A Seed Metaphor For Change

I would like to share with you a metaphor that can be used to change the way you think about healing and personal growth. Just thinking about yourself under the umbrella of a new framework may be enough to shift years of difficulty and obstacles.

In the West, it is common to position ourselves and our problems in any number of cultural frameworks. These may be - in no particular order:

• Sin (I am a sinful person, or I have sinned)
• Class and politics (it is all against me because the system is set up that way)
• Personality types (I am too weak/ sensitive/ anti-rational, etc).
• Personality disorders (I am depressive, obsessive, anxious, compulsive).

Instead of the usual framework you use to consider your current mental difficulties, consider a different one - the one of the tree seed.

Consider the seed for a very big tree, for instance, an oak, pine or elm tree. All of the information to make a great tree lies inherent in that seed. Given the right conditions - light, fresh soil, and water - the seed will have no choice but to grow into the great tree it was born to become.

Now consider that that acorn - or that seed - falls into rocky and poor soil. Its roots go in, but it finds very little earth in which to nourish itself. It finds its position a little like a bonsai - constricted, it grows small, it looks unhealthy and distorted, and is weak from not having the proper supports.