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GOOGLEI have been looking for this story for almost 2 years now, since I first heard Dr. Dyer tell this story on PBS. When he tells the story he is so animated and it brings the experience to life. It is truly beautiful to see and hear. I am so happy to have found it and am loving being able to share it with you. Thank you
God...Thank you...Thank you.
Dr. Wayne W Dyer's Butterfly ExperienceExcerpt from his book
Inspiration: Your Ultimate CallingJune 2007- In this final chapter, I offer my own very personal view on how the world looks when I feel inspired.
I’d like to acknowledge right from the outset that I don’t live at this level of being in-Spirit 100 percent of the time—like most everyone else, I occasionally have lapses and feel uninspired. Yet these moments have become rarer and rarer; in fact, it’s difficult for me to recall a day in the past several years when I felt completely uninspired.
What follows is a personal account of both how I feel inside and what seems to take place in the world around me when I feel connected to Spirit in the ways that I’ve written about in the pages of this book.
Jack
The same day that I completed Chapter 17 and read it over the telephone to my editor, Joanna, on
Bainbridge Island, Washington, I had the most profoundly mystical experience of being in-Spirit in all of my 65 years. The photograph on the cover of the book is a re-creation of what happened.
When I finished up with Joanna, I went for my daily hour-long walk along the beach…but for some reason I elected to take a slightly different route along a grassy area adjacent to the beach. I was recalling my friend Jack Boland, a Unity minister in
Detroit, who crossed over about a decade ago. Jack loved
monarch butterflies, often telling stories of how he marveled at these paper-thin creatures who migrated thousands of miles in high winds and returned to the same branch on the same tree where they first emerged from their cocoons. Before Jack passed away, I presented him with a beautiful paperweight containing a dead monarch that I’d found in perfect condition. When he died, his wife returned it to me, telling me how much Jack loved that gift and how much he admired these amazing creatures who had such mysterious intelligence built into their brains, which are the size of a pinhead.
Jack always told me to “be in a state of
gratitude,” and he ended every sermon with this message to God: “Thank You, thank You, thank You.” On three occasions since his death, a monarch
butterfly has landed on my body. Since these creatures studiously avoid human contact, each time this has happened I’ve thought of Jack and thought, Thank You, God—thank You, thank You.
Anyway, as I walked, feeling grateful for having completed the second-to-last chapter of this book, a monarch landed on the ground, three feet in front of me. I said Jack’s magic words to myself (Thank You, God—thank You, thank You), and felt deep appreciation for my life and the beauty of the day. The butterfly stayed right there until I approached, then he flapped his wings several times and flew away. Thinking of Jack and feeling a little bewildered and immensely thankful, I watched this creature in flight, now 40 or 50 yards away.
As God is my witness, the butterfly made a U-turn and not only headed in my direction, but landed right smack on my finger! Needless to say, I was shocked—but not totally surprised. I must confess that it seems to me that the more I stay in-Spirit, the more I experience synchronicities similar to this one. But what followed did border on the incredulous, even for me.
This little creature became my constant companion for the next two and a half hours—he sat first on one hand and then moved to my other hand, never even coming close to flying away. He seemed to be trying to communicate with me by moving his wings back and forth, and even opening and closing his tiny mouth as if attempting to speak . . . and as crazy as it may sound, I felt a deep affinity to this precious living being. I sat on the ground and simply stayed with my new fragile friend for 30 or so minutes. Then I called Joanna from my
cell phone, and she was also stunned by the synchronicity, insisting that I somehow get a picture of this event.
At this point I decided to return to my home, approximately a mile from where I was sitting, with my new companion. I returned along the beach walk, where the winds were brisk—the butterfly’s wings were pushed by these high gusts, but he clung to my finger, and even moved to another hand without making any effort to leave. As I walked, I encountered a four-year-old girl with her mother. The girl was sobbing over some perceived tragedy in her young life, and when I showed her my “pet” butterfly, her expression went from sad to blissful in one split second. She smiled from ear to ear and asked me all about the winged creature on my forefinger.
When I got home, I was talking on my cell phone to my friend Reid Tracy as I walked upstairs. He laughed with me as I related the bizarre synchronicity at play in this very moment. I said, “Reid, it’s been 90 minutes, and this little guy has adopted me.” Reid also encouraged me to get a photograph of this, since it was obviously in complete harmony with what I was writing.
I left my new friend—whom I was now calling “Jack”—sitting on the handwritten Chapter 17 on my lanai, and went downstairs. I found Cindy, a young woman who works nearby, and asked her to run to the store and purchase a disposable camera. She did, and I went back to the patio, put my hand next to Jack, and watched him jump right onto my finger! (The photo on the cover of this book is a re-creation of that magical moment.)
It appeared that my butterfly companion had decided that he was now going to live with me forever. After another hour or so of meditating and communing with this little creature of God—and pondering this event as the most unprecedented and out-of-the-ordinary spiritual episode I’d ever encountered—I gently placed Jack back on my manuscript while I proceeded to take a long, hot shower. When I returned to the patio, I placed my finger near my winged friend as I’d done many times in the previous 150 minutes, but he now seemed like a totally different little critter. He fluttered away, landed on a table, flapped his wings twice, and flew off, straight up toward the heavens. Moments with him were now history, but I still had the photographs, which I treasure.
The next morning, I decided to watch one of my favorite films,
Brother Sun, Sister Moon, which I hadn’t viewed for more than a decade. And sure enough—in the opening scenes of
Franco Zeffirelli’s interpretation of the life of St. Francis, there he was . . . with a butterfly alighting on his fingers.
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