Thank you, for all your E-mails on the last story. They were all very comforting to me, and I really appreciated each and every one. I’d like to delve deeper into the issue of having my natural birth mother suddenly exiting my life when I was so young, and how this revolves around ones own identity. There’s no doubt that I have tucked away in the deepest recesses of my mind, my memory, events that at this time I am not remembering. I’m totally comfortable with this right now. Everything that we need to deal with will be revealed to us when the time is correct. It is very important that we be able to view past events with as much clarity, calmness, and without judgment, as is possible. Remember, what we are feeling, ourselves must acknowledge the emotions that rise up from within us with love, kindness and respect. It’s also important to remember that every event that happens to us in our lives is first and foremost only one part of recorded perception. It is our part. It is how we at that time perceived with our eyes and feelings, emotions. One year I happened to be living in the northern interior of British Columbia, Canada. As much as I could I would always try to head off into the mountains. From as far back as I can remember I have loved the outdoors. It is the one place that I feel deeply relaxed, happy, and at peace with my self. People I knew always asked me why I wasn’t afraid of wild animals, why would I go off into the wilderness by myself, with often times no rifle. This puzzled me, as I have never to date had any problems with any of the animals I have encountered. On one beautiful winters day, I decided to head up the mountains to where a friend and I had set up his teepee. Walking along a crisp snow covered trail as the sun was shining through the trees, reflecting off of hanging icicles from snow covered tree branches is incredible, beautiful. As far as I knew I was the only person out there. It was so quiet, so peaceful. I rounded a corner in the trail and right before my very eyes was a mother moose and her young calf. The two of them were standing just off the path nibbling on green leaves from some trees. I stood perfectly still, totally relaxed and yet enthralled by what I was experiencing. I took a step forward and they turned to see me. The mother watched me very closely, I’m sure she was checking me out, was I a threat or not. Nothing happened for what seemed like ten or twenty minutes, the three of us just stood there staring at each other. Finally I decided to take a step closer to them. Nothing happened. Another few steps and I was now about twenty feet away from the both of them. Instinct told me to stop. So, I just took off my pack, and sat on it and watched. They ate, I watched, I smiled, it was so cool. All of a sudden around the very same trail a man appears on cross-country skis, he sees me; he sees the moose, the calf, and suddenly starts screaming. LOUD! I damn near have a heart attack as I fall off my pack into the snow. I watch the mother moose and her calf kick up snow and disappear off into the forest. They sure can move fast. By now the cross country skier is beside me. He is grabbing me asking if I’m all right. I push him away afoot or two, then ask him what the hell he’s doing. Suddenly he gets angry and tells me, berates me for being stupid, a fool to be so close to a mother moose and her young. He tells me she could have easily turned on me charged and killed me. Well I’ve had enough of this, I just want to get away from this guy, so I decide to head back to town, it’s getting late anyhow, and I’m peeved at the guy because he shattered such a quiet moment. I get back to town heading for the local café. I see a friend of mine and join him. I begin to tell him the entire adventure I just had. Across the isle to our left is another table with a couple of older natives. They are about sixty, seventy years old. They look at me, just as I raised my voice somewhat when I got to the cross-country skier, I couldn’t help it this skier just peeved me off. The older of the two smiles and asks if they could join us. Sure, why not. He asks me to tell the story again, I do. They both laugh but the older of the two seems to be studying me. I ask him if something is wrong. No, nothings wrong. He starts to clear the table top, as my friend and I watch him with puzzled expressions, his friend just sits smiling. He begins taking our forks and knives placing them in a circle on the table. Once finished, he looks me straight in the eyes saying, “ You are making yourself heavy with anger and irritation you carry inside of yourself.” “ What? “ He says nothing as he picks up the ashtray and places it in the center of the circle. Satisfied it is where it should be he turns to my friend and asks him what he sees. My friend says he sees a man placing an ashtray in the center of a circle. He looks at me and waits for my answer. I tell him I see a dirty ashtray in the circle of forks and knives. He looks at his friend, and his friend says he sees a boat that would not float. We all laugh. I ask him what he sees. He’s been waiting for me to ask him, his eyes glint. He speaks, “ I see a mountain that turned to a rock, that turned to sand, that was then turned into glass, which was formed into a new clean ashtray, which is now full of ashes, filters and dirt, which holds it’s place in the circle of life. The ashtray needs to be cleaned once more. “ Complete silence. As a Soul, as Spirit, we live many lives, to learn many lessons. The separation from my natural birth mother was one of many teachings. My father perceived the separation uniquely within his own souls journey. My mother perceived letting her son go from within her journey. I perceived it a completely different way. That’s why I say what we perceive, we experience, the emotions we feel in each and every moment of our lives, our events, are uniquely ours. They are only one way of perceiving and interpreting one event at a time. But to gain the true meaning of each event we must always try to understand and remember that the other person does not see, experience and may not share the event the same way we did. For continued growth, spiritual growth, we need to look back at all those events, which have effected us deeply, to know that they were only one small part of the whole. We need to remember to always focus on the larger picture from our souls point of view, that is that everything that happens to us happens for a reason. Good or bad it is always a learning lesson for the soul. How you deal and perceive each event is greatly influenced by the emotions and thoughts you carry within you. You must continuously work on cleaning out old emotions and past thoughts. It is sometimes very hard to do, but it must be done, otherwise you keep yourself tied to the past when you’re trying to live in the present. From the spiritual point of view it is impossible to do. For the spirit, there is only always the moment of now. Spirit does not live in the past. Spirit does not live in the future. The Spirit lives only in the now. This is a fact get used to it. Case in point. A few years back my father suggested it would be a good idea if I were to try and find out how my birth mother was doing. After we had moved to Austria, then to Canada, I had heard nothing from my mom. No contact whatsoever. I was a teenager; I was busy as only teenagers are. I never even thought of trying to contact my birth mom. Anyhow, I went to the red cross gave them the information they needed and waited. After only two months, the Red Cross contacted me. They had found her in South West Africa, Namibia, Swakopmund. I wrote to her. It had been twenty-seven years since any contact at all. On the day the letter arrived I went to my dads business at the time and read it. It was a real awakening. Yes she had greatly missed all that and me. She was really happy I was alive and living in a good home. There was more but I’m keeping it short, because there was one really important note. Out of the ten pages she wrote, six of those pages contained negativity, and feelings, emotions about how my father had left her, how she would never forgive him for ruining her life. She had kept her self anchored to the past, life was passing her by, had passed her by for the past twenty-seven years. The ashtray needs to be cleaned.
