Making good on a promise...

I wanted to share this story with you from Peter Friebel from Sweden. I worked with him recently and he has very kindly agreed to allow me to share it with you. I trust you will find it interesting. I will post some comments on my experience of this event soon. 

The name has been changed to protect confidentiality.

Enjoy

Geoffrey 

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Usually I am pretty secure in my own abilities and not easily intimidated or discouraged but that day was different. That day scared me. It was "Meet a Tree" day. And I was nervous like hell! Not because of what the game is all about. Nature Awareness has been part of my own courses for some time and I knew what it was all about. I was nervous because this time the reasons for doing it were to learn how to teach tracking which I really burn for to do well. Even if I knew that failing to find my tree was no big deal I felt that it was not an option for me in this situation.

Geoffrey noticed I was nervous and I assured him it was not because I was about to walk blindfolded, hand in hand with a huge dude in a dark forest :-). At the time I was not fully aware of the reasons myself.

"I have been connecting with trees before, I feel good with trees, trust your instincts!"

That was my last thought before the game started. Being led through the woods blindfolded somehow calmed me down a bit. After a long erratic walk I arrived at "my" tree. I almost immediately panicked inside. Was this a tree or a concrete pillar? Nothing. This tree was cold and empty. I felt nothing. Before I fully realized the horror of my predicament, time was up and I was led back by some different but equally erratic path. Behind my blindfold I started seriously to sweat. Was I about to fail the only time I really needed it to come together? What I feared the most, the reason for my nervousness was about to become real. I heard myself saying to Geoffrey: "I will find my tree blindfolded as vision will not help me here".

I did my best not to let Geoffrey in on too much of this internal turmoil as he is a counsellor after all and I wasn't eager to deal with an external analysis of the situation just yet. First things first. Almost immediately I pointed out the wrong tree. Time went by and I felt like I was at it for an eternity. I tried many different "methods" to get a fix on my tree. Nothing worked. I got irritated, frustrated, sad, very tired and eventually I was right up in my head. I knew it and it was at this point I was about to give up.

Something was nagging at me though. One last time I performed my quick exercise to get me back into heart space. Now nothing of what follows probably makes sense but it was what I thought and felt and it was real to me. In my head I said: "Why oh why this tree now?" The answer came: "Cause this particular tree needs to be found by you, now". At this point I turned off my mind. I was actually talking with somebody or something in my imagination. "You mean that instead of me needing to find this tree, this tree needs me to find it now?" Answer: "Yes". I do not know why but all of a sudden I was going to find the tree for the sake of the tree instead. An arrow like the one on my hand held GPS appeared in my mind’s eye and I started walking. At this point I heard Geoffrey saying "whatever it is you are feeling now, trust it!" I remember thinking: "I am not feeling much but somehow I am now creating a reality with only one outcome". Very shortly after that I found my tree.

At the time, I did not enjoy that exercise at all. It had emotionally depleted me. It was later, after processing it as an event instead of an exercise, that the beauty and purpose of it became apparent.

By giving up I succeeded. It took me a long time to realize that what I gave up was of course my ego. It also took me a long time to realize that what I actually found was what connects me to everything else, my higher consciousness.

Of all the times I have played games like this one that one on that day was the one that counted for me. I was judging myself against a standard that was neither real nor important. I was my own nemesis. The switch to doing it for the sake of the tree made me instantly leave all that. I switched from proving something to helping something/someone. No longer did I wait for it to happen, I simply believed that nothing else could ever happen. I was not finding my tree anymore; I was tracking an outcome I projected in order to help. Intuition and creativity revealed themselves for what they are: the voices of my higher consciousness. Not that I fully realized all this at that moment. That all came later.

I am aware that this all may sound like complete gibberish and it probably provides some nice playground for counsellors but I do not mind really. For me that single day was one of the most important and revealing experiences I ever had even if it took me a month to realize it.

Everything that needed to come together came together and when it did it was no longer about me. I think it all was a well-orchestrated conspiracy to make sure I would find more than just my tree! A conspiracy directed to make me find not a tree but a relation with my higher consciousness.

So what about the tree? When I found it I spent some more time with it and I consistently got a feeling of being afraid and two images in my mind’s eye: a camper and snow and ice blowing over the lake. The place where this tree was standing is heavily frequented by tourists. I noticed the tree had been severely damaged at an early stage in its life. I promised myself and the tree that I would check up on it later.

Last Friday was almost one month later and in the mean time I have done many energy tracking experiments. All of them enjoyable and rewarding. Having finally processed the “Meet a Tree” event, I felt I needed to make good on my promise. As I needed to go to Älvdalen that day, I was able to visit the area where the tree is on the way back.

When I arrived at the place I suddenly realized that a month earlier I was way to shook up to actually register which tree it was and where it was! The only thing I knew was that it split into two trunks high up and that there was a little hole with a pine cone lodged in it. I went to the place that was the starting point one month earlier, closed my eyes, automatically turned a little bit to the left and started walking in a straight line. To my tree as it happened. It took me only 1 minute to track the tree this time!

This time I felt warm standing with the tree and slowly an image started forming in my mind’s eye:

A Large Red Orchid.

Peter