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.’

Vampires and Vultures

This is the second story I am writing about my personal experience in uncovering the shadow (see also ‘From Holy to Wholly’). I have some resistance to confessional writing because it’s just so ‘unprofessional’ and un-academic’ – but then again, those of you who have attended a Shadow Workshop with me will know that intelligence has been one of my masks, so in the interest of wholeness, and because the story contains lots of learning, here goes.

For some reason I arrived back from the DVD store last week with the film Twilight in hand. This is not my kind of movie, nor Garrick’s, so he looked at me a little strangely when the teenage vampire movie started to play. If you’ve watched Twilight then you know that it’s not big on plot, character development or anything actually, except smouldering teenage sexuality, or at least that’s what I saw. I found myself irrationally hooked on the sexy vampires, edgy music and dangerous intimacy. This would simply have been yet another reason for Garrick to spend his life teasing me had I not been doubled over with sobs by the end of the movie. And, no, this was not because it (really) was somewhat of a waste of a rare movie night.

The high school context of Twilight with its typical prejudices, emerging sexuality and youthful beauty managed to open up in me a host of adolescent pains mostly to do with not being pretty or sexy or cool enough. I know this isn’t unique, but it was very real to me at the time of experiencing it and I did not express a bit of it. Though I look back on that time in my life as being fraught with hurt, I never shared, talked about or processed it. My high-achieving and very religious personality simply didn’t allow me to be that vulnerable or ‘not ok’. And so I buried it and have carried it around ever since. The ways in which that repressed hurt have limited and sabotaged me are too numerous and, frankly, too boring to mention. Suffice to say, the story of not being beautiful or sexy has influenced every arena of my life and no amount of awareness, cleverness or peak spiritual experiences could do anything about it.

So why did Twilight magically unlock the door? Have the writers infused the script with cleverly disguised transformative powers? Sadly, no. The fact is that in engaging with shadow work so much over the last few months I have been giving regular permission to bring to the surface what I have stuffed away. To the extent that I am aching for exercise! (Believe me this is new). Why? Exercise, too, is another way to let go of what you have been carrying. Up till recently I haven’t actually wanted to see and feel the pain of what I buried so of course I had no desire to exercise. No amount of willpower or discipline would have dominated that resistance until I internally allowed it (this is what we work with on Embody). Unless there is real, unambiguous and regularly demonstrated permission for something, you will continue to sabotage your efforts in that arena. Everytime I walk now, I re-frame the activity as an opportunity to release more of what I no longer need and to become fully alive. With that, authentic, context I simply love moving.

The main point here is this: if you give permission for something (like I have done by researching and teaching about the shadow, exercising with the intent to uproot the shadow etc) then the mechanism for achieving it is (a) irrelevant and (b) it will find you! Like a silly little vampire movie winking at you from a shelf in a shop.

One way (and there are many) to give permission to see your shadow is to attend the Introductory and Advanced Shadow Workshops that I am running in November (see www.angeladeutschmann.com). Those of you working with the wonderful Bird Cards (I’m getting new stock in next week) can also use The Vulture consciousness to take this further. Here’s to vampires and vultures taking us to the next level of joy!

Three Practices for Joy

A recent reading described the ‘Path of Joy’ to be one of the ways to God, or oneness. It compared this to some other paths to God such as religion, suffering or service. In the case of some of these more devotional paths, there is a clear and known set of rituals or practices to observe like prayer, fasting, studying a holy text or worshipping in a particular way. These practices become the steps and markers of the path and help the followers to navigate it. If you choose to experience oneness through the route of joy then many of those traditional rituals lose their meaning and appeal, in fact the very notion of a Path (which implies somewhere to get to) may not sit true anymore. So what are the practices or habits to cultivate if you choose Joy as your way of being?

1. The Practice of Self-Awareness (on the level of personality and beyond)

‘Above all, know thyself’ – Oracle at Delphi

Interest in activities, books, teachers and other promoters of self-awareness is at an all-time high. You need only look at the number and popularity of workshops, therapies and materials that in some way promise to help you get to know yourself to see that self-awareness as a value has become rather common. On one level, developing self-awareness can mean recognising your emotional patterns, coming to terms with your past, identifying your fears and desires, integrating painful experiences, healing your inner child, recognising your gifts or strengths, forgiving your resentments and being able to see what is truly motivating you in any moment. Modalities such as regression and family constellating also belong to this sphere of self awareness. It is vital (in the sense of being both critical and good for your well-being) to know about yourself on this level and any therapy or book or friend that reveals more of you to you is invaluable.

Yet, this is not where self-awareness ends. The work described above is all still done in the realm of personality. Psychology, and other related fields, has given us wonderful insights into personality, and how to identify, grow and even treat it. But personality is but one layer of the Self and, even if typically people presume that it is all they are, any truthful and committed enquiry will show that there is something else beyond the personality. How do we know? Because with observation and stillness you can learn to watch your personality and if that is possible, who is it that is doing the observing? I won’t hazard an existential guess at the name of that part of self that observes (some call it consciousness, others the soul) but practicing awareness, better yet practicing experience, of that part of you is essential to staying on the Path of Joy.

While getting to know your personality usually involves activity, or effort, of some sort, getting to know a deeper layer of self involves non-activity, such as the silence mentioned below but also, simply, the act of listening and observing yourself. Make some space between you and your responses, your choices, your habits and your language. Step aside for just a second to look and listen to your words, your breathing, your body, your actions. The more you train yourself to observe your personality, the more you can distance yourself from your habits and your pain and the more you begin to see that your personality, while a useful and loved element of you, is not who you are. The joy that this recognition, this gap, brings is beyond understanding (and is, by the way, the only true antidote to stress).

2. The Practice of Silence ‘

What is this life if full of care? We have no time to be still and stare’ WB Yeats

Most of us have heard about, or personally experienced, the power of stillness or meditation. Yet it remains an inconsistent practice at best, or a non-existent one at worst because it seems to be truly difficult to integrate silence into modern-day life. We have grown accustomed to high, even perpetual, amounts of noise and activity around us. That seems to be endemic of a modern, successful life. Yet so many of our answers, our peace, our purpose can only be allowed from the practice of silence. Try this practical system for integrating silence into your life the same way you have integrated brushing your teeth or putting on your seatbelt.

The first prerequisite for this practice is that you are not interrupted by anything, so it’s been suggested in the readings to do it in the bathroom, where it is quite socially acceptable to be on your own and uninterrupted for a few minutes even if you’re at work.

The second prerequisite is that you have no agenda for your silence. That means you’re not trying to empty your mind, you’re not trying to get a message, you’re not trying to de-stress or even meditate. You are simply quiet and soft. Just gently looking and listening until even those activities melt away. The moment you have an agenda, or begin trying to do or be anything, there is pressure on your system and you contract instead of what we’re after here, which is expansion.

This is an easy, un-intimidating way to do it:

Week One: 2 minutes of silence once a day (Set an alarm and do not do any more than 2 minutes)

Week Two: 4 minutes of silence twice a day

Week Three: 5 minutes of silence twice a day

It is easy to do this and so delicious that after three weeks you will be dying (so to speak) to have more and more. But start off by only doing these amounts above so that you are not put off by an unattainable, unsustainable practice.

3. The Practice of Honest and Lighthearted Sharing

‘A problem shared is a problem halved’ Unknown, English idiom

One of the observations I make time and time again in my Growth Clubs is how much lighter people are when they leave a session than when they arrive, even though very often we are working with difficult issues and demanding truths in sessions. Just the act of sharing what is going on with you at a particular moment seems to dissolve most of the fear or sadness or worry around it. I’ve seen clients laugh uproariously as they talk about their bankruptcy or their fear of being single for the rest of their lives, because when you tell someone, once again, you are making some space between you and the issue and it is usually within that space that you can see the solution or let something go.

There are two little tricks though: (1) the sharing must be deeply honest and (2) there must be some humour or laughter involved. Merely moaning about your circumstances (which is nearly always blatant or implicit blaming) with someone who will say ‘shame, shame’ or just support your blaming does not count as honest and lighthearted sharing. If you can’t think of any people with whom you can talk about yourself and your life in a raw, but light way there are plenty of groups to join, both virtual and not, which are designed to create that sort of space. As I look at my life through this lens, I realise with amazement and gratitude that these three practices have become my life, they are no longer just daily practices. If you’re committed enough to Joy then after a while it will be so for you too.

Life as a Dance

Consider being born into life as being placed into a dance studio. Like all studios this one has four walls, providing you with certain space, and also time, limitations. The studio represents duality. You can bemoan these limitations, you can fight against them and you can, indeed, leave the studio anytime you like – although if you bash down a wall to get out it will probably be more painful than waiting for the door to open in its own time. In actual fact the studio door opens more than once in your lifetime, but you will not always notice and will only walk through it when you truly choose so.

Mirrors cover every wall inside the studio and music plays, seemingly on its own, in a loud and powerful way. The mirrors represent the feedback, or reflections, to you from your environment. You can certainly choose to dance your dance – or live your life – with your eyes closed all the time. This will mean you do not see your own reflection, and that can seem as if it assists you to avoid pain. Sometimes it does. Yet you will never dance with full abandon or freedom if your eyes are closed because you will be fearful of getting hurt. So, paradoxically, in trying to avoid the pain of seeing yourself fully, you increase the chances of other kinds of pain, such as accidents, as well as the sharper pain of not dancing in your fullest joy.

You can also choose to dance with your eyes open and see yourself in the mirrors as you go along. This takes bravery, because you will not always see a reflection that you like. If that happens, it allows you the opportunity, simply, to choose again. To dance more and more authentically until you like how you feel when you look in the mirrors. While you are in this phase of your life, it is useful every now and again to close your eyes and give yourself a break from seeing your reflection. These are moments where you look inward, forget the world and its reflections, where you stop learning, stop improving and simply enjoy the blissful recognition that the dancer in the mirror is just a reflection and this dance studio is just a game of your own creation. Resting yourself in this way, every so often, rejuvenates and inspires you to continue creating a beautiful dance. If you become overly focused, or analytical, about the mirrors – in other words trying too hard to find the meaning in every reflection – you will forget to dance!

After you have respected and used the mirrors sufficiently to enhance your dance you will slowly, and naturally, begin to forget about them. At this stage you will be entirely focused on the joy of your own experience and will have become fully trusting of the feelings in your body to give you the feedback you need.

The music that is playing in the studio represents the circumstances in your life – what is happening ‘out there’. Sometimes a sad song plays, sometimes an exciting one, sometimes the song is to your taste, sometimes it is not. Sometimes you stop dancing when a song plays that you think you do not like. ‘Change the song!’ you shout and you stamp your feet or refuse to move until life brings you the exact circumstances (money, job, partner, government, state of health) that you presume will be in your best interests. You get more and more angry, or resigned, when you realize that neither resisting nor waiting succeeds in bringing on a song that you prefer. What can you do? You can dance anyway! You can begin to trust that you can create a beautiful dance (Self) even when it is a sad, or angry, or unsatisfying song playing at the time.

And do you know what the delicious secret is? When you begin to create grace, peace, beauty in your dancing – irrespective of the song that is playing – then you ‘tune yourself in’ to music of that nature and you begin to have an influence on the songs that are going to be played for you in your future! You will never be able to totally control the soundtrack of your life, and it is a waste of your precious energy to try to do so. Simply take note of the music and set yourself free to dance in your own sweet way. Even if your dance is full of grief, even if you are dancing to a song you never thought you could – don’t wait, create.

Just as with the mirrors, eventually you will not be obsessed with what music is playing. You will trust in your ability to dance, irrespective of the song. The music will fade into the background and you will focus your energy exclusively on dancing in the most magical way that you (not your culture, your religion, your family) can imagine. In this paradoxical, divine game, the studio, the mirrors and the music have seemed like your obstacles but have become your creative impetus.

So, dear friends, for now simply take light note of the song that is playing in your life right now, and the reflections that you are getting from the world and people around you – and use them to enhance your dance.

Optimistic or naive?

Garrick and I were subdued in the car this morning listening to the latest news on 702. What I heard was the crumbling of Zimbabwe, the compromise of our judiciary, public broadcaster and police; and key public figures saying that they would die – and kill -for the president of the ANC. Even for a Pollyanna like me, this is distressing.

Some of the people around me – close friends, family and clients – are seeing Africa (and South Africa is actually a part of Africa even if we do a good job of pretending it isn’t) getting steadily, and inevitably, more difficulty to live in. As a white person. (Though they don’t always add that).

Others – and often I’m the leader of this pack –  talk about the creative and transformative opportunities that exist here, and nowhere else and believe firmly that keeping our minds open, positive and keen will attract what we want. From this perspective, it would make sense NOT to listen to the news, not to stay in the room when friends start to prophesy African doom and not to give any head-space to anything other than my dreams, hopes and visions.

That would actually be easy for me, it’s my natural and deep inclination. Yet, a nagging voice chides me for being naive, prods me about the future of my (white, male) children and casts unwelcome shadows on my optimism.

The last group reading that I did addressed some of these concerns from these two perspectives:

• Global Renovation

Is the world the way you like it? Do the systems, nations, businesses of this planet operate according to your highest values? Most citizens of the earth would say No. We want a simpler, cleaner way of life. We want a world driven by values and not by commercialism. We want to co-exist harmoniously with our planet. And yet, when things start to change (electricity shortages, fuel prices) – even if they may well be changing in that direction – we don’t want that either.

You can compare this to having your home renovated. You are the one that was dissatisfied with how it looked before, and you demonstrated this by calling an architect or contracting a builder. You know that the renovations are going to end up giving you a nicer place to live in, and yet you are still inconvenienced and often severely annoyed by both the process and the cost. Understandable! 

Maybe we are renovating the planet, and maybe we are the ones who called for it.

The only way that I can see to work with this is to accept some chaos and upheaval, to let go of some attachments and to be part of influencing the design of our new home so that it looks the way you want it to look.  You can criticise all you like from the sidelines, or you can be an empowered part of the process, designing the planet you want to live in. If you are expecting ANY country, ANY government, ANY energy supplier, to make your life work for you, then that is a disempowered, albeit common, approach.

• Dominance and Submission

Only when Africa breaks its centuries-long cycle of dominance and submission will we heal the disparity that causes violence, crime, dictatorship, poverty and spiritual hopelessness. What that means in practice is that those who have – legitimately or illegitimately – managed to gain dominance, need to say no thank you to it, to bring others on board and share power and resources. The submissive cannot enable this. Only when the dominant party in any situation is prepared to let go of absolute power in exchange for absolute parity, will dominance and submission cease to be the only roles we know how to play.

The idea of global renovation and a short-circuit in the cycle of dominance does not make me feel that things are getting easier, but it does make me inspired to be part of a new world. If that’s naive, then I’m proud of it