Not sure where to put this ... will let the structure emerge bottom up
Size
7135 bytes
Delta
—
''Back to [[SolSeed book]]''
=== What is SolSeed anyway? ===
"SolSeed," like James Lovelock's "Gaia," is a word we can use to describe the concept of "the body of all life on Earth." SolSeed is also the name of a small movement that began online in 2005. The SolSeed Movement is composed of members and friends whose respect for the body of all life serves as a deep organizing principle for their lives. We include members from across the United States, though most of us live in or near Portland, Oregon.
The word "SolSeed" is derived from the fictional religion of "Earthseed" described by Octavia E. Butler in her near-future dystopian novels, ''Parable of the Sower'' and ''Parable of the Talents.'' Butler's heroine and founder of the Earthseed faith, Lauren Olamina, paints a picture of humanity as the seeds of a planetary organism--seeds that would one day be capable of "taking root among the stars." But before we could do that, the human race would have to rise from the hardest of times, the economic collapses triggered by our own abuse of Mother Earth (among other factors). That's also what this book is about, even if it steers clear of such negative visions: healing our own living world, of which humans and our communities are an inextricable part, and going out into the wider universe to make new living worlds.
The SolSeed Movement is not a religion like Earthseed, but like Earthseed it hopes to incorporate some of the incredible persistence and durability that such institutions have demonstrated. It is in our nature to be impatient, to want to see a thing finished in our lifetimes, but a headlong rush into the future is far more likely to bring catastrophe than a well-founded realization of the SolSeed vision.
=== Disclaimer: Where Ideas Come From ===
Our culture has a fetish for originality and the genius inventor. In most cases, however, the context for an idea is more essential than the idea's supposed inventor. In many cases, the people who first recognize an idea are simply in the right place at the right time to make a connection that is newly obvious. In other words, people tend to discover ideas "whose time has come." For example, Newton and Leibniz both come up with the Calculus at about the same time. But if either of them had lived 100 years earlier, he wouldn't have had the context to make the necessary connections. Likewise, if neither of them had ever lived, we would still have the Calculus today ... except it would be credited to different people.
When we connect particular people with particular ideas within this book, it is not because those people "own" the associated ideas. Rather, it is a recognition that they have taken on a stewardship role to develop and disseminate an idea that comes from the whole, the body of all life--in our terms, from SolSeed. In their stewardship role they often collect related ideas and create material that makes it easier for others to experience the same insights they discovered.
[is the purpose to make it "ok" to plagiarize in our book? Why do we need this disclaimer at all?] We're not going to call out individuals within the text of this book because our emphasis is on a shift of consciousness toward thinking of the body of all life as an integrated organism rather than viewing the world as mostly seperate individuals. Where we are aware of deeper resources on a particular topic, we include pointers to those resources.
Correspondingly, the idea of intellectual property and even something as prosaic as plagiarism is somewhat confusing when taking a global view. Clearly we do need people working to push the frontiers of knowledge ...
The SolSeed movement is seeking to coalesce a small subset of the general population. This includes a strong basis in science and critical thinking. Combine critical thinking with an appreciation for the mystery of life and valuing certain spiritual experiences that lead to better lives (the oneness of all, mindfulness). Spiritual practice (mindfulness, empathy, ...)
SolSeed encourages each of us to take deeper root and to flower wherever we find ourselves. This includes the pursuit of enlightenment both individual and collective. We value deep insight into the meaning and purpose of all things and pursue practice that leads to a fundamentally changed level of existence where one's self is experienced as a nonchanging field of pure consciousness. a state of freedom from suffering, desire and ignorance ... "awakening" or "understanding" ... one realizes the non-duality of the observer and the observed ... a state of complete emptiness, a passage beyond the material world into a thought-transcending realm of non-duality and unconditionedness. It is a state where the ego and self have been transcended.
=== Religion: appendix or kidney? ===
Human beings tend to have a religion shaped hole. I don't know whether this was selected for by memetic and genetic evolution because it confers reproductive advantage or whether the tendency toward religion is more a biproduct of selection for other desirable traits. In the first case religion would be a kidney, a critical piece of a fully functional organism, there for a specific and clearly beneficial purpose. In the second case religion is an appendix, an oddity mostly ignored except when blocked with feces and it becomes a life threatening ball of inflammation.
=== Religion-shaped hole ===
For our purposes it doesn't really matter whether Religion is an appendix or a kidney. Identity is fluid and for millenia one of the most powerful forces shaping identity was that of the religious culture a person belonged to. Rather than trying to untangle the causal chain of how humanity and religions co-evolved, I'd like to assert that for most humans religion of some sort is part of their makeup. Given that life is intrinsically empty and meaningless, it falls to our minds to create meaning.
One way to judge the meaning of a particular religion is by its fruits. Are the people who are a part of the group happy, productive and free from suffering?
Surprisingly, it turns out that within nearly every religion there are common subgroups that emerge. At one end of the spectrum are fundamentalists for whom strict adherence to the code of the religion is essential. The fundamentalist seeks to protect the religion from compromising with and therefore becoming undifferentiated from the rest of modern life. At the other end of the religious spectrum in nearly every religion we find those who believe there are many paths to spiritual enlightenment and the path from their religion may not even be the best. These folks teach that bliss is available for all to experience directly and include an opening up and emptying out of self.
The fruits of the first group are confrontation and war. The fruits of the second group are peace and acceptance of diversity and a doctrine of the interconnectedness of all being. Identifying with this second group of religious practitioners, we recognize the deep meaning of Spiritual practice both individual and collective.