That butterfly thing is so awesome.... A friend linked me to another related article:
http://www.tomorrowsedge.net/imaginal-cells.html
After a caterpillar buries itself inside its cocoon, it waits to morph into a butterfly. The caterpillar does not simply shrink a bit and sprout wings. Instead, it sort of disintegrates into a puddle of ooze within the cocoon. If we were to open the cocoon halfway through the process, we would not find a half-caterpillar half-butterfly type creature, but a blob of goop. The goop is made up of a bunch of individual cells that are all basically the same type of oozy cells. For whatever reason, these new cells start popping up. They are not the original cells changing into these new cells, but rather they seem to come out of nowhere. These new cells are called imaginal cells and they are so completely different from the original ooze cells that they are thought to be a virus or some other form of enemy so the ooze cells begin attacking the imaginal cells. However, even though the imaginal cells are being killed off for not fitting in, they still keep showing up, more and more of them. Eventually, the imaginal cells begin to find each other and cluster together. Like attracts like, and the clusters begin to join up with other clusters. The original cells still keep attacking them but they continue to multiply and cluster together. Eventually, they get to be a large enough community and they switch gears from simply being a group of like-minded cells into the programming cells of the butterfly. Some imaginal cells start changing into wing cells, some start changing into antenna cells, some start changing into digestive tract cells, and so on. They are no longer imaginal cells but become butterfly anatomy cells. As we all know, if left alone to do his thing, the butterfly eventually emerges as a completely new entity from the original caterpillar. Do they hold the same memories, life lessons, and consciousness? Who knows? One would think that for survival of the species, the butterfly would still retain whatever knowledge the caterpillar had learned before entering into the cocoon state.
According to this page (in contrast with galacticbutterfly.com) the imaginal cells don't 'fight back' but simply keep multiplying and clustering together until they reach a point that their 'frequency' overtakes the chrysalis and they can begin their new roles as creators of the buttefly. Such a beautiful metaphor for overcoming adversity and transforming consciousness through creating, not through violence.

In a way, I think all the open minded people, free-thinkers, shamans and the like, could be the 'imaginal cells' of the human race.