The Potential of the Seed

While my primary vocation is in the areas of corporate strategy, global technology architecture and the use of predictive analytics to predict human behavior, I receive thousands of emails from people asking me to show them how to identify their purpose and to help them overcome their fear in manifesting their purpose.

Modern fads such as the Law of Attraction (which I refer to as the Law of Distraction) layer extra pressure as they imply that success beyond anyone’s imagination merely requires that one think about it and it will happen.

Ahhhhh ….. if it were only that easy.

I recently came upon a quote from Osho that I believe everyone should read as they strive towards their ultimate potential. 

While Osho’s Life was not without significant controversy, there is wisdom in the quote that follows:

The seed cannot know what is going to happen, the seed has never known the flower. And the seed cannot even believe that he has the potentiality to become a beautiful flower. Long is the journey, and it is always safer not to go on that journey because unknown is the path, nothing is guaranteed.

Nothing can be guaranteed. Thousand and one are the hazards of the journey, many are the pitfalls - and the seed is secure, hidden inside a hard core. But the seed tries, it makes an effort; it drops the hard shell which is its security, it starts moving. Immediately the fight starts: the struggle with the soil, with the stones, with the rocks. And the seed was very hard and the sprout will be very, very soft and dangers will be many.

There was no danger for the seed, the seed could have survived for millennia, but for the sprout many are the dangers. But the sprout starts towards the unknown, towards the sun, towards the source of light, not knowing where, not knowing why. Great is the cross to be carried, but a dream possesses the seed and the seed moves.

The same is the path for man. It is arduous. Much courage will be needed.

I believe Osho has captured the perfect essence of humanity in these paragraphs.

Our unlimited potential is often beyond our own ability to fathom and believe.  How we get there has no guarantees and in fact, if we were told at birth what would be required to get there, I wonder if many of us would ask if we could be sent back for another 9 months to see if anything would change for the better in the meantime.

The path from germination to full blossom is fraught with opportunities for disappointment, fear and failure.

But unless we dare risk experiencing those things, then we will never experience ourselves in full blossom either.  We will remain the seed forever, waiting for the perfect moment that never comes.

If the rose, the cherry tree or any other plant decided that it didn’t have the courage or the interest to bloom or it wouldn’t attempt to unless it knew in advance what it would look like, our world would be denied incredible beauty.

The same is true if we decide we don’t have the courage or interest to blossom.

I can’t imagine a world without a rose or the cherry tree that blossoms in the spring.

Can you?

In service and servanthood,

Harry