The first steps of Growth, for the seed and for the human heart alike, are falling, separation and breaking open.
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.
