Saving Soul Seeds
Liz Rog, Decorah IA October 2017
The Three Seeds
by Charles Eisenstein
Once upon a time, the tribe of humanity embarked upon a long journey called Separation. It was not a blunder as some – seeing its ravages upon the planet – might think. Nor was it a fall, nor an expression of some innate evil peculiar to the human species. It was a journey with a purpose: to experience the extremes of Separation, to develop the gifts that come in response to it, and to integrate all of that in a new age of Reunion.
But we knew at the outset that there was danger in this journey: that we might become lost in Separation and never come back. We might become so alienated from nature that we would destroy the very basis of life; we might become so separated from each other that our poor egos, left naked and terrified, would become incapable of rejoining the community of all being. In other words, we foresaw the crisis we face today.
That is why, thousands of years ago, we planted three seeds that would sprout at the time that our journey of Separation reached its extreme. Three seeds, three transmissions from the past to the future, three ways of preserving and transmitting the truth of the world, the self, and how to be human.
Imagine you were alive thirty thousand years ago, and had a vision of all that was to come: symbolic language, naming and labeling the world; agriculture, the domestication of the wild, dominion over other species and the land; the Machine, the mastery of natural forces; the forgetting of how beautiful and perfect the world is; the atomization of society; a world where humans fear even to drink of the streams and rivers, where we live among strangers and don't know the people next door, where we kill across the planet with the touch of a button, where the seas turn black and the air burns our lungs, where we are so broken that we dare not remember that it isn't supposed to be this way. Imagine you saw it all coming. How would you help people thirty thousand years thence? How would you send information, knowledge, aid over such a vast gulf of time? You see, this actually happened. That is how we came up with the three seeds.
The first seed was the wisdom lineages: lines of transmission going back thousands of years that have preserved and protected essential knowledge. From adept to disciple, in every part of the world, various wisdom traditions have passed down teachings in secret. Wisdom keepers, Sufis, Taoist wizards, Zen masters, mystics, gurus, and many others, hiding within each religion, kept the knowledge safe until the time when the world would be ready to reclaim it. That time is now, and they have done their job well. The time of secrets is over. Released too early, the knowledge was co-opted, abused, or usually just ignored. When we still had not covered the territory of Separation, when we still aspired
to widening our conquest of nature, when the story of humanity's Ascent was not yet complete, we weren't ready to hear about union, connectedness, interdependency, inter-being-ness. We thought the answer was more control, more technology, more logic, a better-engineered society of rational ethics, more control over matter, nature, and human nature. But now the old paradigms are failing, and human consciousness has reached a degree of receptivity that allows this seed to spread across the earth. It has been released, and it is growing inside of us en masse.
The second seed was the sacred stories: myths, legends, fairy tales, folklore, and the perennial themes that keep reappearing in various guises throughout history. They have always been with us, so that however far we have wandered into the Labyrinth of Separation, we have always had a lifeline, however tenuous
Liz Rog, Decorah IA October 2017
The Three Seeds
by Charles Eisenstein
Once upon a time, the tribe of humanity embarked upon a long journey called Separation. It was not a blunder as some – seeing its ravages upon the planet – might think. Nor was it a fall, nor an expression of some innate evil peculiar to the human species. It was a journey with a purpose: to experience the extremes of Separation, to develop the gifts that come in response to it, and to integrate all of that in a new age of Reunion.
But we knew at the outset that there was danger in this journey: that we might become lost in Separation and never come back. We might become so alienated from nature that we would destroy the very basis of life; we might become so separated from each other that our poor egos, left naked and terrified, would become incapable of rejoining the community of all being. In other words, we foresaw the crisis we face today.
That is why, thousands of years ago, we planted three seeds that would sprout at the time that our journey of Separation reached its extreme. Three seeds, three transmissions from the past to the future, three ways of preserving and transmitting the truth of the world, the self, and how to be human.
Imagine you were alive thirty thousand years ago, and had a vision of all that was to come: symbolic language, naming and labeling the world; agriculture, the domestication of the wild, dominion over other species and the land; the Machine, the mastery of natural forces; the forgetting of how beautiful and perfect the world is; the atomization of society; a world where humans fear even to drink of the streams and rivers, where we live among strangers and don't know the people next door, where we kill across the planet with the touch of a button, where the seas turn black and the air burns our lungs, where we are so broken that we dare not remember that it isn't supposed to be this way. Imagine you saw it all coming. How would you help people thirty thousand years thence? How would you send information, knowledge, aid over such a vast gulf of time? You see, this actually happened. That is how we came up with the three seeds.
The first seed was the wisdom lineages: lines of transmission going back thousands of years that have preserved and protected essential knowledge. From adept to disciple, in every part of the world, various wisdom traditions have passed down teachings in secret. Wisdom keepers, Sufis, Taoist wizards, Zen masters, mystics, gurus, and many others, hiding within each religion, kept the knowledge safe until the time when the world would be ready to reclaim it. That time is now, and they have done their job well. The time of secrets is over. Released too early, the knowledge was co-opted, abused, or usually just ignored. When we still had not covered the territory of Separation, when we still aspired
to widening our conquest of nature, when the story of humanity's Ascent was not yet complete, we weren't ready to hear about union, connectedness, interdependency, inter-being-ness. We thought the answer was more control, more technology, more logic, a better-engineered society of rational ethics, more control over matter, nature, and human nature. But now the old paradigms are failing, and human consciousness has reached a degree of receptivity that allows this seed to spread across the earth. It has been released, and it is growing inside of us en masse.
The second seed was the sacred stories: myths, legends, fairy tales, folklore, and the perennial themes that keep reappearing in various guises throughout history. They have always been with us, so that however far we have wandered into the Labyrinth of Separation, we have always had a lifeline, however tenuous
and tangled, to the truth. The stories nurture that tiny spark of memory within us that knows our origin
and our destination. The ancients, knowing that the truth would be co-opted and distorted if left in
explicit form, encoded it into stories. When we hear or read one of these stories, even if we cannot decode
the symbolism, we are affected on an unconscious level. Myths and fairy tales represent a very
sophisticated psychic technology. Each generation of storytellers, without consciously intending to,
transmits the covert wisdom that it learned, unconsciously, from the stories told it.
The third seed was the indigenous tribes, the people who at some stage opted out of the journey of separation. Imagine that at the outset of the journey, the Council of Humanity gathered and certain members volunteered to retreat to remote locations and forgo separation, which meant refusing to enter into an adversarial, controlling relationship to nature, and therefore refusing the process that leads to the development of high technology. It also meant that when they were discovered by the humans who had gone deeply into Separation, they would meet with the most atrocious suffering.That was unavoidable.
These people of the third seed have nearly completed their mission today. Their mission was simply to survive long enough to provide living examples of how to be human. Each tribe carried a different piece, sometimes many pieces, of this knowledge. Many of them show us how to see and relate to the land, animals, and plants. Others show us how to work with dreams and the unseen. Some have preserved natural ways of raising children. Some show us how to communicate without words – tribes such as the Hazda and the Piraha communicate mostly in song. Some show us how to free ourselves from the mentality of linear time. All of them exemplify a way of being that we intuitively recognize and long for. They stir a memory in our hearts, and awaken our desire to return.
Dear human cousin, what if you knew that you were born to carry some seed that that was needed right now or would be needed in the times to come? What if someone had whispered into your ear when you were an infant, and when you were a child, and when you were a teen, and when you were a young adult, so that you knew it without a doubt:
You belong to the universal soul.
You are a part of the universal whole.
You were sent here with a gift we have all been waiting for,
and we welcome now this sacred blessing we see shining from your core!
~Laurence Cole, paraphrasing Martin Prechtel
And if you were carrying a seed, how would you know? For many of us, it takes decades to identify the nature of our seeds. Sometimes they can never be named, sometimes we don’t want to name them, but still they are there, just as in need of protection as a seed that is flashy, nameable, or early-bloomed.
The third seed was the indigenous tribes, the people who at some stage opted out of the journey of separation. Imagine that at the outset of the journey, the Council of Humanity gathered and certain members volunteered to retreat to remote locations and forgo separation, which meant refusing to enter into an adversarial, controlling relationship to nature, and therefore refusing the process that leads to the development of high technology. It also meant that when they were discovered by the humans who had gone deeply into Separation, they would meet with the most atrocious suffering.That was unavoidable.
These people of the third seed have nearly completed their mission today. Their mission was simply to survive long enough to provide living examples of how to be human. Each tribe carried a different piece, sometimes many pieces, of this knowledge. Many of them show us how to see and relate to the land, animals, and plants. Others show us how to work with dreams and the unseen. Some have preserved natural ways of raising children. Some show us how to communicate without words – tribes such as the Hazda and the Piraha communicate mostly in song. Some show us how to free ourselves from the mentality of linear time. All of them exemplify a way of being that we intuitively recognize and long for. They stir a memory in our hearts, and awaken our desire to return.
*************
Our human family has been forgetting and fumbling for a long time now. So much has been lost
and we are still losing. And yet, there is evidence all around that seeds of remembering were
indeed saved, protected, and nurtured. Some are just daring to show themselves now, and
some have been right in front of us all along, visible only to some. We catch glimpses through
stories, songs, dances, and rituals...
Dear human cousin, what if you knew that you were born to carry some seed that that was needed right now or would be needed in the times to come? What if someone had whispered into your ear when you were an infant, and when you were a child, and when you were a teen, and when you were a young adult, so that you knew it without a doubt:
You belong to the universal soul.
You are a part of the universal whole.
You were sent here with a gift we have all been waiting for,
and we welcome now this sacred blessing we see shining from your core!
~Laurence Cole, paraphrasing Martin Prechtel
And if you were carrying a seed, how would you know? For many of us, it takes decades to identify the nature of our seeds. Sometimes they can never be named, sometimes we don’t want to name them, but still they are there, just as in need of protection as a seed that is flashy, nameable, or early-bloomed.
- If you know some feeling of aching longing, deep in your bones If your heart hurts when you behold beauty
- If your heart hurts when you behold pain
- If you can feel the beauty inside the pain and the pain inside the beauty If you sometimes cry
- If you sometimes gaze at the moon
...then you are surely carrying a sacred seed that is still alive and must be protected. For the
sake of All, please dear human cousin you must carry your seed with tenderness and courage,
warding off all that would harm it. If that is the only thing you do in your whole life—to keep your
seed alive—it is enough and everything. The seed has its own wisdom, and will come into
greening when it will, in this lifetime or the next, if only you keep it alive.
To keep our seeds alive, we first have to notice and resist the harm of our modern world—by patriarchy and the market economy, by separation, scarcity, and unkindness.
Many of us have had to put on armor to protect our seeds from assault. We hide our tenderness, we stop our playfulness, we withhold our voice, we tuck away our dreams, for they have been so often battered. This self-preservation makes sense. But we can begin honoring our seeds by noticing that we’re doing that, by feeling the pain of it, and by celebrating with those who are daring to show their seeds.
When you feel your heart hurting, it might be because someone has harmed your seed. It might be you yourself who’s done it, to yourself or to another. You might be living in the story that there is not enough space in the world for your seed or for that of another. Notice it, and then dear cousin put your arms all the way around your precious seed and hold it like you would an infant, a child, a beloved. Our life depends on you doing it.
We come from a few generations of people who’ve been living in the story that participation in the market economy is good for the nation, but it’s not true. In fact, the competition, scarcity mentality, and time-suck of the market economy is a powerful seed-crushing force. Practicing active resistance is one very accessible way to protect your seed. Know that the images we look upon are etched in our souls, and then choose which you will allow in. When you are at the gas station and a screen pops on the pump with advertising videos, look away and plug your ears, or chat with a stranger, or sing. Turn off your phone, more and more often. Talk to strangers. Give away more time and things than you thought you could. Make yourself think again, and again, and yet again before buying something that you most probably don’t need, and if you do buy it give tremendous praise and thanks for the gifts of the earth that someone turned into a tool for making life shine. Choose which way you’re willing to hear world news, even if it’s different than other people you respect.
Starting there, resisting the impersonal but ever-present forces of the market economy, you might also begin noticing and resisting the personal attacks on your seed. One day you might find yourself speaking up when another person has diminished you, and one day you might find yourself speaking to a large group on behalf of the seeds of a whole people, or a plant, or a planet. It can happen.
You must resist the harming of your soul-seeds, and then also you must feed them deliciousness, give to them like you would to a child or a lover. What are the ways to do this? The list is forever-long and it’s yours. A few ways: being in silence. journalling. being with people with whom we feel welcome and free. giving service to community. being outside and knowing
To keep our seeds alive, we first have to notice and resist the harm of our modern world—by patriarchy and the market economy, by separation, scarcity, and unkindness.
Many of us have had to put on armor to protect our seeds from assault. We hide our tenderness, we stop our playfulness, we withhold our voice, we tuck away our dreams, for they have been so often battered. This self-preservation makes sense. But we can begin honoring our seeds by noticing that we’re doing that, by feeling the pain of it, and by celebrating with those who are daring to show their seeds.
When you feel your heart hurting, it might be because someone has harmed your seed. It might be you yourself who’s done it, to yourself or to another. You might be living in the story that there is not enough space in the world for your seed or for that of another. Notice it, and then dear cousin put your arms all the way around your precious seed and hold it like you would an infant, a child, a beloved. Our life depends on you doing it.
We come from a few generations of people who’ve been living in the story that participation in the market economy is good for the nation, but it’s not true. In fact, the competition, scarcity mentality, and time-suck of the market economy is a powerful seed-crushing force. Practicing active resistance is one very accessible way to protect your seed. Know that the images we look upon are etched in our souls, and then choose which you will allow in. When you are at the gas station and a screen pops on the pump with advertising videos, look away and plug your ears, or chat with a stranger, or sing. Turn off your phone, more and more often. Talk to strangers. Give away more time and things than you thought you could. Make yourself think again, and again, and yet again before buying something that you most probably don’t need, and if you do buy it give tremendous praise and thanks for the gifts of the earth that someone turned into a tool for making life shine. Choose which way you’re willing to hear world news, even if it’s different than other people you respect.
Starting there, resisting the impersonal but ever-present forces of the market economy, you might also begin noticing and resisting the personal attacks on your seed. One day you might find yourself speaking up when another person has diminished you, and one day you might find yourself speaking to a large group on behalf of the seeds of a whole people, or a plant, or a planet. It can happen.
You must resist the harming of your soul-seeds, and then also you must feed them deliciousness, give to them like you would to a child or a lover. What are the ways to do this? The list is forever-long and it’s yours. A few ways: being in silence. journalling. being with people with whom we feel welcome and free. giving service to community. being outside and knowing
the natural world as a friend. being willing to stick out, to be eccentric...for some people are like
that and we need them. being willing to be invisible, quiet...for some people are like that and we
need them. moving slowly. making things with our hands. praying. singing. dancing.
Our communities are walking-breathing soul-seed-banks. The seeds in our children, if they have not already been buried deep by mistreatment, are alive and visible. The seeds in our elders are sometimes re-emerged in the forms of eccentricity and generosity. The seeds in our middle- agers are sometimes active and visible as workhorses, pumping out their callings while there’s still time.
But the most precious and tender seeds of all, the ones we’ve so tragically forgotten and must now at all costs reach out to protect and nurture, are those of our Sojourners, our teens and young adults.
For so many decades now we’ve left the Sojourners on their own, assuming that they can get what they need by the learning that takes place in high school or college, that they can find their way ‘like we did,’ that growing-up just happens. Yet without the nurturance of community, seeds languish and die. If we want the world to benefit from the one-and-only seeds that this generation is bringing, then we must contribute to the protection and nurturance of their seeds. We must help make fertile soil, for their time for planting may well be now. We must do this even though it likely did not happen for us. Hurry—lest we forget that this is exactly what we longed for, let’s begin again now to honor our Sojourners.
Where did the notion of “pulling oneself up by ones’ bootstraps” come from? Certainly our ancestors who lived in real community would never have dreamed up such an idea that creates the opposite of community. Let’s now turn that seed-starving notion upside down. How much can we give to our Sojourners so that they can protect and, if it’s the time, grow out their seeds? For we need what they’ve got, more than ever. You know it.
How shall we do that?
They might need:
Our communities are walking-breathing soul-seed-banks. The seeds in our children, if they have not already been buried deep by mistreatment, are alive and visible. The seeds in our elders are sometimes re-emerged in the forms of eccentricity and generosity. The seeds in our middle- agers are sometimes active and visible as workhorses, pumping out their callings while there’s still time.
But the most precious and tender seeds of all, the ones we’ve so tragically forgotten and must now at all costs reach out to protect and nurture, are those of our Sojourners, our teens and young adults.
For so many decades now we’ve left the Sojourners on their own, assuming that they can get what they need by the learning that takes place in high school or college, that they can find their way ‘like we did,’ that growing-up just happens. Yet without the nurturance of community, seeds languish and die. If we want the world to benefit from the one-and-only seeds that this generation is bringing, then we must contribute to the protection and nurturance of their seeds. We must help make fertile soil, for their time for planting may well be now. We must do this even though it likely did not happen for us. Hurry—lest we forget that this is exactly what we longed for, let’s begin again now to honor our Sojourners.
Where did the notion of “pulling oneself up by ones’ bootstraps” come from? Certainly our ancestors who lived in real community would never have dreamed up such an idea that creates the opposite of community. Let’s now turn that seed-starving notion upside down. How much can we give to our Sojourners so that they can protect and, if it’s the time, grow out their seeds? For we need what they’ve got, more than ever. You know it.
How shall we do that?
They might need:
-
Community. To be seen, to be known as carriers of a precious community treasure. To be
given what they need in order that they can carry their seed in the world. To be invited into spaces where they haven’t been seen, to be listened to well and trusted to listen well. Sometimes this requires middle-agers and elders who have money to realize that the Sojourners can’t come unless we exuberantly offer free passage to gatherings where we need their voices (which is all gatherings).
-
Inexpensive housing. For, if they must spend all of their days working at jobs simply in order
to have housing, how can they live into the visions their seeds are calling them to? What if
Empty Nesters offered free or inexpensive housing to young adults, many of whom have
college debt or other financial difficulties that keep them from growing out their seeds? What
could that do for the future, for the lives of the great-grandchildren?
-
Access to land. Many of this generation are awakened to the need for right relationship with
land and food, and we must make ways for them to live into that calling. If we have
inheritances from ancestors (usually from people who benefitted from some kind of privilege)
how can we share its benefits with a wider community than just our own personal
descendants?
- Ritual. For half a century or more our culture has been re-examining our relationship with religion, and now many are re-establishing ways that are chosen from a place of self- knowing and integrity. Some are participating in existing houses of worship, some are joining their leadership in an effort to help them evolve, and some are creating new ways of spiritual community. However it is, we must honor this longing and step into it, sometimes with stumbling, humble, baby steps. Making ritual—to honor the seasons, the passages through life, the grief of living, the joy of living, or anything else—is one way to build lasting community connection with the All.
Sojourners are carrying seeds that we all need in order to survive. They are asking the right questions, remembering ancestral ways, willing to experiment, able to think and speak clearly, and ready to give to the good of All. We can’t even imagine what they will bring forth. But they need us to see them, welcome them onto the path, help them, be family with them.
*******
Dear Cousin! What if you were carrying a seed that we all needed in order to survive? What if your neighbor also was, and also your nephew, your sister, and the stranger on the street?
Don’t you want to live as though that were utterly, heartbreakingly true?
Each day is another chance.
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