Gestation period -

"Thank you for listening to the messages."
This is what she said as we were leaving, after John bought me this beautiful bracelet called "Butterfly Maiden".
I always see messages, probably more so than the average person. Probably too much.
Always looking for meaning to things, hidden meanings.
Sometimes I just cannot ignore them. It's the way of the Seeker.
This summer was the summer of the caterpillars. I saw them 3 different times, each time they crawled into the art tent. I've worked there for 24 years (!!) and it was the first time I saw them. They were big green ones which became filled with yellow hairs.
We were browsing the tables, and we came upon this one table that was selling bracelets that were made with "intentions"... and the one she pulled for me, "Butterfly Maiden" pink and topaz crystals... I thought it very intuitive on her part. We chatted for a bit and told her about the caterpillars and my astrological reading.
Just before this, I had a reading where I was told I was in a "gestation period", a waiting period where it was better for me to wait, rather than "do" anything...... Saturn was sitting in my 12th house and would soon conjunct my ascendant, but until that time, it was not a time of doing, but rather waiting.... and then I would "know" what to do.

I'm reading "When the Heart Waits" by Sue Monk Kidd, which I bought awhile back and just picked it up yesterday. She talks about waiting, the gestation period and the cocoon she found.
The importance of waiting spiritually is often overlooked in our "fast-paced" society.
Here it was again. No accident in buying this book! another message.
I'm ok with waiting, but I'm curious as well... what does life have in store for me when I do break out of my cocoon... what will this transformation look like?
There are things in my life that are working very well for me and I would be grateful for them to stay the same, but there are things that need to go.
Get rid of what is not working to make room for that which is, and to be better able to focus on it more efficiently.
I am painting again.
This brought up a dream, reminded by the book actually, of the giant cocoon filled with many little cocoons that turned into butterflies. I was standing at the doorway of my art room looking into my bedroom where this was happening. I painted this, and put it away unfinished.
Messages of transformation have been repeating themselves to me these past few months, maybe longer.
I've just been having these feelings that something is on the verge, about to change, there is something more... something different... and I am wondering.. what?
So I have gone back to painting, mostly to see what wants to show up. What is it that needs to be revealed. (The magic of painting)
Saturn in the 12th house of the unconscious will move into the 1st house. The house of me.
Who is that? What will my soul reveal to me, my purpose, my mission. I'm ok with being still, going within to discover what that is. To get in touch with the "still voice within" and discover what kind of butterfly I actually am.
I see it as a process, each time I "transform", I grow deeper into my spirituality and discover another deeper part of myself, the true Self that needs to be expressed.
Shedding away the masks we put on for the public and allowing more and more of the Self to express itself.
Amazing process really, but it calls for a lot of patience, doesn't it?