“I sow with every wind”
Yesterday evening I went out for a short walk. It was quite windy and raining a bit. A swarm of maple keys was approaching, some touching me, whirling high up, going even over the roofs of the neighbour houses. Then came another swarm, like swarms of locusts. We have a maple tree standing directly in front of our balcony. The leaves have gone and now it is time for the little “helicopters” to fly. I always thought that the maple keys on our balcony came from this tree but I now saw that the swarms flew a long distance, came from other trees at least some 50 meters away. I was astonished about this great Deva intelligence preparing first the leaves of the maples to fall and then, later, with the autumn storms, the maple keys are swarming out.
Maple keys in front of our house
Maple key on the balcony table
These little flying seeds made me think of my old French Larousse dictionary which I had used during my study times at the university. On the first page there was a publisher’s mark saying, “Je sème à tout vent” – I sow with every wind.
It fascinated me very much and it became a motto in my life – to freely distribute, be it what I learnt as wisdom teachings, be it the paintings coming to me or books. Karma cares for what comes back. Nature does not care or charge for “seed copyright protection” to finance the development costs or the shareholder’s purse, it freely distributes. Of course, artists or computer programmers want to survive and our society is not based on free giving. And what comes as free mostly is not free but carries a more or less hidden catch. However, giving money for something you get is an exchange of energy and can be done with an awareness of being free; you need not understand it as paying. Also the maple keys want fertile ground to grow after landing.
I yesterday read that in Switzerland more than 30 per cent of the people, especially the young ones, only consume “free media”, be it in print, be it online. Paying for quality content production seems to be out. The recent election whirlwind brought plenty of fake news with blunt lies. And there are many websites now producing twisted news – the more viral, the more effective and powerful. I recently read from Macedonian “fake news producers” which gain quite a lot of money with sowing these poisonous seeds infecting many ignorant people with their viruses. Not only elections become infections when bad seeds sprout to governments, to laws and to international relations. Other kinds of seeds are needed for a healthy harvest.
It demands a high degree of discrimination to observe, to discover the seeds of motives and not to get deluded in one’s ensuing decisions concerning what to do in these times of the Dark Age.
Good seeds often take a long time to sprout and to grow. Weeds grow much faster. The huge redwood trees grow over centuries. In my life I observed that it took several decades for the deeper seeds of wisdom to sprout and grow – and they had been sown not just in this life. The seeds are coming freely, the good ones and the others. It needs a good gardener’s work to take out the weeds and water the good seeds.