The Majesty of Molting: The Process of Shedding What We Outgrow
Discomfort as a 'Birthing Signal'...
Rattlesnake Wrangling
Once upon a time in New Mexico…I use to wrangle rattlesnakes (I use to wrangle wolves too, but that’s another story).
It was one of my responsibilities at Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary.
And to be fair, I typically relished in the task: danger, a clear goal, and wild animals tend to pull one into deep flow very rapidly.
As a lover of serpents, and the young man I was, I found the task to be a rush. Granted, it wasn't something we typically did ‘bare back’, as we always had tools to aid us. Once however…I did catch one with my bare hands, for which the director of the sanctuary promptly forbade me from ever doing again. Sigh.
We never killed the snakes, only relocated them.
It was during the process of carrying out this charge of rattlesnake wrangling that I began to witness ‘molting’ for the first time. Some snakes, sometimes…would present gray and drab while devoid of their lovely greens and browns. Initially I had no idea what was going on, until I was later informed by those ‘in the know’, that the snake was preparing to shed it’s skin: to molt.
Fascinating.
Not only that, but I was told they were ‘potentially’ more dangerous in this state because they were ‘uncomfortable’. Apparently the process sloughing off parts of one’s self is uncomfortable...who knew?
Thankfully I was never bitten, despite a few close encounters (also a story for another day), but the phenomena of molting left an impression on me.
A Graveyard of Crab Shells
I once again encountered molting on the volcanic beaches of Hawaii (the place I now call home). As you move across the the volcanic rock you encounter what appears to be ‘dead crabs’; perfectly preserved down to the membranous material over their eyes.
Incredible.
Initially, I would pick them up and study their details in wonderment (sometimes I still do). I mistakenly believed these were deceased crabs. I was later informed that these were the artifacts left behind from the crabs molting their shells and the original carrier was likely still out there.
It was the husk of what they once were.
What struck me the most is that they molt because they have ‘outgrown’ their shell. What once was a protective barrier becomes prison ‘if’ left unshed.
Right before molting, underneath the exterior, there is increased pressure because they no longer fit within their ‘boundary’. They get uncomfortable, because the size of the life within in them has developed to a new phase. In one fell swoop they release it to emerge anew.
Your Life is as Big as ‘The Guardian’ Will Allow
One of the strongest drives in all biological life (including humans) is to guard or protect oneself from perceived threat.
It’s an instinct as ancient as the first life forms wiggling about on the ocean floor, where the rule of law was a larger mouth than yours looming about, in search for nourishment.
From the prey of gigantic dinosaurs sprinting with all their might to survive certain death, to mice scattering when a human opens the lid of a trash can they are inhabiting; the urge for safety is ever present.
We do this on every conceivable level, from:
The overt physical act of defending our lives in the face of a glaring assault.
To shrinking away from going on stage to speak in front of a crowded auditorium.
To staying silent about our needs with a partner because we feel unsafe to ask for what we desire.
There are infinite iterations of this pattern…I call this archetypical force ‘The Guardian’.
The Guardian is a boundary, shell and/or container. It simultaneously holds, protects and limits us. In general one could say that the ‘size of our life’ is determined by The Guardian.
Every limitation you have is a protective mechanism whether you chose it for yourself or not…we must swallow the bitter medicine that many of them you have zero say about.
Your skin is a protective barrier, and a limitation.
Intriguingly, the strongest athletes on Earth can only access about 40% of their strength, otherwise their muscles would tear their ligaments apart with certain ferocity. Your body places a lot of effort on limiting how much strength you can access in order to protect you.
Strength training doesn’t actually make you stronger, it unlocks dormant capacity already present within by slowly letting your body know it’s safe to express that strength.
Without this limiting function, you could easily be driven as mad as a hatter.
Consider…
Your brain acts as one of the most sophisticated ‘reducers’ in all existence because it is limiting the amount information your conscious mind can access at any one point in time, otherwise you would be flooded with the gargantuan scope of all the information in the universe at once; being obliterated by the shear enormity of all there is.
Even all the information available to you just inside one city block would cause system wide collapse in your mind, to witness for even a moment.
The Guardian stands watch.
And…
We do not just contend with our own Guardians, but the Guardians of others.
What is racism, sexism, and elitism if not fear?
What is the military, police forces and social taboos if not a protective mechanism?
What are borders, fences and nations if not limitations?
Where there is fear, your know The Guardian will emerge to keep you safe, protected and limited.
While obviously problematic (at times) for the more ‘expanded aspirations’ we might have, we must thank god for the actions of The Guardian. For without boundary, limitation and protective mechanisms nothing could survive in this world, let alone thrive. You are you, and I am me, by virtue of The Guardian. Without a container, nothing can stabilize, anchor and grow.
Freedom needs discipline to contain and channel it, for unlimited freedom would lead both everywhere and nowhere.
Bodies need skin to hold the blood and organs within it, for without this protective sheath to act as container, we would be but primal soup.
Living creatures require fear to keep them alive inside a world where the large fish eat the small fish.
The Majesty of Molting
The body is a second placenta- Dr. Andrew Still
We all molt.
Archetypally and functionally we all enter periods in which the ‘size of our shell’ no longer fits because the being within has outgrown it.
The first significant molt in our lives is when we burst out of our mothers amniotic sack, and usher forth from her womb in a tidal rush of life that has outgrown in current container. The last molt is at the time of death when we slough off our mortal coil to be born once again into another world.
One of the ways we know that we’re due for shedding skin is feeling uncomfortable, suffocated, and irritated by the ‘size’ of our current life: a change must happen.
A rupture. A regeneration. A sweet release.
Eroticism, Dismemberment and Cracking Open
In many myths across the vast landscape of the ancient world one encounters a theme: the fusion of sex, eroticism and death.
The French call orgasms, ‘La petite Mort’, or the small death.
In some interpretations of Hindu tantra, Kali is worshipped as a goddess of sexual energy and union, but also death and dismemberment. During ancient Dionysian rituals, great orgiastic sexual unions would occur, along side dismemberment in intoxicated frenzies, as offerings to the force which ‘liberates’ and frees us from our tightly knit boundaries.
The Archetype which stands as polar opposite to The Guardian is The Liberator. Eroticism, sex, dismemberment and death all share this liberating energy in common. If the Guardian condenses and contracts, then the Liberator opens up and expands.
Molting is an act full of a the most primal expressions of all these forces.
In the video below you can see the erotic tension of push and pull occurring in the crustacean. It wiggles in a pulsating dance where it detaches itself and feels it current attachments over and over again, seeking release into a greater reality.
Like sex… Like the in and out of penetration, of wanting to be closer and pushing away rhythmically over and over again, dancing in the great mystery of magnetic and electric attraction. Pulsating, quivering, spasming, until one is broken open out of their limited container.
This is how many of experience growth: we call it in, and simultaneously push it away. The tension the precedes the release, the sweetness of the wanting, the unbearable pressure that grabs us like a wave, and the at last the release.
Death is a great liberator, freeing you from your fleshy confines just like molting. We are born and die over and over again.
A molt is a dismemberment.
The great paradox of our existence is that each molt is a death, and when we stop molting we stop growing. Like the great ouroboros, who eats it’s own tail, we are forever in a cycle of creation and destruction that feeds into itself perpetually.
Molting is about cracking open, and flying free from the comfort of what we grown use to.
I invite you to watch this 45 second time lapse video of molting in action.
The Discomfort of What We Outgrow
No protective layer, container or limitation remains static forever.
Some will tighten like a lead blanket, or a corset, slowly crushing the breath out of us until we shrink to accommodate the pressure. This happens when we refuse to be cracked open, erotically dismember ourselves, and die to the new, greater reality.
Like a stillborn alchemical fetus.
Others will act like a cocoon: holding space for a metamorphosis to occur within. In which case the next phase of our development begins to swell against the limitation, pressing upon it like clothing that is too tight.
The is often what we experience as the discomfort of growth.
The old skin adheres to us with fleshy tendrils, while the new self grows and swells against the limitation from within. We become itchy, hot and bothered, knowing that a time for molting must soon arrive. Once we are ready to release the old pattern, we must extricate ourselves from an old way of being.
Yet the old births the new.
Every time we outgrow ourselves, we become more of who we actually are.
We often resist the feeling of angst, fear and dread that emerges with the coming change, but it is precisely this feeling that signals it’s time to exit the womb, to crack open the shell, to split open the cocoon, and step into the light ready to breathe a larger, more full breath…
Story of my week 😬🫨😵
Right on time.