Seeds For The Soul

Living As The Source Of Who You Are
by Chuck Hillig

Reviewed by: Stephen J.M. Bray

 

SEEDS FOR THE SOUL is perhaps the most ambitious book from Chuck Hillig who has written a number of elegant books introducing readers to the Advaitic tradition.

Advaita is a Sanskrit word which means undividedness. From an Advaitic perspective consciousness/matter; life/death; sickness/health are all unified as ‘not one, not two, and not many’. But Chuck Hillig invites readers to experience Advaita for ourselves, not as a concept, but as reality.

He comes closest to presenting Advaita as a concept when he writes: “The indivisible pretends to be divisible, assumes a point of view, and then struggles to, seemingly, regain what it had never really lost.” What is remarkable about Hillig, is that unlike many writers within the Advaitic tradition it’s clear than he cares deeply about the world and the people he encounters.

This is just as well because when not writing Chuck is a licensed marriage and family counsellor.

For Chuck the key to effective therapy resides in providing safety for people to fully complete their relationships with life in its many forms, including others and self. Seeds for the Soul is double value: it may be read as a student or as a seeker for Advaitic awareness, and it points the way to your true nature.

Read it as just a regular person with problems and it provides practical insight and help to enable you to enjoy a richer experience of yourself. Hillig admits that there are inconsistencies in the text, but then there are inconsistencies in life and indeed in most religious or philosophical works.

So who cares?

In Chapter One Hillig asks the big question: Is life happening to you, for you, in you or as you?

Later he cautions us that life will mean to us whatever we say, or believe it to mean. It’s an elegant idea supported by our experiences of self-fulfilling prophecies and experiments in quantum mechanics. But thankfully Hillig does not refer to any of these! Instead he encourages us to be willing to swallow the entire universe and thus accept ‘what is’.

Later in the book he extols us not to chew too much. I differ with him here for I enjoy savouring, chewing, and inwardly digesting. But nevertheless Hillig’s message is still valid.

“The Universe”, says Chuck, “does not want you to be wishy-washy.” Just taking this one line and reflecting upon it for a week will reveal so much, and enable you to achieve even more.

The beauty of the line is that it’s written in simple language that we can all understand.

And this comment is true for the entire book. Some of Hillig’s insights are stark and obvious. For example:

Of all of the people that you’ll ever meet in your life, you are the only one that you will never leave…or lose.

And If you want new results in your life, then you’ll have to change your old beliefs.

And Our primordial fear is actually of being loved so completely that our experience of separation from others will dissolve entirely and we’ll disappear.

The book is a remarkable work, which gets better every time you give yourself the joy of dipping into it. Its simplicity adds to the profundity of its message. It concludes by quoting a campfire round that we all know, but in the context that old round is transformed and transported into a recipe for living. I thoroughly recommend Seeds for the Soul.

Black Dot Publications, March 2003. (Paperback) 276pp ISBN 1-55395-844-6