely unable to fend for itself. It must put itself in an uncertain position in order that it may grow. It must find a quiet place and allow the transformation to occur. Often it will rub itself against a rock or a tree, just as we might find ourselves coming up against an obstacle that causes friction and discomfort. It could be a relationship or a situation that causes more pain than we can endure any longer, and that becomes our motivation to shed the past. It might be a feeling of hunger for something new, something more that opens us to change. It might be a dissatisfaction with life as we know it that urges us to move. But however life signals to us that we are ready to grow, we must decide whether or not we are willing to shed the past. Unlike the serpent who will automatically respond to its own inner necessities, we are the ones who decide whether or not we will move forward with what is wanting to happen within us, or whether we will close down and not allow expansion to come to us at all.

Be like the serpent, shed what no longer serves you and move forward into the expanded life that calls you to grow.