Emerging From The Cocoon

Jonathan Hawkins
4 min readJul 31, 2021

Marveling at the world anew.

A picture showing cocoons and a butterfly.
Photo by Suzanne D. Williams on Unsplash

The “me” of 5 years ago is gone. In its place is someone I never even believed I could become. The things I once loved, the ideas I held tightly to, even my life experiences shaped me into who I had become, and most of that has been left in the past.

This shift wasn’t due to some tragedy or challenging event. It happened gradually but surely, and the shift came from within me, rather than from the outside. The most shocking to me was probably my relationship with video games.

From the very young age of 4, I have been intensely fascinated by them, and it has been a lifelong passion of mine. I grew up playing them, and they were one of my major pastimes as an adult too. When everyone else was out socializing and having more typical life experiences, I was spending most of my time enjoying getting lost in the imaginative worlds of video games. That was always the case for me, and after 30 years of life, I had no reason to believe it would ever change. I didn’t even think it could. Spoiler alert: it pretty much did.

I do still enjoy the right kind of games, so it hasn’t left completely, but my tastes have changed so drastically that most of what I play anymore is only a small handful of genres, with a focus on non-violence, and the amount of time I spend playing in general has considerably lessened. Even games that I recall very fondly from my childhood, teen years, and twenties are no longer appealing. I felt such a shift away from them in fact, that the video game collection I had spent most of my 30+ years of life gathering, I ended up selling or giving the huge majority of it away, simply because it felt like it was time to focus elsewhere.

I’ve also begun to discover the depth of joy that comes with creating content, rather than spending most of my time consuming content. These days, I have just as much fun when I’m writing about something interesting to me, working on recording some videos, or engaging in other creative pursuits. It has become a question of how would I rather spend my time, and I surprise myself in that, my past passions like playing video games or binge watching anime that defined my life experience for decades, often take a back seat to something more creative.

Coming along with this new version of me is a deeper understanding and appreciation for how life works, not from the perspective of the physical, but rather metaphysical. Wise teachers past and present like Dr. Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, Moojibaba, Abraham/Esther Hicks, Louise L. Hay, Seth/Jane Roberts, and many others have been my teachers and guides during these past few years of metamorphosis I have undergone. The new me has reached a depth of understanding that the old me couldn’t fathom and wasn’t ready to see.

But I embrace the person I used to be. I couldn’t have made it here to this day without having lived the life I have. Every step, even the ones we call missteps, are purposeful, guiding us to greater and greater truths and insights about ourselves and our ever-growing desires. And no matter how shocking or scary change may seem at times, I choose to believe that it’s always for the better, and that things are always working out for me, even if everything looks like insanity on the outside.

The main thing I have come to learn and really revere in my life experience is appreciation. For far too many years, I either never took those ideas seriously, or never stopped to consider it at all, taking everything for granted as a matter of course. Most people come to this sort of realization after facing a shocking loss, but it doesn’t have to work like that to start appreciating things in one’s life. Having experienced a new way of living, being aware of, and offering appreciation for as much in my life as I can identify has changed my inner world, and the outer life experiences, for the better.

Most of us are so busy, and so mentally focused on the experiences happening around us, that we’ve not even been taught the basics of how creating our life experiences really works. That probably sounds strange to most readers, but if you are curious, I invite you to investigate any of the names in the earlier paragraph on YouTube, or else seek out some of their many published books, and read ones that capture your interest with an open mind. There are completely different ways to live life that most of us are never taught, too caught up in the busyness of our modern world as we are. The me I have become, am becoming, and am excited to see evolve even more as the days continue, is only possible thanks to the new levels of awareness that these teachers and life itself has guided me to.

5 years ago, I wasn’t even thinking about any of this, let alone appreciating life with a level of depth like I do today. Now I can look back with gratitude, because I can see how much I’ve grown, and the changes that I never imagined would come are more enlightening and fulfilling than I could possibly fathom.

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Jonathan Hawkins

I’ve a knack for tutorials & how-to’s, unusual perspectives that express themselves thru words, and I love writing about video games, especially wholesome ones.