I’m a seed saver. I never used to be. I never thought much about seeds until about 15 years ago when I started to garden.

Now, I’m not just a seed saver – I’m a seed sharer. I gather my seeds as part of the autumnal harvest and package them into holiday gifts for my core peeps.

Being a seed sharer matured my understanding of Ayurveda. From Ayurveda I learned the seed is the bija. The seed is the condensation of the consciousness and essence of the plant distilled into it’s most compact form. Out of the bija the unique manifestation of consciousness explodes.

The 10000 Things

From Taoism as a student of Chinese philosophy I learned the one becomes the 10000 things. I learned that nature, and our nature is exponentially abundant. Abundance is the nature of nature. Any seed saver will tell you they are also a seed sharer – simply because of the obscene abundance of the situation.

If your mental patterning (samskara) goes to scarcity – become a seed saver and seed sharer. You’ll kinesthetically reprogram your awareness to pick up the behind the scenes abundance of the consciousness that created you.

We all need to become Seed Sharers

(I’m borrowing this clip from my book – Body Thrive)

Just as each friend you have is different from the rest, each plant species in your diet becomes a new friend. Yet 75 percent of what humans eat today is generated by 12 plants and 5 animal species. Ouch. Of the 4 percent of the 50,000 to 300,000 known edible plant species, only 150 to 200 are used by humans.

Three plants — rice, maize and wheat — contribute nearly 60 percent of calories and proteins obtained by humans from plants. 32 The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) estimates that during the last century, 75 percent of crop genetic diversity has been lost, a phenomenon referred to as genetic erosion, as farmers worldwide have opted for (or been coerced into) planting genetically uniform high-yield seeds, using petrochemicals,
and monocropping.

That means that global industry and industrial agriculture has killed 75 percent of our agrobiodiversity in less than 100 years. Holy disaster, Batman! And we haven’t just lost the plants, we’ve lost a huge chunk of our bioculture: our local food production systems including local knowledge and the culture, skills, and even languages of women and men farmers. Not just harvested seeds are disappearing, but also unharvested species that we don’t know much about. It’s as if our planet is losing part of its brain to monocultured junk food and esl.

Loss of Seeds = Loss of Intelligence

Genetic erosion is linked to cultural erosion — and the loss of seeds linked to the loss of human culture or languages
globally. Indeed, cultures are diminishing like the seeds of so many plants. Linguists, for example, indicate that
60–90 percent of the world’s 6,800 languages will be extinguished by the end of the century. ( Jacques, Peter J. and Racine Jacques, Jessica. “ Monocropping Cultures into Ruin: The Loss of Food Varieties and Cultural Diversity.” Sustainability. mdpi ag, 21 July 2102. Web. 15 August 2015.)

With the loss of species and languages, we have also lost deep wisdom in how to prepare great food. How is genetic and cultural herosion happening so quickly? We have shifted from dynamic ecosystem collaborators to mainstream consumers. More people ask me, “What should I eat? ” instead of, “What should I do today to care for my ecosystem? ” It’s grievous how far down the path to consumer mentality we’ve come in just 100 years.

The data is in: if you want more control over what you’re eating, you need to get more involved with plants and farms. We must shift, one by one, from consumer to collaborator. The good news is that it’s really fun. The first step is to turn back to variety, the spice of life. Nature is trying to nourish you. Expand your horizons.

The Ridiculous Abundance Mindset

Each season of my life on this yogic-ish path I find I’m a little more attuned to what is going on. I’m learning. I’m waking up.

In this phase, I’m bewildered by abundance. I’m sure Rumi said it best- this natural state of reality of obscene plentitude. While scarcity and urgency are awesome tools for getting us to purchase and take action -and therefore we’re bombarded by the messages that life is urgent and abundance is scarce – reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

Some seeds take 100 years to pop into action. That is a lot of latency time. Some seeds require fires to get their juices flowing. Others are dependable like earth-spinning clock work. Seed harvesting gives us a number of easeful living messages. Messages like – we have time. We have way more than we could ever need, or want or use. We have more than we could ever even give away to all our friends in the world. We live in a plentiful, diverse universe.

Becoming a seed sharer has Becoming a seed sharer has changed me deeply. Many have said before we’re here on borrowed time, on borrowed resources. When you gift seeds you’ve collected, from plants you intentionally or unintentionally planted… or volunteers that caught your eye, you know you had very little to do with it all.

You didn’t engineer the seed (thank goodness). You may not have even planted the seed. You simply noticed. Stopped. Asked permission to harvest, and collected the bounty for dispersal.

The Subtle Shift to Collaborator

You made the subtle shift from consumer to collaborator. As a seed sharer, you’re helping the plant species survive and thrive. You’re now part of the solution, you champion of seeds. You’re tied into the history of humanity, of plants and the planet. You’re reconnected and you know it with each cell of your body.

The recipients of your seeds are curious. Your seed bags aren’t commercial. They are homemade little pouches. Nothing fancy. Just packets of intelligence. Packets of consciousness that evolved here on planet earth over 13.7 billion years. In sharing the seeds on the plants you’ve bonded with you further their line, you progenerative collaborator you. You’ve become part of the solution. You’ve made the shift. In doing so – you help others make the shift, slowly putting to death the scarce, urgent consumer phase of human consciousness.

Over Harvest the Invasives for More Ridiculous Abundance

Many of you know of my deep love of the “Wise Wild 13”. What I never expected is that my friends and course members would ask me to send them thistle seeds or dandelion seeds or lambs quarter seeds. After the last Yogahealer retreat in Idaho, dear friend and course mentor, Batool Merali, wanted to take home thistle seeds. My first thought is that the invasives don’t need our human help – they’ve got their spread dialed. My second thought is that spreading invasives is illegal due to the decimation they incur on native ecosystems. But I love the impulse to connect, honor, spread and share that which is nourishing your physiology. Gather the native plants you want to spread. Develop a relationship with the invasives already thriving in your hood. No need to collect and spread their seeds. Just harvest the heck out of them. You can enter reckless abandon over harvesting mode with the invasives. Do you need any more proof of the reality of ridiculous abundance?

In closing, thanks for celebrating the miracle of the seed, the bija, with me. Thanks for getting curious about which seeds you want to progeneratively collaborate with. What we notice, what we pick, what we package, what we share- it matters. Let the plants teach you about the ridiculously abundant and powerfully creative mindset. Let the plants change who you are and how you think. I promise you’ll be all the wiser. These highly adaptive, more than qualified, time-tested teachers are free, don’t charge a red cent, and are located right outside your door.