Have you cleaned your ashtray? After having looked back to the time when my mother left my life, with non-judgment, with as much clarity as possible, I can honestly say that I no longer hurt inside. I know that she was going through a rough time, I’m sure she was definitely emotionally hurt in her own life. At the time she dealt with her situation the best she knew how. My father dealt with the situation the best he knew how. The both of them made choices, decisions, that each of them thought to be right in that moment. That’s why it is easy to forgive them today, to accept them both for who they are, to love them both, to respect their own uniqueness, their own individuality, and to respect and honor them each as Souls on their own journey who at one small moment in time shared the journey together. Your name and your identity. What is it? What does it mean to you? Is it who you really are? Is it the way the world sees you? These questions arose within me after I received an e - mail recently, and so I started to ponder them. I meditated on the thought of my own identity and some surprising insights occurred to me. At birth my parents gave me the decidedly Austrian/German name of Gunter Binder. I never gave it a thought; this was who I was at the time. I don’t exactly know when it occurred to me, but there came a time in my youth when I started to look at my name more and more, and came to the conclusion that it felt uncomfortable, it didn’t feel right, but that is as far as I went with it. Life went on, adventures came and went. Then about ten years ago, while sitting at a kitchen table in a run down trailer sipping coffee, I begin to write my name on a piece of paper in front of me. I’m not thinking of anything in particular, just daydreaming and doodling. Gazing out the kitchen window, I begin to start sketching a tree. The type of tree I’m sketching is called an Alder tree. By now I’m right into the process at hand, I hear nothing, again it is as if time is standing still, I’m totally absorbed in my artwork and this one tree. I complete the finishing touches, and underneath the picture I place the caption, “Alder Time”. I reach over, pick up my cup, take a sip, and gaze back at the tree, in that exact moment a thought flashes into my mind, I write it down, and it is the name James. Let me tell you, I was quite baffled as to why this thought suddenly pops up out of nowhere. I repeat the name out loud to my self again and again, and again. It is at this point I write down all the words on the paper combining them, coming up with the complete name James Alder Wood. I repeat the name out loud; I immediately feel a connection deep down inside of me. The connection feels good. It feels strong. It feels comfortable. The name absolutely feels as if it’s mine and has always been mine. I claim it back and a few years later legally have it made mine. The day I changed my name brought out some very, very, interesting moments. The people in my life at the time absolutely refused to acknowledge the new name. I mean they were positively hostile towards me. To this very day my own family has a somewhat difficult time dealing with it. I feel my immediate family disliked the new name not because of the name it self, but mainly for the fact they had named me, they had given me a label, and now I was in fact saying I didn’t like that label, and I was no longer living up to the old name/label and everything they thought it stood for or was supposed to stand for in their eyes. For me it was very simple. I never felt comfortable with my original name; it was as if it never really belonged to me in the first place. The name I chose I feel completely at home with, I feel it belongs to me, I feel it was always mine to begin with. I understand my immediate families concern; because to them it is one that lends it’s self to the thought of who will carry on the lineage, the family name. I feel that individuals, not everyone, but the majority, see only your name, and from this label, they come to expect certain behavior traits, they see, and hear only what they wish to be associated with your name. They come to believe that this is whom you are. For every individual you know this is the same reality, and every individual that knows you has different perceptions of who you are, and you feed those perceptions to keep up their perceived reality of you. It is all an illusion, based on illusion, based on perceived thoughts. The family lineage will go on no matter what the name. Each person is not the name, which is just the identifier of that one person, like a Chevy or a Ford, Toyota, or Nissan. Each person is a Soul, a Spirit living within the confines of a human shell. How Spiritually wrong it is for many people to be summed up by the labels given and attached to them by individuals, governments and societies in general. Labels and the assumptions that go along with them is a very big reason there is so much conflict in the world today. Large factions of the populations know this, Governments, armies, etc, know this. When you place a strong label on an individual, group, town, city, country, nation, it becomes very easy to divide and conquer, to cause conflict, not resolution. It is not the way of the Soul, Spirit, which as Gary Zukav in his book states is one of Harmony, Cooperation, Sharing, and Reverence for life. Do you label people, situations, events, and moments?
