A Letter from John Seed
26, April, 1991
Friends,
I'm presently in Japan, about to head down to Kyoto for a Council of All Beings and now I put the finishing touches on something I've been threatening to do for years; send this collection of letters, processes and poems and such I've received from folks doing Council of All Beings workshops. This is for free distribution, but only to those of us actually working in this field. If you are no longer active in this work, please let me know and I'll make sure you don't get future copies of such material (if I ever get around to doing this again!). Check out the address list. If you know of folks who should be down there but aren't, please put me in touch with them.
I guess I've facilitated literally hundreds of Councils by now and I never get bored and the sense of the importance of this work only grows and grows: it's clearly that only a total revolution in consciousness sweeping the human race in the next decade or two is going to give us the slightest chance to avoid utter ecological collapse and the consequent vast simplification of life on Earth. I can see nothing with more potential to trigger such transformation than reclaiming authentic ritual and ceremony which the Council of All Beings represents to me: unless we can slough off the shallow, fictitious selves that we've inherited and grow into our real, biological identity, unless love of Earth grows so strong as to enable us to quickly move into vast changes in our lifestyles and patterns of consumption WITHOUT a great sense of sacrifice which we're certainly not capable of, then complex life will soon disappear from the planet. And if it should be that the change DOESN'T come, what better way to pass these final days than in love and praise of Gaia and mourning for all that is slipping away.
Hence this offering back to you of all the inspiration that you've been to me. Please keep me and all of us posted on the work that you're doing. Please check the address list and let me know of anyone who should be on there but isn't.
My heartfelt thanks to Kay Grindland for editing, printing and mailing this out, and to Will Pipkin for helping Kay and masterminding the layout. Thanks also to Kurt Seaberg for allowing us to use his fine illustrations.
for the Earth,
John Seed