The Journey of the Seed and the Seedling
The first steps of Growth, for the seed and for the human heart alike, are falling, separation, and breaking open.
This post is an echo of the work we are currently covering in mymojodojolife.com.
It may seem random from where we stand in the middle of our present heart-break and calamity, which can often leave us believing that something has gone terribly wrong, that we have been overlooked by life somehow. But, as always, there is an underlying intentionality, which belongs to a far more expansive arc of meaning, far beyond our comprehension.
This post is an invitation to that wider perspective. Perspective is the Keeper of Meaning.
By definition, all growth requires an often painful outgrowing of who we have already become, even if it was through great cost. What got us here, will not get us there, and Tomorrow is waiting.
The first steps of Growth, for the seed and for the human heart alike, are falling, separation, and breaking open.
The Journey of the Seed
Even the falling of the seed, seems at first random, but of course, it had its causes, far beyond what the little seed can gauge or comprehend, and once the seed falls, all the 'reasons' and 'whys', matters little.
That first falling was due to a kind of ripening; the way something sudden happens, a place of belonging is left and lost forever, what seemed sudden and without warning, was in truth a moment long in the making, whose time had finally come.
The seed falls, blown about by the wind, seemingly discarded, not belonging to anything whole, except the wide earth that swallowed it up, and covered it over, until in the darkness it learns its first reluctant patience.
And it learns the grace of nature, the kind that does not happen in the light-show of sunshine and cloud and bird-flight overhead, but quietly, below the surface, among the small, unlovely crawling things, amid the petrichor and the loamy richness, held gently, in utter darkness.
Then something happens, the final undoing, a breaking open and splitting apart in what feels like the utter ending, and which, beautifully and poetically is only the very beginning.
The first incredible act of courage, is, not to make a break for the surface, but to dive deeper, with the first pale delicate root. To find the pure joy of anchoring, of searching, of thirsting and of penetrating, deeper, integrating with what is.
And then, the first self-chosen pain, the first self-chosen discomfort, to break out of what had become a safe womb, and push through the veil and into the world above.
And after that, the expansion, all the seasons and storms, and the pure glory of Life.
The Journey of Wheat
Awakening is a threshing. This is a truth that can not be any other way.
We are the wheat and just so, the chaff of what must be removed by rough handling is also us, in every way that matters when it comes to experience.
Long seasons we strive, we weather storms and earn our right to stand tall in the sunlight, forging our ways of being and belonging in the world.
But we cannot stand idle in the same field forever. We came here for a purpose, and to meet that purpose we have to embrace a new way of belonging to the world, and to do that, we have to give up on the old one.
We fool ourselves into believing that awakening is all light and insights and stepping forward. We forget that the wheat must be cut down and that all the threshing which must follow, is not some unkind mistake, but the necessary removal of everything that keeps us small.
Only, what must be removed from us is not meaningless husk, it is as precious as our limbs and our flesh, our hopes and dreams are no less dear than children, and the parting is not without great pain. We invested ourselves, our hearts, so sincerely, into parts of our identities, hard won and anything but meaningless.
Everything we earn and value when we are small, comes under fire in some way when we begin to wake up. We lose relationships that cannot endure the heat of honesty, we even lose parts of ourselves that we believed defined us, and in the threshing, the husk is removed painfully in what feels no less than loss and wounding.
It is a fools’ errand to assume we can walk on, free and unburdened sparing no thought for the one that walked the hard and unforgiving road. Grief must be the constant companion of anyone who would be born deeper into life if they are not prepared as the Buddhists are, to part also with the sense of Self.
If we want to be awakened, and we want to actualise as a ‘Self’, we need to learn and practice grieving and letting go. We cannot be conscious and remain as we were, we cannot be loving and feel nothing in the parting and loss.
Of course it is painful. It doesn’t mean something is wrong. It means you know you are growing and that you know how to love.
Choose this.
Hearts Break, Heart’s Mend. Let Yours.
Hearts break when we try for too long to love around our deepest wounds.
Sometimes trying bravely to love around the wounds, is love. And it took great courage and grace to be this way, because the wounds were not trivial.
No one told us, we were supposed to love ourselves too, and sometimes the greatest form of love is letting yourself stop; stop loving around the wounds, stop fighting, stop loving so bravely, stop breaking.
Do the bravest thing; Be broken.
Crumble.
Be broken and let the pieces fall. You cannot love around those wounds any longer. Now you must love through them, and you must BE loved through them.
That’s what wounds are for. That is what they always were for. They feel like they are in the way. Look again, better yet, feel. They are the way.
Rumi said: “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
If we let our hearts break. This is how we let them mend.
Let yours.
You have all the power. You always did. Real power is the courage to be unmade. Our promises need to be taken from us, and our hearts need to break to allow us to belong to a wider, deeper life.
I know I always say that no one else is coming, but you yourself were always more than enough, the truth is you don’t actually need anyone else. We all need people, but not to save us. We save ourselves. You know this.
Share this with whomever has a breaking heart, or whose has never fully mended. It is time.
What a beautiful and at times heartbreaking journey the soul goes through, simply to find itself ❤️