— Alixa García

BECOMING IMAGINAL

Imagine a caterpillar.

Belly rubbing the soil.

Inching their way through...

consuming and consuming earth matter until engorged with green. When the time comes, it

wraps itself in a cocoon of isolation where it is attacked by the same juices that it once used to

digest food. In this state, the caterpillar enters a suspended death. It is here, amidst the

complete cellular breakdown, where something miraculous starts to happen: imaginal cells are

born.

Imaginal cells hold the information code for the butterfly, and while no single imaginal cell

has all of the information, collectively, out of apparent death, they bring forth the majestic

creature. How poetic that scientists knew to call them imaginal, for indeed, they are keepers of

imagination.

The caterpillar’s existing immune cells, vying for it’s life as they have always

known it, attack the imaginal cells for being foreign, different, unfamiliar. But the imaginal

cells are unaffected as if floating just out of reach, full of imagination with what’s to come.

Gathering in clusters, they begin their ascent toward transformation. The caterpillar, we

can assume, never knew it could fly, having lived its entire life up until that point on dirt and

leaf. But after crossing the grueling threshold required for transformation, the butterfly can

now soar up to 12,070.08 km (7,500 miles).

As a species, we are not much different from the caterpillar. We have become excellent at

engorging ourselves through over-consumptive resource extraction and, because of it, are now

entering our own suspended death state. There are those who wish to fight for that old world.

The sleepwalkers’ world. The world of the Wetiko. A whole army of immune cells ready to

defend what they have always known, build walls, armor up, and attack the emergent. And

yet, amidst the destruction, distraction, and extraction, there are those of us who can imagine

the intangible, breathing in visions from tucked-away corners of the universe. And, with

everything in us, we are gathering and bringing forth worlds unseen.

Daring to be imaginal requires a willingness to bring the vision held within into the collective.

It asks for a devotional surrendering. The etymology of 'surrender' is to make from above, and

in these times, the imaginal must reach beyond the realms of this world and into ones that

already exist, simultaneously within and just beyond us, pulling down unseen visions into existence

through the sacred act of co-creation.

Envisioning and co-manifesting a just and thriving world is an act of reverence for everything

that brought us here. In times of collapse, the imaginal awakens in search of vision seekers,

catchers of future moments untold; dream-weavers despite - and because of - the cessation all

around us.