he gave $10 (& got SEEDS in thanks). soon they were worth ~$2700 🎁
This holiday season, I want to be sure you know about this way to build abundance - for yourself and others - through giving.
So I've had to use Seeds twice to ask for help when I didn't know where else to turn.
The first time was almost 5 years ago:
Largely because of discrimination in venture capital (over 98% of funds go to male-founded organizations, and it's not getting any better, which is part of what Seeds is working to transcend) I had had to pour much of my personal funding in to Seeds over the years to get it going, and to keep it alive.
Then, in late 2019, the two main income streams for Seeds simultaneously dried up. Seeds hadn't been paying me a salary - I gave that up to reduce costs - and with this change, I couldn't afford to keep Seeds going and also cover rent myself.
It took me a bit of time - like a lot of women, I was so conditioned to put my own needs last that it didn't even occur to me to try this until every other avenue was exhausted and I was still short. But I came to realize that I had to use Seeds to ask for help.
One of the people who gave to my need back then was a friend. We'll call him C. He was the person who told me about clown, which led to my going to France to study it…and my ultimately getting kicked out of the clown school there lol…but that's a story for another time. C had previously received a gift from Seeds.
For fun, this was the French clown teacher who expelled me, but yeah :
Phillipe Gaulier
C was facing financial challenges of his own when he helped me, and was “only” able to give $10. But it's the volition, not the size of the gift, that counts.
As ever, those who help someone through Seeds receive SEEDS cryptocurrency in thanks, and his one-time gift garnered him $10 worth. Just outside of a year later, the $10 in SEEDS he had received were worth nearly $2700 as the market soared.
Because of his kindness, as channeled through the design of an economic ecosystem which empowers people to build wealth through giving, he received what turned out to be a significant financial return.
And friends, isn't that the type of economic ecosystem this world needs? One in which people build wealth because they give?
To be clear, past results don't guarantee future performance, etc. C's SEEDS hit that value near highs, and it should be said that in order for Seeds to thrive, people must contribute to the ecosystem. We need more folks to add to the Seeds mutual aid pool, which can garner them additional rewards in the form of bonuses, surprise airdrops, and earned fees. It also helps when folks buy SEEDS on the decentralized market, because that brings value to the ecosystem and all who have contributed to it.
But most of all, it helps when you give.
**
Fast forward to late 2024.
Maybe you've heard me speak about the concept of the 'Spiral Course of Progress.' A few years ago I learned that this is the way the planets move through the solar system, contrary to what I'd been told in school - revolving around the sun, but also hurling as a unit across the Milky Way at incredible speeds.
I think our growth as humans takes on a similar shape. It's not a linear “Hero's Journey,” like the narrative form Hollywood films typically show. We often revisit a progressed version of the same lesson, until we complete it.
Five years ago, I was in a very different place - financially, emotionally, and physically. I had recently gone No Contact or Very Low Contact with my immediate family of origin, one of the healthiest decisions I've made. If you grew up in a household with a narcissistic parent, you know that that step is taken only after everything else has been tried, in many cases over a period of decades, and only then if the child who was the target of the narcissist is able to get help and heal. (If you were that kid like I was, I want to send a lot of empathy and love your way, and share that Vipassana is what has helped me through it most).
So five years ago when I had to use Seeds to ask for help, I think my lesson was about setting healthy boundaries. This was scary because I sensed that if I did, many of the people in my life would leave it, because I was still aligning with a lot of people who had that strain of narcissism running through (oftentimes unconsciously), since that was familiar to me. What I feared ended up happening - I set the boundaries and they bailed - but I know now that it needed to, for their good and mine as well.
Through establishing those boundaries, and cultivating a clearer sense of my own worth, I found the strength to ask for help. I came to finally believe that I deserved assistance when I needed it. And you do too.
As a direct result of being brave enough to share about something that felt very vulnerable and advocate for myself - and then receiving a generous gift to cover my rent from the nice people who helped me via Seeds - the energies totally changed.
Within months, I suddenly had greater personal financial abundance than I had ever previously seen - coming from sources I never would've imagined, like free money in surprise airdrops because I had added to the Seeds mutual aid pool. A new course offering, now called How to Build Abundance in Cryptocurrency, was also doing much better than I could've hoped. Seeds soared as well.
Best of all, what we were sharing was helping more people.
By late 2024, after a lot of years of struggle and adopting a pretty humble lifestyle, I had cobbled together financial independence, which, coming from working within the biases of the old economic system, felt hardwon.
But recently, as maybe you've seen me share, I was robbed of what was, for me, a huge sum of money. The funds stolen were those I used to sustain myself so that Seeds didn't have to, and that I continued to put into Seeds when there wasn't enough sustenance coming in from elsewhere.
I think the most painful part was that I knew this theft of my personal money had to have been committed by someone Seeds had helped. Also, when I reported it to authorities, they wasted a lot of my energy time, and ultimately did nothing. The cop I spoke to explicitly told me that he would not act because I hadn't had “enough” stolen to merit his time.
Suddenly I was once again at risk of not being able to pay rent...but it felt so much worse this time, not only because I thought that I had finally triumphed over the danger of that, but because the theft was driven by such a strong malicious intent, committed knowingly by someone was chose to hurt me even though I had helped him. It really made me want to leave Earth, because the wounded masculine does this here, and it's a terrible thing.
I'm still processing a lot of negative emotions surrounding this. It's forcing me to be very honest about the rage and hatred that it's surfaced, both toward the bogus 'authorities' and the thief himself. But I also understand that through practicing Vipassana, eventually all of that will clear, and all of this means the need for new systems like Seeds is greater than ever.
So I understood that the universe, or whatever you want to call those higher energies that a lot of us have known to provide us with guidance, was nudging me to use Seeds to ask for help once more. To learn a few more things.
As my own growth as a person took on this Spiral Course of Progress, the lesson this time seems to be more refined. It isn't about my setting boundaries within my family or origin, but among a broader scope of relations, and within the Seeds community itself. The previous lack of those boundaries has been far-reaching, even going so far as to make it virtually impossible to find the good help we need to improve the product.
I didn't see it clearly before because I hadn't healed this enough to be able to, but through this experience I realized that there were many instances in which I was bending over backward for folks who weren't able to or interested in receiving what I was offering, and sometimes even had bad intentions. This was a pattern I'd learned growing up, and needed to release.
I really do wish those folks well and I definitely don't mean that I've behaved anywhere near perfectly in all my interactions - far, far from it - but I have a clarity now that allows me to see that I can't play out this pattern anymore. It was depleting me, it's also not good for others, and it's standing in the way of scaling Seeds to such a degree that the masses can transcend the old zero-sum economic paradigm.
So I really get that it's essential that I focus my energies on connecting with folks that want to support new economic options.
Generous people who want to see us come together to transcend the dysfunction in the old.
If that's you, I'm so happy we found one another.
So if you know what I mean, I humbly ask you to give. It doesn't matter how much. All that matters is doing so with a open heart. If you've given already, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Your gifts are already helping me to get back on my feet.
And I wouldn't be surprised, if this Spiral Course of Progress keeps on spiraling, that we're all seeing a huge uptick in financial abundance in the coming months and years. Perhaps even bigger than before.
Sending you love as we move into 2025. I know I'm not alone in sensing that it's going to be a transformative year.
With Gratitude,
Rachel