John Seed and the Council of All Beings Part III
(Page 7 of 10)
May/June 1989
By Pat Stone
MOTHER: Still, you're saying that you have seen higher experiences at a Council.
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Seed: That's right, it happens. Sometimes one person will have an intense new experience that will just sweep everyone else into that level. The air will feel thick with energy, and there'll be a kind of group catharsis that will leave you with your heart pounding.
I am Spiderwho lives by the creek.I have patience.I create a web and sit there all day,waiting for an insect to fly by.To humans,I give the patienceto just sit still andlisten to the creek running by.Listen to the stories and songsit has to tell you.Watch the birds that play in itand the flowers that wave at itand the trees that fall into it.just sit and listen.
Of course, just the fact that every weekend now a group of people come together with the shared intention of healing their relationship with nature is a pretty profound thing in itself. It may not always be necessary to have a singularly powerful experience to start to realign one's life in harmony with the earth. People may just come out of the Council saying, "I'm going to refuse plastic bags at the supermarket," or "I'm going to bicycle to work instead of driving a car." Unless we start making our lives sustainable by doing things like that, it doesn't matter how many spiritual experiences people have.
MOTHER: John, when you talk about spiritual experiences, it makes me wonder: Are you trying to create a religion?
Seed: Create a religion-that's putting it bluntly. There's no doubt in my mind that we are related to the planet in the same way leaves are related to a tree. In my mind, that's not a religious perception-just the truth. I know we weren't created 6,000 years ago by an old man with a white beard. We weren't created by spaceships coming down and fertilizing some orangutans. The story of evolution is my creation story.
I believe that humans can have the same incredible spiritual experiences through ecology and nature as they do through Christianity or Buddhism or so on. And in my opinion, allowing one's religious feelings to arise in the context of nature and evolution is the only thing that can unite us as a planet.
MOTHER: Where is your work going next? Seed: I still take part in nonviolent protests. Just before I left Australia, I was part of a group that buried itself in a cave deep in the mountains of Queensland to stop a limestone company from blasting for cement. But I'm trying to find a balance in my life between that kind of direct action and working on the spiritual level-because I do believe that what we're facing is primarily a spiritual crisis. The ecological crisis is primarily a crisis of values and of identity.
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