Light Seed Truth

In human experience, God isn’t the only “thing” that can’t be measured or otherwise scientifically proved. Our worlds are filled with essential things that are neither matter or energy, among them thoughts, memories, sensual delights, and gut-level feelings. Think of hope, desires, love, the sound of music, the taste of food or wine, the thrill of victory, sensations of comfort or pleasure itself. Just what is the size of any of those, anyway? The list becomes nearly endless, even before getting to physical causes.
Across the ages and cultures around the globe, people have turned to a figure of speech known as metaphor to give voice to these, receive confirmation, and find guidance. “You are my sunshine,” speaks of far more than dawn or a getting a tan. It may even lift your day or lead to marriage. For the early Quaker movement in mid-1600s Britain, the three metaphors of Light, Seed, and Truth opened an innovative path for personal and societal transformation.
This in-depth examination of metaphor in their hands will enhance your own awareness and spirit as well.
As I explain, metaphor embodies qualities, principles, and values — secular and sacred — as well as feelings and emotions.
Metaphor, in going beyond the mere comparison of two different encounters, brings a less brainy way of thinking into our awareness. It can even become a means of unifying and renewing. There is never a final answer in its mysteries, but rather opportunities for individual and group ongoing discovery, renewal, and connection.
This close look at the writings of the original “Children of the Light” and “Seekers After Truth” in turbulent mid-1600s Britain finds fresh insights for application in our own times. Psychology, after all, didn’t exist when the radical movement became better known as Quakers or, more formally, the Society of Friends, spread forth with an alternative Christianity that reshaped their personal lives, daily actions, and tight-knit communities of faith. Given the deadly consequences of the blasphemy laws of the period, they dared not voice their perceptions fully. What they did express was shocking enough to provoke harsh persecution.
The Light, Seed, and Truth they voiced weren’t physical objects we would know — nouns, especially — or even energies, as verbs, although they reflected real-life aspects. Metaphor, at its best, instead compresses overlapping layers of thought and experience into a universalized image — just what light or seed we want to envision is, after all, left open to personal choice. All of these enrich the metaphor and its applications.
While those everyday understandings apply here, by extension, our Light, Seed, and Truth are not like anything but rather stand uniquely in their uniqueness. Their understanding of Light, for instance, became infused with the ancient Greek philosophy of Logos. As you will also see, the three metaphors form an interlocking system, ultimately blending into a oneness. It’s what Quakers came up with in place of a systematic theology.
I’ll admit that while Light and Seed conjured up many visual images to draw on, Truth was more challenging to perceive as a metaphor. In some group exercises I led, fascinating representations did come forth. While they lacked a natural fit, they added to the content of the metaphor. Seeing Truth as a verb, meanwhile, led to amusing reaches, such as “I truth you!,” the expletive “Truth you!,” or “truing” a situation, all of them softening the monolithic static concept where we began. You will likely be startled to find where we landed. Let’s just say this Truth is one that nobody can claim to “own.”
The findings aren’t confined to history, either, as the metaphors present keys to today for personal development, self-awareness, mindfulness, ethical fidelity, relating to others, conflict resolution, spiritual practice, focal points for meditation, and well beyond.
Imagine how they’ll work for you.