True Wealth

by Gavin Mounsey | Mar 20, 2025

These are worth more to me than all the jewels, gems, silver and gold on Earth!

top left: Runner Beans, top middle: 16 different heirloom seeds (which I was adding to a slow cooker stew) including 12 different legumes and 4 different types of heirloom rice, top right: Hokkaido Black Soybeans, bottom left: Pawpaw seeds and fruit, bottom middle: Red Oak Acorn, bottom right: Shagbark Hickory seeds (germinating)

I would also argue that they are just as (if not more) beautiful visually. Also, you cannot eat gold, diamonds, sapphires or rubies… nor can you plant them in the ground and increase their value 100 fold in a single season, while also producing oxygen, building precious soil in the process and simultaneously increasing your health/emergency preparedness.

When these seeds shown in the picture above are combined with act of composting, it means you are contributing towards the fabric of an ancient, living, decentralized economic model. We invest our time and materials and the ‘asset managers’ and ‘investment strategy team’ (comprised of myriad bacteria, fungi and decomposing insects) invest molecules of biological currency for us, storing those units of currency in the form of fertile soil. We can then withdraw from our account through using the ‘key code’ that is embodied in a living heirloom seed we plant in that soil (which unlocks it’s potential and allows us to withdraw part of our savings account in that living soil/seed bank in the form of life giving food, medicine, oxygen and poetry for the senses).

Composting is medicine for the land and medicine for the soul. It offers us a tangible way to connect with and give back to the living planet that sustains us all. It also a form of wealth that necessitates ecological literacy.

One of the interesting things about acts like composting and saving heirloom seeds from plants you grow yourself each year, is that it is an act that provides an impetus to become decreasingly selfish and greedy while becoming increasingly generous, ecologically literate and kind.

from The Serviceberry : Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World By Robin Wall Kimmerer

 

from The Serviceberry : Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World By Robin Wall Kimmerer

As the Monster Of Modernity accelerates what has been called the profitable apocalypse, those who have always sought to look up to centralized institutions to tell them who they are and how to live often feel that they are without sociocultural identity.

The sick degenerative downward spiraling cycles of Big Ag and Big Pharma (artwork by Mark Wooding of “After Skool” from this video)

Others see this process of the removing of the mask that had been covering the depravity of the dominant institutions and modern industrial exploitative culture on Earth as an opportunity to participate in active ethnogenesis, co-creating a divergent regenerative culture and planting the seeds for parallel societies in the composted failures of the anthropocentric systems that brought us to where we are today.

We are forging alliances beyond borders and connecting in a way that transcends arbitrary statist borders with those that share a vision of regeneration, integrity and aligning with the inherent abundance of the Living Earth, severing our ties to that which no longer serves us and leaving this world more beautiful and free than it was when we got here for the next generation.

It would appear that the etymological root of the word Apocalypse would aptly describe the current unfolding of events. I feel this process of ‘revealing’ and ‘the removing of a covering’ is offering each of us a choice to either rise to an invitation/initiation to become our best selves (transcending that which held us back previously, co-creating emergent sub-cultures, embracing alternative ways of living, serving Creation and our family of humanity by working to leave this world more beautiful than it was when we arrived).. or we can choose remain attached to a corrupted system and dominant culture of separation headed for inevitable collapse.

There are some people in the alternative media space that see this collapse coming, but would like to convince you to buy gold, silver or invest in alterative cryptocurrencies in order to “protect your wealth”. The mentality that encourages one to horde is scarcity thinking, and while hedging your bets in a financial sense does have merit, placing all one’s eggs in the basket of depending transactional units of currency or precious metals to be able to pay someone else to do the work of feeding you represents its own kind of poverty.

What invariably survives collapse? What survives crisis? Community. Whatever you give and contribute into your community and you generate that goodwill, and you generate those structures of taking care of each other and reciprocal gift relationships, that is an investment you can count on. That is a savings account that fires cannot burn and thieves cannot steal.

From Gaia Organics seed website. For an extended list of Regenerative Gardening Seed/Seedling/Tree Sources for 2025 (for Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia) check out this post.

The best investment you can make is generosity, for the only thing that cannot be taken from you is that which you give.

Unlike minerals such as Gold Or Silver (which can be hoarded for long periods of time and retain their value in hidden stashes) heirloom seeds are living embryos, and their continued value necessitates involving oneself in the participatory act of co-creation through tending, nurturing, observing and valuing non-human life.

Also, for most of us (myself included) we do not have unlimited space to perpetually expand how many seeds we will plant each year (and we can only eat so much food). Thus, the inherent quality of seed saving (which invariably produces more seeds than any one person can make use of themselves) is that it incentivizes generosity (because while one can store some seeds for quite a long time and they will remain viable, their shelf life is not indefinite, and the one who tends plants and lovingly saves seeds from their prized crops feels compelled to ensure those seeds go forward to achieve their true potential).

Each physical copy of my book purchased between now and May 24th will have heirloom seeds saved from my garden slipped between the pages so that the reader will not only have the knowledge but also the living seeds to get started investing in the living Gift Economy of the Earth.

 

Silver, Gold, Cryptocurrency, Fiat and other substances or symbols that retain value (or perceived value) separate from any relationship to the living non-human world around us can be horded, fought over, stashed and obsessed over in very anthropocentric ways, while ecological literacy is diminished (or never nurtured in a human to begin with) and one’s “wealth” can increase along with their greed, fear and isolation.

(artwork by Mark Wooding of “After Skool”)

The human fiat currency economy necessitates scarcity (or at the very least the perception of scarcity) and its propaganda systems attempt to instill in us from a young age that “there is not enough to go around”, that it is a “survival of the fittest/dog eat dog world” and that success in life is measured by how much fiat (or gold, silver or crypto) you can hoard and/or how many material possessions you can accumulate. Of course, scarcity is an illusion and where it exists in relation to food, in an empirical sense, is the result of said scarcity economic model crippling the local ecology and ancient cultural practices of a said region, which at one time, embodied, recognized and perpetuated the abundance inherent in that bioregion.

from The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World By Robin Wall Kimmerer

 

The ancient living economy of the Earth, on the other hand, is based on a perpetual cycle of gifts moving freely within a self-organizing, anti-fragile, symbiotically connected community of beings (which each have niche gifts that they provide to make their community increasingly resilient, biodiverse, beautiful and nourishing as a whole). It is the antithesis of the human fiat economy, as instead of hoarding, it involves giving gifts to other beings and having faith in the soundness, elegance and longevity of Creator’s design.

Take a leaf for example, each one embodies the architecture and dynamics of the larger gift economy (ecosystem) it is seamlessly embedded within. The leaf breathes in cosmic light (which is gifted freely to the Earth and countless other worlds by the beings we call “stars”, in our case, a star we call “Sol” or “The Sun”.) Through the alchemy of photosynthesis the leaf also breathes in CO-2 (which we humans and countless other beings gift freely to the plants each time we breathe). The leaf also absorbs water (which is gifted by the ocean as well as by the way of extraterrestrial sources such as meteorites in the form of water vapour, which is gathered into raindrops in clouds via the gifts of fungi and trees, which help initiate rain drop nucleation by the spores and pollen they send up to literally create rain storms).

Last but not least, the leaf completes the miracle of photosynthesis through absorbing the minerals from the rich earth below (which was created through countless beings gifting biomatter and their very bodies over centuries). That leaf combines those gifts to make sugar (and a diverse range of other phytochemicals) which the plant in turn gives as a gift in the form of food. The gift of food created by the alchemy of photosynthesis (enabled by the gifts of many beings on Earth and beyond) is then gifted back to the earth (both in the manure of the being that ingested the food, and in time, via their very body which was built with that food) returning to the Earth as well, completing (and enriching) that ongoing perpetual cycle of gifts that makes up the Earth’s living economy.

Another aspect of investing in the living economy of the Earth which we unlock through healing the soil and eating real food (that is critically important in this time) is human fertility (which, on average, is plummeting globally right now). More on this in my next article.

close up of a Cold Hardy Chicago Fig leaf in our garden (revealing the fractal geometry and gift economy that weaves all living beings together from the atomic, to cellular to molecular level up). This geometry speaks to the genius of the Creator of all things and the ingenuity of the living Earth and her photosynthetic children (which are our elders).

When you learn to understand what nature is communicating to us, you are invited to read a scripture that is far older than all man-made religious texts. In this ancient gospel as old as the mountains and as ancient as as the seas, wisdom is inscribed which teaches us to live in peace, abundance, symbiosis and harmony with our fellow beings. (source)

Therefore, the act of saving seeds, nurtures a perceptive state of fullness and abundance within the mind, it moves one to recognize the abundance all around us, to live in a way that is in service of life, in symbiosis with community (human and non-human) and compels one to embrace Gift Thinking (True Wealth).

Some of the gifts of True Wealth are found in the years, lasting fulfillment and health which is added to our lives when we care for the land we live on (and those who we share it with). Lasting fulfillment is found in savoring those precious moments that are given to us each time we stop to appreciate the “little things”. It is the gift we give ourselves when we choose to use our time on earth to help things grow and nurture them to achieve their highest potential.

“The land is the real teacher. All we need as students is mindfulness. Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.”

 

– Robin Wall Kimmerer (Author of “Braiding Sweetgrass”)

 

Other gifts of True Wealth are found in the relationships we nurture within our communities (human and non-human) and the unfolding of our spirit through learning directly from Creation. This sacred act invites us to become an instrument for Creator to bring forth even more beauty, abundance and diversity on the Earth.

Gift thinking and the recognition of the abundance that Creator has gifted us, potentiating that abundance through lovingly stewarding the Earth and treating our neighbors as we would want to be treated (human and non-human neighbors) is one of the most important things wise men such as Jesus attempted to communicate to this world.

The path from the current way of life on Earth to the more Beautiful World we all is only possible can only become manifest through one million baby steps being taken by 100 million people until a critical mass is reached. That turning point is the place where we see the disturbing results of the Asch conformity experiment inverted, bearing witness to a time when those with a proclivity to follow the herd begin to follow in a direction that is actually beneficial to them. The beautiful world you want to live in (but do not see around you now) is not found by walking through pearly gates and there is no quick fix to get there.

I’ll tell you what is a great starting point to embark on a path to get there though, something like a handful of acorns, hickory nuts and pawpaw seeds. Holding those living embryos in one hand is holding the potential for ten thousand food forests in your hand. That handful of seeds could liberate a thousand communities from dependance on big ag, poverty/malnourishment of the spirit, corrupt governments, big pharma and ecological illiteracy.

Yes, perhaps True Wealth is found in realizing that humans alone cannot create any True Wealth at all, though, there are some supremely powerful creative forces we can align with, enabling us to go along for the ride on a co-creative path to abundance and learning to perceive and potentiate the Wealth that is already all around us.

 

Like an acorn planted in the now, we will not live to see it’s true potential. It is an act that embodies faith in Creation. While we may indeed receive food, medicine, air and knowledge through that act, the real nourishment and wealth we receive is not of the body, but of the soul.

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