Seeds of Love
An excerpt from the forthcoming book Original Love, by Glenn Aparicio Parry
In his new book, Original Love, Glenn Aparicio Parry delves into the spiritual origins and deeper universal meaning of LOVE.
Original love is love from the origin or Source, and as such transcends any limitations of time or space. It is love that has always been here and always will be here, love that is timeless and whole. Love is the most powerful force in the cosmos with the capacity to integrate the wisdom of the ages, including the feminine and Indigenous wisdom that was pushed aside in our relentless pursuit of progress.
Seeds of Love's Emergence
There is a revolution of love on the horizon. The seeds of love are ready to germinate.
This revolution is truly an uprising, comparable to a seedling emerging from underground, its tender green shoots reaching toward the light. The growth is new, but the seed contains the entirety of the plant’s history. Everything our ancestors have ever done, all their accomplishments, thoughts, prayers, hopes and aspirations, are contained in the seed of our future. All that has ever occurred has been in preparation for what is now sprouting.
The original roots of love are wisdom and compassion—more specifically, Indigenous and feminine wisdom and compassion. Indigenous and feminine knowledge have been with us since time immemorial. They are our perennial wisdom heritage. This knowledge resurfaces from time to time as necessary, just as perennial plants do in their season. At the moment, the world is struggling, mired in multiple ecological and humanitarian crises. Indigenous and feminine wisdom is returning today because it is needed to address these crises. This perennial wisdom needs to be listened to, respected, and embodied.
SEEDS OF THE DIVINE FEMININE
Much of what we call Indigenous wisdom today is related to original feminine wisdom. The origin of the cosmos itself is associated with creative feminine life-giving potential. Indigenous creation stories, such as Spiderwoman and Skywoman (The Woman Who Fell from the Sky), speak to this. Many ancient origin stories are feminine. It bears reiterating that women’s bodies are sacred conduits to the rhythms of nature. Women are our oldest connection to Earth, Moon, and cosmos. It is probably for this reason that the feminine is associated with wholeness and wisdom. Sophia, the Greek goddess of wisdom, is actually much older than commonly assumed, related to the Great Mother Goddess of the Bronze Age and earlier. Sophia appears in the Bible and in Gnostic teachings from the early Christian era as the female personification of wisdom. The Gnostics (literally from gnosis, or knowledge) held Sophia as a co-creator of the material world. Sophia, forced underground early in the Christian era, is a perennial symbol of wisdom who has reappeared throughout history. In the twelfth century, Sophia returned in Jewish Kabbalah symbology, alchemy, the Order of the Knights Templar, and the Cathar Church of the Holy Spirit. Sophia not only represents divine wisdom, but the activity of journeying back to the source for the purpose of the soul’s transformation.
The Gnostic, Jewish, and Christian traditions all contain elements of the Sumerian and Egyptian Great Mother Goddess. In the esoteric teachings of the Kabbalah, the Holy Spirit is associated with the Shekhinah, the Divine Feminine presence. The Hebrew noun Sh’khinah, literally means “the act of dwelling.” Yet the Shekhinah also implied a luminescent radiance, a “Mystical Eden,” “holy apple garden” or “great sea.” Like Sophia, the Shekhinah was exiled, along with Adam and Eve and all of humanity from the original garden. The wisdom of divine femininity was exiled by men mainly for their personal agenda of authority over women, a strategy that lacked compassion and inclusivity. The Divine Feminine is here to guide us back to the experience of sacred oneness with the entirety of life.
Indigenous peoples were exiled in a similar way feminine wisdom was exiled. Many Indigenous peoples, such as the Maya, fled to the mountains for safety, or energetically, pulled inward to conduct their ceremonies in secret. American Indian tribes outwardly adopted the practice of Christianity, while privately continuing to practice the old ways that honored the right of everything (all our relations) to harmoniously coexist. Even when traditional ways were forced underground, the people demonstrated resilience, holding onto their wisdom teachings.
DIVORCE OF WISDOM FROM SCIENCE
During Paleolithic and Neolithic times, Indigenous and feminine wisdom predominated. It was only relatively recently that the masculine emphasis on linear, specialized scientific thought uprooted perennial women’s wisdom. The main benefit of the feminine principle is that everything is held in relationship. The main benefit of the masculine principle is its bright light that separates and extracts phenomenon, allowing for close study. The linear, specialized thought of the patriarchy led to a dramatic increase in invention and technological innovation during the 16th and 17th centuries. Rational consciousness arguably served us well during that time, improving our standard of living, but as a result, we became fixated on wanting more and more technology, a trend that continues today. Only now are we beginning to realize it is dangerous to further technology without due consideration of its ramifications and consequences.
Ever since the invention and use of the atomic bomb on fellow humans in the mid 20th century—an action that clearly represented a complete dissolution of wisdom from science—rational thought has been, in the Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser’s term, deficient, potentially more harmful than helpful. With the splitting of the atom, Einstein remarked that “Everything has changed save our mode of thinking.” The splitting of the atom is symbolic of wholeness broken apart into fragments that cannot be put back together. Invention uncoupled from wise forethought is the crux of the issue. Thankfully, this is not the final stage in our evolution.
Love is rarely spoken of as a gateway to wholeness, kindness, and compassion for all, even though love holds that very essence. Love is too often viewed as an insular activity between two people. Yet love is a dynamic, foundational energy that connects the elements of nature together. Love cannot be broken down into parts, in the way rational consciousness operates.
The current breakdown in rational consciousness is akin to the principle of entropy we witness in nature and presages a breakthrough to a new form of relational feminine, loving consciousness. The fragmentation and general incoherence of today’s thinking will end, and thinking that is beautiful and harmonious will return.
SEEDS OF ORIGINAL LOVE AND WHOLENESS
Original love is the most wholistic form of consciousness yet to appear, for everything arising now was there at the beginning, at the origin, held in the wholeness of creation. What is original includes all that came before, and can also be new. The wholeness of creation is actually beyond linear time. Wholeness is “time-free.” I will elaborate on this point in subsequent chapters.
What is arising now amounts to a bounty of buried treasure—the suppressed gifts from the collective soul of humanity. The most obvious re-emergent aspects include the feminine qualities and with this, a renewed respect for Mother Earth and the traditional ecological knowledge of Indigenous peoples. Since feminine aspects are closely associated with life-giving powers and interconnected wisdom, feminine qualities are also a harbinger of love.
It is original love itself that is now re-emerging. Love, and its accompanying qualities of wisdom, compassion, care, and respect for the radically inclusive diversity of life—all that has been submerged in our consciousness—is now awakening and growing. The rise of the sacred feminine qualities are also bringing a rise in what we consider the sacred masculine qualities, for both feminine and masculine traits are two wings of a bird; for either a woman or man to soar, a mutual interdependence must be recognized, supported, and coordinated.
We are not yet at that place of mutual respect and harmony, but in the past half century, the status quo of gender relations has been re-examined and is changing rapidly, if not completely overturned. Greater freedom has been demanded not only for women, but for men as well for those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersexual, or asexual. Change has brought a stubborn pushback from those who feel threatened, but the momentum for this resurgence of inclusivity and wholeness cannot be stopped. Like water molecules approaching a waterfall, there is no turning back.
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Glenn Aparicio Parry, PhD, of Basque, Aragon Spanish, and Jewish descent, is an educator, ecopsychologist, and two-time Nautilus award winning author of Original Politics: Making America Sacred Again (SelectBooks, 2020) and Original Thinking: A Radical Revisioning of Time, Humanity, and Nature (North Atlantic Press, 2015) and Original Love is the third book in the trilogy.
This excerpt comes from Chapter 11, "Seeds of Love's Emergence" of his just published book, Original Love, SelectBooks/New York, publication date February 13, 2026.
The founder and past president of the SEED Institute, Parry is currently an adjunct faculty member of the California Institute of Integral Studies, the president of the think tank: Circle for Original Thinking www.originalthinking.us and the host of the Circle for Original Thinking podcast. Parry organized and participated in the groundbreaking Language of Spirit Conferences from 1999 – 2011 that brought together Native and Western scientists in dialogue, moderated by Leroy Little Bear. Visit https://glennaparicioparry.com/. .
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