22 December 2025 (Winter Solstice)

Eli Gold
Dec 22, 2025
14 min read

"Seed-Sourcing" is a collective open-writing practice.

These texts are process-documents - meaning they are spontaneous (written in 10 minutes or less) and utterly unedited. They are intended to be read only in the spirit of their context (i.e. - not treated as 'literature', but rather a trace of an immediate arrival in the moment, belonging solely to the shared practice).

ROUND 1

Introduction : the Invitation of Winter Solstice

Some things only happen in the dark.

Life begins in the dark.

This season is dedicated to hidden happenings.

To the dense, dark earth.

To the quiet needed for listening to the most subtle and sensitive voices.

Things are happening under the surface.

Possibility is silently fostered now.

This season is shaping what will emerge as light comes back into the world.

Round 1 : Dying (instructions)

Write what is dying in you.

I am not asking what you want to intentionally release. This isn’t about intention.

Recognize what is already happening.

Observe the changes in your life, the way it is evolving -, and witness what is already in the process of dying, of dissolving, of departing from your way of being, of making, of relating, of loving, of choosing.

All that is dying becomes compost, enriching the soil of your Self and your Life as it dis-integrates.

Write what is dying in you. This is your ground.

C - My skin… particules - écratinures The fire in my belly reaching out to not be aside – Not be abandoned – not be shut downVieillir – Murir – s’endormir Fragments of control – Shoulder Heals holes in my knees – this hole is clean – Not knowing which one is it – holding on the memory that happen – but which one – my body knows – not me anymore Pieces of previous loves – part of caring bodies – memories – fragments

In search of her guidance that leaves the surface of the planet –

far far far away -

Fading

R:There is a gate, in the horizon.

I can see it well, I understand how it functions.

I placed it there last year.

That gate is the entry into the purified field of reality.

The gate has certain protocols.

Protocol 1: Observe all the veins of belief. Observe the veins of attention that continuously feed the world around you, in its objective, common, conventional configuration.

These veins continuously pump out all your blood of attention.

Protocol 1 is about becoming aware of them and withdrawing that force… reclaiming it.

What died in me?

What is dying in me…

I believe less and less in the reality of what is outside the gate…

I believe less and less in this conventional, objective, natural world.

There is a house in a swamp. It is built on wooden stilts.

It is not possible to leave this house, for there is nowhere to walk without mud.

Eli likes to keep a clean house, and she has become exhausted by the scraping off of mud each time she leaves and comes home.

Over the years, she built additions to the house to handle the scraping off of the mud.

Antechambers.

Each has a collection of objects for their collection of acts.

First with strigils, metal hooks for scraping.

She used to use a similarly fashioned object for her childhood horses, who loved riding through the mud.

She is raw up to the waist with the daily scraping.

Then with buckets. And sponges. And all manner of soaps.

She has crafted many recipes of lotions and creams and balms for the rubbing required. There has been so much rubbing required.

Then with towels.

And fresh clean clothes for her fresh clean house.

She likes the swamp. It is full of life. The most rare and exquisite flowers. Flowers she is convinced that only she has seen. And birds. And fish. And birds. And fish. And birds. And fish. And snails.

She has negotiated a pact with a family of birds to carry visitors in and out from an opening in the roof of the house. Sometimes she even leaves and comes back with the birds. She pays them by allowing them to lay eggs in her throat. It is the softest, warmest, safest place for incubation. Consequently, she cannot speak.

The trouble with the mud was too much trouble. So she stopped leaving.

The birds bring her anything she needs.

Consequently, she did not know that for several years, a tree has been growing under her house. It has grown to reach and wrap around the house.

The roots have dried the mud, but not before the stilts began to rot and fall away.

She has not known this is happening. She has been busy harboring the eggs in her throat and welcoming visitors.

The roots of this tree have grown so wide that the swamp is no longer a swamp. It is something else.

This is the ground

The slow process of dying, its been months since the dissolving became evolving.

Rooting beneath the soil

There have been roots that spread through the centre of the earth, that travelled back towards the southern hemisphere. We had to return there. This didnt seem like a choice, it felt like a pull to understand what versions of myself have already died yet still needed to be seen and touched by those who knew me.

My mother, my father, my brother.

This process of dying needed severance

Which I am choosing to see as reverence.

The one who gives prizes to potency!

The one who sacrifices her specific needs,

Giving and giving

Unquestioningly.

The one who cannot trust her intuition

completely.

The one who compromise her peace,

Insisting

to give life to the dead bodies.

There is a child lost in the wilderness who has wondered for decades and the random points of light in the sky’s patterns are about to make sense for the child's brain. The child can feel the end of the unknown is nigh, but not yet.

atrophy

Elasticity is dying

Metabolism slowing

Flexibility becomes rigid

Strength fades

more rapidly

Mentally less flexible

Spiritually less pliable

Some of the closest to me have died in a gradually accelerating slope to a vertical asymptote

It is a gift to be able to prepare for the inevitable

It is torture in the same.

ROUND 2

Round 2 : Receiving (instructions)

Write what is arriving in you - from the world - that you welcome with your arms, ears, eyes, heart, hands, and spirit open.

It is easy to look at the world and want to shut it out or shut it off or shut it up. There’s a lot of suffering and injustice. But try, for right now, to focus only on what you see happening in the world that brings you great joy, great enthusiasm and excitement to be alive in this moment. It does not need to be only human activity or happenings.

I am not asking you to write about what you hope will happen. Or what you feel is possible. This is about acknowledging the beauty that is already happening.

Write anything you witness around you - and say Yes to, receive fully.

This is the water circulating, arriving into your ground - softening the earth, bringing minerals, and all the conditions that will allow life to grow.

C - The crack of a match - une allumette – Feeling being « La petite fille aux allumettes ! » the darkness meeting the light ! The light through the curtains It’s a sunny day – The sunny douy A way of seeing it - It’s my way of seeing it The sound of the wind in the fire The fire that keeps the heart beatingThe fact of staying – staring at the darkness – digging deep to finally hear this sound – the one of the allumettesIt seems insignificant but the fact of not using much energy – just an « allumette »

Allumer – rallumer – fabuler Fabulate the matches - Matches – a passionate fight Matches – Fitting together Matches – Be Harmonious – one the way for it – Together

I can set my attention onto something very difficult.

“Love is dying.”

What do you observe in saying this?

I cannot find the one I love.

My father has abandoned me.

There is no experience that implies a sentence.

“My beloved is far.”

What is the experience that you believe may correspond to that?

Everything feels so difficult, so entangled, so ugly…

We had a difficult discussion that ended in withdrawal and closing of the heart.

What does this imply?

We cannot seem to find our way through this…

Consequence 1: “I’m sad.”

Show me your sadness

Consequence 2: “What a wonderful conundrum this life is… I shall pierce through it!”

Go ahead!

Consequence 3: “I don’t know what will happen next. I am afraid…”

Who taught you how to read what fear is? Is it a feeling? Maybe you mistake it with joy. No? Are you sure? Look again. Put some glasses on…

I have a better idea:

Let’s pierce your skull with a giant rusty spear… and call it fear and sadness. And then we can dance in the rain and call it mathematics.

Is there something in particular that you need to pay attention to?

Flowers.

And bodies. Fleshy and naked miracles.

They do not even try to hide their unlikely marvel.

The red that leaves the tube in my arm, filling the egg and emptying -

is the same red in all mammals. All mammals (at least).

All creatures that hold their young to their breasts and bring forth milk.

All creatures that wag their cocks into the wind and bring forth seed.

We have inside all the colors of the turning sky.

I welcome these shades into my ground.

They will make stones, precious stones, of the same colors.

And in generations, this body, my ground, and all it has left behind will be mined. Carefully. Surfacing the secrets formed in the dark.

One of the eggs in Eli’s throat hatched while it was inside.

This has never happened before.

The birds are very careful to check daily on the sounds inside the shell to know what life is happening within.

They take them out, one by one, by gathering their wings together at Eli’s throat and flapping wildly until the eggs rise to her tongue.

Her library is full of nests. She empties her mouth into them.

But today, one of the eggs hatched. She felt a tickle, a cry, a wriggling and sharp ticking pin. She ran so quickly to cough into a nest that she tripped and fell through the open window.

She was not worried. The mud is soft.

The birds all came to catch her before she struck the now-rooted, hard and firm ground. (what kindness!)

The hatchling came rolling out as her body landed.

There is a river in a forest. And a tree house, that is her home. And all manner of ways to walk again.

J:Eye contact. Direct eye contact.

Can I receive it without looking at the gift directly in the eye?

Can I receive without suspension of disbelief or suspicion of unworthyness?

My eyes need to be fully open to see what is already happening.

My heart is wide, widely wildly open.

That I am being moved by all the humans, the tides, the forests, the weather, the seasons, the decomposing matter. Moved to show up as the light that I am. This light that is.

The currents of love swelling with the tide brings all the flotsam and jetsam from the far far far surfaces of all the oceans to this shore.

It's washed up and gently, quietly, intentionally placed in front of my bare feet so I can look at it, feel it, see it, share it by claiming it for my evolution, for our evolution.

Yes to showing up, yes to listening to my unwavering intuition.

Yes to breaking the patterns and cycles.

Yes to holding the space with kindness, generosity and gratitude.

Yes to seeing the fears clearly and choosing a different neural pathway.

Yes, to listen to that voice that knows what is meant for me, for us and the evolution of this life.

This kid is terrified. Petrified at the unknown.

(the best one in the series called it ‘it the undiscovered country’)

Exhausted by the past and present. Pre-fatigued by the possibilities.

This kid can feel the understanding simmering from within.

The constellations form and have meaning

The child will still be alone in the void of the wilderness but soon with direction

simmering

The pressure has built and the waters grow

The molecules are moving, consuming more space now

The pressure compounds to heat, and the container compounds to more pressure

More heat.

The waters grow

Steam

Gurgling

Boiling

The kettle will soon be screaming.

Transfiguration

Phase change

A change of state ( bienvenue)

What phase is next

The child is not delusional. It knows it will still be a child, but it welcomes the new phase, in absolute dread.

I had lost my sense of place.

Immersed in the world of conversation.

I see myself surrounded by the sea

On a small rocky ground

Beneath my feet.

I got close to the water

As it was withdrawing.

Touched it

Gently

Just a hello,

For reconnection.

Now it rises around me

Without warning,

Forcing me to let the water touch my bare body

When I’m not yet ready.

Passing through.

There is no time left

For postponing.

There was no fear left in me,

Just the joy of unpredictable

Unplanned joining.

ROUND 3

Round 3 : Gestating (instructions)

Here in the dark, in the winter, in the wild - there is activity under the surface of the soil.

It is the time of the rootwork.

Existing plants and trees are growing through their roots.

What is strong and alive will strengthen through the roots these months,

With all the help of the fungal mycelium, assisting with decay. And time.

The soil is gestating.

Many seeds have fallen into the soil. Not all will survive. Not all have conditions to survive. Not all are meant to survive.

Observe what’s happening in your life at this time, in this season.

Try to listen to what the soil is prepared to nurture.

Which fallen seeds have fallen in the right place at the right time? Which seeds will survive?

Which will you protect and nourish so that they pierce the surface this spring?

I am not asking you to plant intentions.

That is an agricultural approach - manmade, controlled, strategic.

I am rather asking you to look at your life and what it’s made for. What are you feeling called to carry? All that has happened has prepared you for growing something. Try to listen to the seeds that are held in the dark and coming into their song. The seeds that will survive the season. That will not only survive the season - but even be ultimately activated by the dark.

Write what you see and feel silently yearning to live, waiting, slowly coming to life in the dark of your soil.

C - Following my own creation – and if you’ll shine… What if ?

From some notes of piano – this canon is caring me -

Pachelbel is holding me to trust stronger

All together – Praying – Breath in – Leave it to the ground – Collecting the leaves – Opening the chest

A canon

A cannon

Etre canon

Fun enough to let a smile appear Bright enough to pierce through the clouds - full of fears Shining enough to swim in the tiny tiny stream

In need of changing shapes feeling to big for that stream not wanting to touch the bottoms of the streams begging for a gentle ride – maybe a fun one

Would this become an underground river – the ones that flows through caves – well :

Où sont mes allumettes ? Where are my matches ?

There is a movie called “Love me if you dare!” – Jeux d’enfants.

It is a very violent, passionate love story… that becomes impossible and so they decide to die together, with a giant mass of concrete poured over them…

A bit like Romeo and Juliet. They chose to die…

I understood why.

Someone might go through terrible heartbreak. “Where is the one I loved? Where is the love? Why can’t I find it anymore? What happened? How it is possible that something so exquisite, so divine, to be muddied, to be lost?” and all that.

But someone else, in this very situation, can stretch their hand such that it reaches right into the fucking spine of whatever love is. While the hand is firmly inside, pulling strongly by all the plasma threads…

one can speak with blood ejaculating from their pupils…

“I know you, Love, and I choose you… and if this world says you are no longer… then I shall cease this world alltogether.”

And this is even more fun when one really understands what death is…

I still have my fist into the spine of Wild Fierce Brutally Divine Love and whatever the fuck you are… you have no means to decide what is real for me.

To understand death is to be able to enter the cessation of the world… not to kill some body, some particular bodily configuration that Merry Christmas to you too convinced you to somehow identify with. But how did they do that? They have discouraged your freedom of expression by telling you that expression is only real if it corresponds to facts, to reality… Fotia has some friends but we call them imaginary friends and kindly tell her that she will go over this phase.

My daughters shall not play with small definitions of death. If I play with death, I play by my rules. I have a certain caliber of bullets.

The heart decides reality. Ok?

Paths are made through the forest by walking. A line made by walking. (Ask Richard Long.)

Eli is ready to walk again. Ready to draw again, the lines of transiting hither and thither, to and fro.

She will walk blindfolded. It will help her know the forest - the next realm made by grace, asking her to move. Move. Draw. Draw your paths. Draw as many paths as you can.

Soon the warm blooded will come. The ones with the mammary glands - the fountains of milk. The ones who know to synchronize the pump of the blood with the white spurting love. The smell of fur. The smell of fur against the face. And the smell of the skin under.

Eli is walking with her eyes closed, following the smell. Wherever she finds the smell of fur and milk, it is safe to walk. And the sounds. The birdsong. The birds will not lead her to danger.

Eli will take this knowing - color, touch, sound, smell … I will take this knowing in the places shaped by steel prisms of pragmatism and hope of power. To give them something else to feed on. The factory. The church. The parliament. The marketplace. The slaughterhouse. The prison.

There is a growing knowing of the way a body asks for warmth. Asks for milk.

The pain, the tangle of pain, has been weaving. Like the tree growing without her notice.

An acuity of feeling. A tender spore to land on the hardest body. The asphalt, the concrete, the loudest doubt. And still take root.

What makes the darkness an acceptable place to sit with, sit in, be with?

Is it the knowing that the sun will eventually return and bring light?

Or is it a place that can bring deep comfort, rest from the visual stimulation, rest from distraction.

More often than not I feel comfortable in the dark during periods of gestation. Even if it often feels raw, open, endless, sometimes like a bottomless pit, sometimes like an abyss, sometimes like an expanse.

I prefer that state of gestation.

The quiet internal, pensive states of existence that require observation and non attachment to outcome.

There were years where I didn't spend enough time in the dark.

Those years I scattered my seeds somewhat carelessly.

From here I am called to take care of each seed, without the expectation whether it lives or dies. This fate is not in my control. I couldn't imagine that kind of responsibility.

Being called to live from my higher self means having let the lower selves die, decompose and become nutrients for the next generation of Self.

This is not a hierarchy. There is no judgment in this.

This is the natural law.

I am being called to resist less. Attach less.

Surrender more.

Love more.

More grace.

Independence

It feels like ages of supporting

And being solitary

Yearning to be part of something bigger

Foolish

The lost child is called to help but finally feels that is not possible without a moment of self support.

The constellations have meaning. The direction is clear and the child contently waits on the dry hard plane. The kid feels the cracks and ridges of the parched ground.

The moon has visited the sky for a time, cloudless and clear.

The child stays with the moon for as long as it takes.

Calm

The contained boil. The steam screaming

Its there.

But unanxious

Calm

After a brief eternity, the child will stretch and stand.weep and say farewell to this wilderness who has been a home and a prison.

Orienting. Bearing. Moving.

The horizon approaches.