The Journey of a Seed
Nature mirrors some extraordinary learning for us. In a reading from
a few months ago, the journey of a seed was used to teach four important
principles of personal growth:
1. Every seed (human being) is innately designed to grow best at a
particular depth and there is no value in trying to make someone ‘go
deeper’ than they desire
2. No seed, no matter how perfect and miraculous, can grow on its own.
Just as seeds require external factors (sun, water etc) to grow, human
beings need each other in order to develop
3. A seed grows even though it cannot see where it is going and does not
yet know what it will become
4. The first part of a seed’s journey is growing through the darkness
(soil) and the first, unavoidable, part of the human journey is growing
through our resistances. Only after growing through our resistance
(pain) can we push through and grow in the light (joy).
This is an excerpt from the reading, expanding on points 3 and 4:
A Seed Still Grows in the Dark
‘The third element of the seed pushing its way through the soil to
produce itself in all its glory is this: the seed cannot see where
exactly it is going, and it does not know what it is going to become at
the end of the journey. Oh, so many of the modern-day teachers are
telling you that you need to see the path clearly before it will
manifest and that you need to know precisely what you wish to grow, or
grow into, before it is possible to grow. A seed does not see a thing.
It is in fact buried underneath the ground. And for the first part of
its journey, it is in darkness. It is still fed by the light, but it is
in darkness. It cannot see the world that it is going to grow into, and
it still grows. That is the faith of a seed. There was a moment, in the
teaching of Jesus, when he compared faith to a seed. It was very wise,
and here we are expanding on that story, in a way that we have never
done before.
A seed grows even when it is in the dark. A seed does not know what it
is yet. It does not know where it is going. It cannot see anything, it
is in the dark. For the first part of a seed’s journey it is in the
dark. And so it is with human beings too. There is so much focus, so
much pressure, to try to get people to a sense of sureness, or clarity,
about who they are and what they are going to grow into. But you cannot
bring that knowledge until that journey has naturally got to that point.
There is a part of a seed’s life when it grows in the dark. And there is
a part of your journeys where you grow in the dark. And that is not
wrong, and you do not need to try very hard to know something before it
is revealed to you. It is not so that the seed refuses to grow because
it doesn’t know what it is growing towards. It has its faith. It still
urges itself forward and up, though it has no idea of what is awaiting
it, or what it is. That is the faith of a seed. You are surrounded by
such seeds. If you could take some inspiration from their journey, you
would be able to put it to enormous use in your own.
The First Part of a Seed’s Journey is Growing Through Resistance
It is also significant for you to see, and this is the fourth
learning we will offer today, that through the first part of a seed’s
journey it is growing through resistance. When it pushes out of the soil
and carries on its journey in the light it is not growing through much
resistance anymore but the first part of its journey it is pushing its
way, it is growing, through resistance. It has soil all around it, and
the way that it grows is through pushing its way through the resistance.
Again this is a part of experience that human beings judge and try to
avoid, or at the very least try to get over with very quickly. But the
first part of your growth occurs, and can only occur, through engaging
with what you resist.
The seed gives you the clues to what is the journey of all life on this
planet. But human beings have held themselves apart from all life for a
long time. Yet nature holds so many clues for you. And one of them is
that with a seed, the first part of its journey, necessarily, is through
encountering resistance. In other words, the way to grow is to look at
what you resist as the first part of the journey. It’s not the only
part, the seed pushes through the resistance at some point, and then it
grows through light, but it cannot grow through the light, until it has
grown first through the resistance of the soil. We have positioned it
today in terms of a seed, and of the miraculous journey of a seed. You
can just as well think about it in terms of a baby, who also grows in
the dark for the first bit of the journey.
We are only talking here about conditions for flourishing, not
conditions for living. You can live without encountering some of these
growth points, if you don’t want to encounter them you can stop your
growth at any point. But we know very clearly your desire for
flourishing, and we are giving the cycles for that journey. It is not
the whole journey that you will be working through resistance, no. It is
only a certain part of it. Why? Because in order for your flourishing to
occur, for you to begin to grow in the light, rather than through your
own darkness, you first require yourself to look and encounter all the
things that you are carrying as resistances.
Your body helps you to identify your resistances. And you also run into
your resistances through pain. Physical pain, emotional pain and so on.
Pain and resistance are very closely related, and it is well know that
where there is no more resistance left, there is also no more pain. That
would be the point of breaking, blossoming, emerging, out of the soil,
and carrying on the journey in the light. There is no way to rush this
process, and there is no way to avoid it either. The seed will not grow
if it is not planted at its proper depth.
You may also have put two and two together already and realised that the
potential for depth of the seed, the deeper it is planted in other
words, the more resistance it has had to work through before its
blossoming. There are some human beings who choose very deliberately not
to work through all that much of their resistance in one life. Those
ones are planted at a relatively shallow level, and that is their
choice, and you cannot change that as we have already said [above] just
by wishing that they were deeper and by attempting to get them there.
But there are those who are prepared to work with all their resistance –
all - and it is possible. If it were not possible, and if it were not
possible for you, we would not be bringing this. It is possible for you
to have released all that which you resist. Again, if you want to know
where you are still resisting have a look at where you still feel pain,
physically and emotionally. Your pain is a little tick at an area at
which you still carry resistance. When you have softened your way, given
in, surrendered to all your resistances, then as the seed you emerge.
You have grown through the darkness, through the soil. You have grown in
the first part of your journey, you have grown via your resistance. It
is the only way that your growth can start.
You begin your journey of awareness, and of consciousness, you begin it,
everyone, by engaging with your resistances. It’s because you have
problems, in other words, that you start your journey. It’s because you
have pain, or dissatisfaction that you begin your journey. If you did
not, then there would be no way to start. You have to begin by the root
of your resistance. What we are inviting you into is to go as
consciously and thoroughly as possible into the middle of your
resistance. The more you give in to this part of the journey, the easier
the soil will just part ways for you and you will emerge. You cannot
avoid encountering your resistances, you can try, but you will remain in
the soil for as long as it takes, until you have dropped, let go,
softened every resistance you have to what is inside you, to what you
see in other people, to what you find in the state of the moment. We
have never talked about this before. But it is a very deeply wise way in
which to approach your own journey, and also to support the journeys of
others. Go into that which you resist. Make it an awareness for you.
Move there deliberately. Because that is, like the journey of the seed,
that is the first part of your growth.
Emerging Into the Light
If you are wondering whether the feeling of popping out of the soil
into the light is ecstatic for a seed, it is. That is the point where
some teachers talk of enlightenment, in the journey of the seed, and the
journey of the human being. For some human beings, who have intended it,
there is a moment where you have dropped every resistance you have. And
without knowing when it is going to happen, you emerge. You get glimpses
of your emergence before it happens. The closer you are getting to the
light, the more the sunlight filters through that dark soil. You can
feel sometimes a ray of sun that has penetrated the soil as the seed,
and still you don’t know what you are, remember. The seed still cannot
see. You still don’t know what you are becoming, what your purpose is.
You don’t know. But, every now and again you catch a bit of light. And
it pulls you further along your journey through your resistances. That’s
the only way to get to the light, to go through that which you resist.
As you get closer and closer to the breaking-through point - and may we
remind you that the only reason that we bring this forward today is
because this is your journey - you begin to feel different, and so you
should because you are different. You are no longer a seed, you are
something else. The same genetic material is still a part of you, but
you are totally different from a seed. You look nothing the same. It is
just so with the human journey. You will be the same source or essence,
but you will be totally different. When you run into people that knew
you as a seed and that meet you some while later when you are in your
emergence phase, they will say that you are so different, and you are.
There is a tremendous feeling of liberation when you emerge. We don’t
want to describe it. Words will detract from that feeling. You get
already glimpses of it, but it is possible, within this life, to move
out of the resistance material, and to carry on your journey in the
light.
Another way of putting this is to say that if you have gone into your
pain so thoroughly, it is possible to emerge from that, and to forever
grow in light. That is a possibility. We can’t rush it, and there’s no
way of going around it, but it is a possibility to carry on your
flourishing in the light. And do you know one of the first experiences
of being in that light? You can see.
All the growing and the struggling and the encountering again, and
again, and again of resistance, when you are busy in that phase, you
can’t see. We don’t take that for granted you know. It is extraordinary
faith that lets the seed keep on growing, even though it does not know
what it is. You don’t get the comfort, just like a seed, you don’t get
the comfort of knowing in advance what is the outcome of this journey to
give you some encouragement along the way. You don’t get the sight until
you have been thoroughly through the resistance.
So one of the glorious experiences of emerging is you start to be able
to see. You start to be able to see who you are. Now you can look and
notice that you are a mealie! Before, you did not know, and that is the
design. To try to know what you are while you are in the dark is very
difficult, and a tremendous frustration, and an enormous use of energy.
There’s no need to worry about that, it will become apparent to you, and
you will laugh at how you did not know all this time that that is what
you are. You will laugh because there will be a time when it is not a
mystery when you look around and you realise that’s what I am, all this
time I’ve been growing into a mealie. But that knowledge is not given to
you in advance, because it would change the journey, and that is not
useful. So being able to see is one of the tremendous experiences of
emerging into the light, besides the fact that you don’t grow via
resistance anymore. You’re not growing through soil after a time, and so
your growth is simply through light - through joy is another way of
putting it. And one of the first things is that you can see who you are.
You will still develop - a mealie doesn’t look like a full grown mealie
when it just emerges from the soil, but at least it can see some of what
it is. And that knowledge emerges as the growth happens.
There is a lot more for us to say about how to grow in the light. Very
few have let themselves do so, and we are honoured to invite you today
into that group.
It is a very significant giving that we are doing today because the
awareness of this can truly enhance and speed up the journey. Knowing
now that you cannot be emerged or born into the light until you have
encountered all your resistances, gives you more permission to do so.
Make that a priority. We cannot think of what would be a bigger priority
than going fully into your own resistances, into your own pain, and
coming out the other side, because without that your emergence is not
possible.’
Thank you to the special person who co-created this reading and gave permission for it to be shared here
This reading has been slightly edited by Angela to facilitate easy reading and understanding.
© Angela Deutschmann
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