The seeds of potential are within us

Reading from Wednesday, January 23, 2013 yoga class

We have a friend, Bruce, who lives in Virginia.  He sent me a link to a story written by Liza Fields in a Roanoke newspaper.  When I read it, I thought... oh boy... this will be one of my yoga readings.  The title of the piece is the title of this post.  Liza begins the article with an Indian proverb:  All the flowers of the tomorrows are in the seeds of today.  She writes:

"They began arriving on the first day of winter... They delivered quaint old color-wash drawings of yellow squashes, tomatoes, blackberry canes and watering cans perched on a rock... snappy parsley, red roses and pastel-blue morning glories.  They brought potted lime trees and pines, mosses and ferns, arbors clobbered with grapes and snow-storm clematis, misty clouds of purplish weeping cherry and wisteria.  They called the mind to mountain huckleberry bushes, blackberry cobblers, and birdbaths full of blue sky.

Who were these winter guests?  The seed catalogs!  Those bindings of paper that, when you flip their leaves like a slow fan, pump oxygen to your spirit and hope to your heart.   Gardeners and growers may feel it best, but after all, there is a universal enzyme inside all people that is encoded with one clear call. "GROW!"   Sprouting.  Clearly, we humans have more growing to do here than a pole bean.  We have a chance to grow "big-minded."  The kind of growth it entails is disconcerting.  Researchers of wisdom growth say that each breakthrough stage is generally painful--a breakdown of the old, into a bigger one.  It often looks ugly.  You can see this happen around the world, today--old separate orders and systems collapsing, defensive reactions to preserve them, chaos everywhere.

But it also happens to you.  That should be good news.  Maybe you're in a deep crisis, grief or uncertainty, or suffering because others are.  Just picture that old seed husk cracking open, falling apart and rotting.  It hurts!  But take heart.  You aren't the seed husk.    Mary, Mary, quite contrary...

First... everyone begins life at an egocentric, survival stage.

Second... many people, but not all, move on to a clan-based focus... loyal to the gang/tribe.  They can carry long grudges.

Third...some people move on to more developed ethnocentric stage, sometimes called conformist.  Concern is with social approval, respectability, meeting the norm... what will the neighbors think?

Fourth... the world-centric stage can bring a global oneness, desiring cooperation, not domination.

Finally... the kosmo-centric stage... expand awareness to a very spiritual, practical, universal one...think Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama.  Compassion exceeds ego. 

Most of the world's population is currently at conformist stage or lower... BUT, we all have the seeds of potential.  We have lots of dirt and decay, plus the enzyme of "great need."  Surely our growing season is at hand."  

Isn't that great food for thought?  LOVE this article. 

Then it brought to my mind a song by Fight for Fighting, entitled "World"... a few lines from the song: 
                                                    
                                                      What kind of world do you want?  Think anything!
                                                       Let's start at the start, build a masterpiece!!!
                                                       Be careful what you wish for... START NOW!!  NOW!!