Love Without Conditions: Reflections of the Christ Mind

This incredible book helped to bring me to an understanding about myself and how to deal with some of my feelings. It gave me a tool that allowed me to enter into my heart and not my head. It taught me a simple way of dealing with my feelings and the lessons around forgiveness that I needed to understand in my life, which I am still learning about.

When I first read this book a short time after leaving the forces (1996), it was like an Orchestra playing to me, and the simple tool it provided me with in order to help deal with the ‘Hugh Swirl’ of emotions that were going on for me at a time when I felt I was lost in a world (civvy street) I no longer understood. I can only describe the events that were taking place at that time as my awakening to a higher power.

When we experience feelings we often externalise them, sometimes by holding others responsible for the way that we are feeling, and yet all they are is a gift, they are showing us something about ourselves that we do not like or are uncomfortable with. Paul Ferrini wrote in his book that when you experience an emotion so strong, then in that moment all that needs to take place is for you to sit with the feelings, feel the feelings, close your eyes and look inside at the feeling that has presented itself to you. Try not to give the feeling a name a name, because once we name it we move away from what the truth is, that's inside of us.

Just sit with the feelings, talk to them, tell them you accept them for the gift that they bring you, tell them that you embrace them and that you forgive them and yourself, and now that they no longer serve you, release them to the light, you do not have to understand these feelings, just be with them.

I can only tell you this, for me it worked and many of the feelings I felt then have never returned and if they do, then I guess I wanted to hang onto that them a little while longer until I felt they served me no longer.

Merlin and the Parabolic

I was sat around the camp fire this morning at 06:30hrs having a cup of Dandelion coffee, Merlin having eaten was settling down for the day, when suddenly he was surrounded my around 30 song birds, consisting of blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, chaffinch and sparrow.

I did not pick up on the initial alarm call; it may have been very subtle and to be fair I was still prising the sleep from my eyes. As I sat and watched how they responded to Merlin’s presence, it was clear that some of the birds stayed well up in the canopy which was around 15-20 metres in height. The closest one went to around 2-3 metres from Merlin and this was a Blue Tit.

Merlin in the meantime was completely un-interested in them, perhaps he thought they presented no threat to him, or maybe because he is captive breed his responses may be somewhat different to that of a wild bird?

At one point Merlin ruffled his feathers, trapping air between them and shaking of any loose feathers. This year Merlin has had the biggest and longest moult I have ever experienced with him, I checked with some friends and their birds were moulting heavily as well. We concluded it was due the weather we are having, I decrease, immediately after Merlin ruffled his feathers the parabolic flock of birds suddenly went wild. The warning calls change to scalding headed up by the long-tailed tits mainly. In fact I had the sense that the Long-tailed Tits were the main guys in the group, I will need to check this out further to see if there is a lead role here for some birds.

Notably absent were the Blackbirds that said I had only observed one or two Blackbirds in the area that I am working in. After my brew I headed off to check on my client, and as I returned I became aware that two Magpies had now moved in on Merlin, the song birds had settled down and started to move away from Merlin as I left camp.

Again Merlin paid the Magpies no attention, and the Magpie’s left as I entered the camp site. Having merlin presents me with a great opportunity to observe how other birds respond to him and it allows me to pay close attention to their calls and how they change given different situations.

Lessons from an Eagle Owl

I was in Gambia about ten years ago with the British Army Ornithological Society, who are serving and ex-serving members of the British Army. We were carrying out a water bird survey from a riverboat from the estuary near to the capital all the way up to Senegal. After five days on the river we pulled into a camp site for a twenty-four hour rest period. Soon after going ashore my friends were eager to go straight out to see as many birds as possible. I declined to go, as spirit asked me to spend time with our Expectation Leader. I was told that my friends and I would not see any birds that evening, however in the morning I would be in for a treat. It transpired that my chat with our Expectation Leader was exactly what she needed; she said she was missing the spiritual connection, whist living in Africa. My friends returned disappointed having not seen any birds. Later that night we were very excited as we received information on where we could find a Verreaux’s Eagle Owl, its roost was in a Giant Plum Tree.

That night in my dreams I was given a vision of a large wood, at this time I did not realise what relevance this would have. As I arrived for breakfast, my friends (apart from one) were all rushing out the door to go and find the eagle owl and appeared quite unwilling to wait until we had eaten. John and I sat down to eat and after breakfast, we went to find the owl, on route we bumped into our friends who having not found the eagle owl were now heading off to find Sand Grouse. They asked if we were coming. I said I would meet up with them later. I felt inside that I really just wanted to connect with the trail, with the earth and enjoy what nature had to offer as a whole.

Soon, I saw in the distance the large woodland, the one that I had seen in my dream. As we were heading towards the woodland we were about to pass a tree on my left, spirit told me the owl was in this tree. As I approached with caution the owl who was indeed in this tree, took flight from cover. I could not contain my excitement as I watched it fly towards the large woodland. It was then that I realised that this was The Giant Plum Tree. It is interesting to note that we all had the perception that the Plum Tree would be very large in size, while in fact it was only about 20 meters in height, perhaps this is why the other guys missed the owl not realising the Giant Plum Tree was not such a Giant after all.

John and I soon relocated the owl and we enjoyed magnificent views of it before setting off to let the others know where it was. As I spoke with John on the way back, I became very aware of my thoughts, I was aware that I could easily ride on my ego. I joked out load, saying to John how it would be fun to hold this one over the guys, some of the thoughts in my head were “guys, you know you wanted to pay someone to find the owl for you.” “well, I found it!” “It will cost you!” It felt like one up man ship. As we continued talking it seemed with each word and thought these things became less important.

They ran off to locate it, only for one of them to return a short while later asking me to tell him exactly where it was. I eagerly showed everyone where the owl was and it gave me great enjoyment seeing the pleasure they had in seeing the owl.

The joy and the reward was in seeing the owl and being guided by spirit, recognising the information I was given was the truth, being able to tell the difference between my thoughts and spirits, pinning down my ego and doing what was right for the greater good of all.

Later I reflected on the words Eagle Owl and what they meant. Eagle: represents Spirit. Owl: represents Deception. Clearly spirit was involved here, had I completely bought into my ego the deception would have been on myself.

I thank our creator, mother earth, nature and of course the eagle owl for teaching me about myself.

Troubled Moose

 

At 4:00 pm I left Idre (Sweden) in my Landrover to drive to Mörkret (Where the National Park is) to pick up 2 families for a "Peter's Fish 'n Grill" which is a nice evening out fishing and grilling sausages somewhere in the wilderness.

I arrived with the families at the remote place I selected. We needed to walk about 2 km to get to a little lake with a small shelter and a fire place. 2 hours later while grilling sausages we saw a moose walking on the other side of the lake. (not a big lake maybe 40 m across) It glanced at us but didn't care we were there and it went about its business of eating small twigs. You can imagine that the people (all Dutch) were very happy to see a moose so clearly and for such a long time. Suddenly 3 other fishers came over a hill on the other side of the lake and both they and the moose were startled. Strangely enough those idiots started to scare it of by screaming at it etc. The moose ran away.

A few minutes later, when the fishers where unpacking their gear, suddenly the moose came charging over the hill, ears back in her neck. Even before I saw the moose I felt an adrenaline rush myself. The moose stopped a few meters from the fishers, turned and showed her flank, ears back and neck low. This is very unusual and aggressive behaviour for a young moose like that. Suddenly it felt like the moose and I were in a tunnel and I told it (in my mind) to turn round and walk away as these people meant nothing good with it. Immediately she looked up at me, ears focused on me. She calmed down immediately, turned and left. Apart from being flabbergasted from what just happened I was very happy she listened.

Half an hour later we packed up our stuff and wandered the 2 km back to our cars. After about 1 km I saw the tracks of the moose walking on our path ahead of us. With only 500 m to go the track indicated the moose had stopped and turned to listen. I told the group that probably at this point she heard us coming after her. From that point she had moved to the right. Based on her previous behaviour I was a bit anxious but I still was confident she did not have any problems with us. I told the group (why did I tell the group this?) that she left the path to come back in a curve and watch us come by on the path. Sure enough, close to the cars she was standing beside a little cottage about 2m from the path we walked on. I told my group to just walk on past here feeling happy to see her but not pay too much attention to her. She just stood there watching, ears up, pretty relaxed. When we had past she turned and wandered off.

I have never experienced anything like it neither the actual behaviour of the moose nor my own actions that evening. It was a great day!

Peter