Plant
“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity, and love.” – Thomas Merton
I love the first line – every moment and every event plants something in our soul.
I thought about the rest of the analogy of seeds being planted. In the gospels Jesus had the parable of the seeds, which landed on different types of soil and how some just shriveled and died, others sprang too life, but where withered by the sun, and finally some grew and prospered.
This matches up well with the thought that a person has to be in the right space or place for the knowledge and wisdom to be accepted. I think that many of us carry these seeds of wisdom in us, which are waiting for the right time to sprout.
I like to think that we carry all of these seeds of wisdom around with us waiting for the perfect time to bring them to life. I know that I have bought books, brought them home and put them on a shelf, because they drew my attention for some reason, but I wasn’t ready to read it. Then at some point in the future it was the perfect book that I needed with what I was dealing with at that time.
Our brains are full of everything that we have seen, read, or heard about in our life. All of these bits of information are seeds, which have come to rest in our minds. But I firmly believe that none of them are wasted, they are just waiting for the perfect mooment to spring forth with the wisdom that they contain.
I think that this is what the wisdom teachers mean when they say that we have all of the answers within. We have all of these seeds just waiting for us to be ready to grow. It is why it is so important to continue learning something everyday. You never know when you will come upon the one thing that will activate one of those seeds that has just been waiting to germinate and bring about tremendous positive change into our lives.
This is where the “overnight” success comes from. From the sprouting of those seeds. So get a little water and fertilizer and start sprouting some new ideas – who knows where they will lead you?
