Deliverance

Above all else I have wanted this account to focus on the nature of the spiritual guidance that I have received - the dreams, the synchronicities and so on - and the ways in which they have helped me to change and to grow. This is because I believe that everyone can access this kind of guidance and thus better find the way on their own path.

But of course a very personal story, a love story, has also been described because it has been through the challenges and joys of close emotional relationships that I have mostly been learning what I needed to learn. So although this book is not meant to be about ‘me’, it seems reasonable to ‘complete’ the story... I am conscious that the two aspects of the account are obviously closely connected.

Some may object that: “Well, his love life didn’t work out very well did it, despite all the belief, so how can anyone trust this so-called guidance?”

What does it mean for a relationship to ‘work out’ - do they all have to live happily ever after? That might be nice. And I suppose in our hearts we all hope for that kind of peace and contentment, though surely we know how unrealistic it is in this world of change and contrast, this life full of challenges where we are bombarded by information, outside influences and high expectations. And in any case, each of us has a different path and different lessons. Some are blessed with emotional security. Many are not.

Yes, at the end of 2003 I felt a deep loneliness and sadness because it seemed that I had lost Bettina, the woman I loved more deeply and with whom I had touched a more profound joy than anything I had known before. I had never felt so close to another person. I had never believed myself capable of such experience. She was, perhaps, the proof of the transformation I had sought. And so I began to realise that rather than feel sad I should instead give thanks for our time together. If this was all we were to have, then it was still very, very beautiful.

But it wasn’t all. And there was more to learn!

You may remember that at the very time that things were breaking up so painfully, indeed even at the darkest hours, I was still experiencing dreams and other guidance that reassured me of a happy resolution, of healing and of ‘victory’. This seemed quite perverse - surely it was just wishfulness? And yet despite the horror I found that I felt no anger whatsoever and no sense of recrimination, just the same simple love. I was in pain, but my belief was unshaken (though it was now to face the greatest challenge of all).

For almost a year there was virtually no contact between the two of us and very few signs of encouragement: as I described in the last chapter, the psychic and spiritual activity I had become so accustomed to just calmed down to a mere shadow of what it had been. For example, in ten months I only remembered twenty-two dreams of any kind. I know that my experience was on a much lesser scale, but I imagined that I could identify in a way with hostages in a war zone - suffering apparently innocently, the future entirely uncertain, receiving no news or reason to hope, holding on to whatever one believes in...

There were still car registrations and synchronicities to observe, but I came to realise that they were more reflections in the outer world of my inner state of mind, of my continuing belief, rather than messages or predictions. Just as dreams can be of different types and qualities (described in Chapter I), I began to see more clearly that the same is true of ‘signs’; indeed, perhaps signs are simply a form of waking dream. They are not all to be taken at face value, but with pinches of salt, and great discrimination is needed when deciding how meaningful they are. So for a whole six months there was little that took this story forward.

I concentrated on my career and my home and gradually regained my strength. In the spring I decided that I needed more social contact so I joined a dating agency, hoping for some friendship - there wouldn’t be any romantic relationship since my heart wasn’t in it. On the other hand, being a mere man, there were moments when I couldn’t help wondering... Then on one such day,

I was shaken by a powerful dream reminding me of what was important.

D 19th May 2004: I was at a railway station, trying to buy vegetables from a woman. She gave me far too little change, but when I confronted her she seemed not to understand me and unable to communicate. I decided to take her to the station manager to sort it out, but found that I had to take a guide dog with me too!

So I am on my journey but for the moment ‘stationary’, unable to move forward. I am seeking some kind of emotional ‘nourishment’ (from other women), trying to make ‘changes’ but getting it wrong - these attempts are ill-conceived and I shall not achieve any real communication thus. I must allow myself to be guided by a higher spiritual authority.

Within days this apparent ‘message’ was backed up by further reassurance of the true path.

S 26th May 2004: I had left a small gift at Bettina’s house to mark Shavuot and immediately afterwards saw the car M 289 ARK, a reference to the healing of a paralysed man. This was closely followed by the car BET ...!

S 27th May 2004: on the way to a public function I saw two different cars with registration ... TRU. Across a crowded hall at the function I saw Bettina, and my heart reminded me of the truth.

S 31st May 2004: driving near her home I saw the (personalised) number plate ... 5OUL followed immediately by M 261 ARK which refers to forgiveness.

D 31st May 2004:

(1) I saw several women’s faces and associated with them somehow was the number 44. Then the numbers changed to 43.

(2) I drove to a country restaurant, for the second time, for an important date but had difficulty parking in the small triangular area available. There was a space but it was unavailable because of roadworks, while another space was too dangerous to enter due to a step in the road surface. But I managed to move some tables and parked. Inside I saw a friend named Moore. Then I met a beautiful woman with whom I was very close, but our meeting was rushed and incomplete. Later I met her again in the same place and this time the feeling between us was good and powerful. At one point she turned completely upside down! Then I was with a young man watching a television screen, which was also a computer; the young man switched from watching a film about time travel to using the computer for planning a sports and exercise programme that he was going to study.

The night before these dreams I had prayed for guidance concerning Bettina: she was filling my heart but was not in my life - how was this to change? The first dream seemed to refer me back to the previous path of 4 + 4 years and relationships that had reached a zenith with her. The result of all of this was 43, the I Ching hexagram of ‘Breakthrough’ that I had received almost a year earlier. This dream reaffirmed to me that I was heading in the right direction, that all was as it should be.

The second dream gave a more detailed description of things and a prediction. Our first relationship had been a difficult and unsettled time (seeking ‘nourishment’, the parking problem, an ‘incomplete meeting’) and there was ‘work to be done’; but there would be a second chance, ‘more’ to come, in fact a complete ‘turn around’ in the situation. ‘Time travel’ and ‘tele-vision’ both suggest looking ahead to the future. I felt that the young man here was my son who indeed would be going to study sports science at university in four months time. Is that when things would change, in the autumn?

In June, nearly eight months after my illness, I felt at last that a corner had been turned and I had recovered my strength and composure. My birthday I Ching reading was simply Hexagram 45: “Gathering Together” - the work has been done, now is a great time of unification and achievement. More colloquially, things would now start to ‘come together’. I knew that I just had to be patient, though for all my experiences this has always been so difficult for me! Yet every so often there would appear another set of extraordinary synchronicities to uplift me...

S 29th June 2004: my weekly internet horoscope gave the very unusual prediction that “You might feel that...your guardian angels are delivering special messages to you. You could experience some exciting coincidences...” That morning I also saw the car number ... BET.

S 30th June 2004: next day I was listening in my car to a recording of ‘Earthly Powers’ by Anthony Burgess. A priest was speaking about “great coincidence” and his sixth sense, and then I saw again the same ... BET. This was in an entirely different location to yesterday’s sighting, and I had never seen this car before.

S 2nd July 2004: now came one of the most incredible synchronicities I have ever experienced. I was printing off a copy of this manuscript when a good friend called in for a chat; we were talking about my feelings for Bettina when the computer printer suddenly jammed at the very page that describes the beautiful beginning of the relationship! (This printer has never jammed before or since.)

At such moments it is really difficult not to believe in some sort of divine and deliberate spiritual intervention. There was a feeling that for a timeless split second the universe had stopped and I was in a peaceful place of pure understanding. Whether this is an altered state of consciousness or indeed contact with a higher intelligence one cannot say. But now I knew that somehow, some day, all would be well.

In July and August there were two further very clear and powerful dreams, not recorded here because they contain personal information about other individuals, that seemed to confirm my belief and again suggested the new university term as a significant time ahead. In this period, also, there were two similar and quite amazing events of deeply spiritual significance.

If nothing else so far has persuaded you that, however weak and faithless we may be at times, a sincere heart can receive answers to prayers, perhaps these will.

S 30th July 2004: late at night, in the most beautiful part of my garden, I prayed for Bettina - that she might be healed of her pain - and acknowledged that I didn’t have a clue what to do to help her or our situation. I put the problem in God’s hands and lit a candle to represent faith. This candle was a small tea-light, in a rattan holder suspended by a thick nylon cord from a bird table; I had used these things many times before. But next morning I discovered that the cord was burned through and the holder had fallen to the ground.

Not only has nothing like this ever happened before or since, I also have no idea how it could happen naturally since there was more than six inches between candle and cord - and these candles generate hardly any heat especially in the open air. I intuitively knew that this was an answer to my prayer: there would be a complete change in the situation, the difficulties ‘cut through’’. And perhaps Bettina would in some sense ‘fall’...

S 23rd August 2004: about a month later I visited Westminster Abbey, one of the holiest places I know and a feature of an important dream in October 2003, and again I prayed for us. Then I went to meet a friend for lunch. But, because of some intuition, not only did I insist that we go to a different restaurant than the one my friend had planned, but having sat at a table outside I felt the need for us to change tables twice! (This was the same friend who had been with me when the computer printer jammed.) After a while, I began to describe my visit to the Abbey and just at this moment a large parasol just above us collapsed, grazing my head slightly and then smashing the glasses in front of us.

We were the centre of attention in the street and the management offered their apologies, but I knew that this was an act of God! The answer to my prayer was the same as before: a sudden change, a fall, a failure of ‘protection’...The critic may argue of course that, like the candle, this was ‘just one of those things’. But why had I felt the need to change restaurants and tables so that we were in exactly that place?

When does a coincidence become a synchronicity? Surely the point is the meaningfulness of the event, whether it has a real importance in the mind and in the life of the experient, who in turn is the only one who can make that judgement. My friend John told me a wonderful example. He was feeling bored at work and wondering whether his football team’s manager was going to be sacked after a run of bad results, but there’d been nothing on the news. He turned to a colleague, who supports a different local team, and began to discuss the matter. Immediately, the colleague’s telephone rang and simultaneously John received an email on his computer - it was from a friend who told him that the manager had in fact just resigned. The colleague’s call was from a different friend telling him the same news. Now, the event may have had a reasonable probability, but four independent individuals were involved in this exchange which all took place in a moment. It is a wonderful, amusing and interesting coincidence - but nothing more than that because the event had no great life significance for these individuals (though it might have done for the manager).

It may be argued that many of the events that I have described are little more than this: fairly interesting coincidences. “So what if the candle fell? That umbrella too would have fallen anyway...” “There are lots of cars with number plates that spell something...” (actually, there aren’t). But I am noting these things and reporting them because of their meaning for me at those moments. This is synchronicity. And if it happens to you, only you can be the judge of it!

Similarly, just two days after the umbrella incident:

S 25th August 2004: I saw three car plates in quick succession, first ... CLU then ... 03 DAN then ... BET. The reference in the Book of Daniel is to “deliverance from the fire”.

But I knew that the time wasn’t yet quite right when a few days later I returned to work after the summer holiday to find that the A41 roadworks still weren’t finished! Just one junction, a right turning, remained closed off... On the other hand:

S 10th September 2004: on this road, in quick succession, I saw the cars ... BET and ... 923 JOB which refers to God “moving mountains”.

From this point the synchronicities really started to proliferate again, at an average rate of about one a day, virtually all of them encouraging. There were car references to a meeting, to healing, to miracles and to God responding to prayers. Again I found that I’d recorded some music in error, the song Trying To Reach You. Then there was another of those seminal dreams...

D 23rd October 2004: A ‘spiritual teacher’ was standing near me and showed me a vision, rather like stars in the night sky joined by lines. I understood that each circle represented a significant situation in life, with many connections between them and to me (in the centre).

The being spoke to me: “In our lives we experience many situations and relationships. Some of these are vital for our growth, while others are just practice. But while we live, we cannot know which are which...So, in every moment, we must try to be the best that we can be.”

As he spoke, parts of the web faded from view to leave only a few ‘vital’ centres and links visible.

This was so lucid that it was perhaps not so much a dream as a visit to another world. The words spoken were heard perfectly clearly. The being with me stood just behind and to one side, its presence entirely real. I woke up immediately afterwards, completely alert and with total recall of the experience.

It was the most powerful encouragement to me to go on believing in what is good, however hard life may be, and to know that we are supported and guided on this path.

About two weeks later, the long-awaited change was triggered by another of my ‘ordinary’ dreams!

D 4th November 2004: In my car I approached a major junction in my home town of Wolverhampton, but I was held up by a cyclist just in front of me. He was wearing sunglasses and listening to a Walkman through headphones, and was weaving slowly across the road, obviously unaware of anything around him. I got out of the car to remonstrate with him, pulling off the glasses and headphones. Then I saw that the road just ahead was being reconstructed - it was wide and straight and almost finished.

S 4th November 2004: The next morning I saw the car number ... 655 JOB, which passage includes the words “God grant me what I long for”.

The dream clearly speaks of a major turning point approaching and a new, clear path ahead. It’s time for me to wake up, to look and listen! The follow-up sign also seemed to tell me that the time was now right - though I still wasn’t at all sure how. Nonetheless, acting on instinct I went three days later to leave a note and a flower at Bettina’s door. At the first road junction of this journey, I was delayed by a man crossing the road wearing sunglasses and headphones, obviously unaware of where he was.

Then, nearing her house, I saw ... 44 DAN which includes the words “How great are God’s signs!” The weekly horoscope spoke of “...perhaps a surprising reunion...a chance to start afresh...” During the next morning, I opened my office door and a white feather blew in...

Five days later, the telephone rang in the middle of the night. It was Bettina. She was in distress and needed to talk to me. It was the breakthrough, the ‘fall’, the turning upside-down. We talked throughout the night and then I went to her house to comfort her; the feeling between us was just the same as ever it had been.

She was still, rightly, cautious about our ‘relationship’ so hings moved slowly but throughout the next several weeks we were in touch and growing inexorably closer. Naturally, I was impatient! But whenever my faith began to wobble again there would be signs and dreams to strengthen me. For example, one day when I felt very low and was wondering whether things really would work out, I saw the familiar car M 106 ARK as I parked outside a laundrette. This reference - “Be prepared...” - has always been reliable. An hour later, as I began to take my washing out of the drier, I found lying on top of it an American quarter dollar coin. I have no idea how it got there; I had never seen one before let alone possessed one. I picked it up and read on it the words “In God we trust”!

Then, as this extraordinary autumn term came to a close:

S 13th December 2004: The A41 roadworks were finally finished and the new turning was open!

S 15th December 2004: In my first Christmas cracker of the season I found a plastic ring...

S 25th December 2004: Bettina and I met for lunch on Christmas Day and it was a very, very happy time. As I set off to go home I saw 286 JON which describes Christ’s first miracle, at a wedding.

D 27th December 2004: I was in unfamiliar countryside and nearing the end of a ‘quest’, holding a small coin and following written instructions about where to go. Some of the turnings and decisions that I had to make were very surprising, yet I obeyed the instructions faithfully and discovered that everything worked out perfectly, just as I’d hoped for. I finally arrived at a car where I met my lover. Then I saw a large number 55 appear in front of me.

Again I understood that I was being guided on this incredible spiritual journey and must simply trust in God (the coin in the dream echoing the one I had found recently) however difficult or strange the path. Some resolution and peace of mind was close - it was not too long until my 55th birthday!

The New Year was the happiest that I can ever remember, as Bettina and I spent it together.

IC 1st January 2005: My annual I Ching reading that day was Hexagram 37: “Family”. The commentary describes a loving coming together, similar to my last birthday reading, resulting in “Grace”.

A week later I read the book again, for the future of our relationship:

IC 7th January 2005: Hexagram 30 is “The Clinging, Fire”. It describes the radiance of nature and the necessity of perseverance. The dedicated man must hold fast to what is right. Moreover, “that which is bright rises twice”. The fourth, moving line speaks of a flaring up and a dying down, something being consumed too rapidly - this is what happened in our ‘first relationship’. But the sixth line describes “The zenith of life. Good fortune comes from grief because of a real change of heart”. This is our second rise. The resulting hexagram was 37, which I’d received the week before.

In the weeks that followed we grew closer than ever. This was a genuine renewal, for we were both different now as a result of the profound spiritual learning we were experiencing. But what hadn’t changed at all was the deep bond that both of us had recognised right from the beginning. Life was not all plain sailing, but at this time it would have been very difficult not to believe in miracles. Just a couple of months before, joy seemed unimaginable.

I really hope that this offers strength and inspiration to others who may read this and who also suffer the terrible pain of the ‘loss’ of what they believe in and hope for.

Please never stop believing.

But life never stands still. We live in a world of constant change where the greatest spiritual challenge to each one of us is to discover that which never changes and to gain the strength to let go of our attachment to that which must pass. As many teachers have said before, when we are attached to other things (which are ephemeral) or other people (who are changing), then we stop growing. If our sense of personal identity depends upon that which is outside ourselves - be it a career, money, others’ approval or even a relationship - then we lose touch with that which is within us, the true self. Such dependency inevitably makes us resist change, which is the natural state of life, and therein lies all our suffering.

This is what I had finally just begun to learn in 2004, when despite my loss I discovered that there remained an inner peace. I still felt the same deep love and it remained with me every day and in everything I thought or felt or did. I began, hesitantly, to realise that this inner love does not depend upon any attachment to others. Yes, I had discovered it through my relationships. It revealed itself more and in different ways with each blessed one of those of whom I have written, and others. And ultimately it was Bettina whose great gift was to help me to break through my last resistance.

The love that I now felt no longer depended on our relationship or on everyday events. There were good times and there were still many difficult times. When times were good, this love could be expressed joyfully and powerfully, often with an almost transcendental sense of oneness. When times were bad, the love still felt just the same.

I had found the deepest sense of spiritual identity. Awareness of this is love. This is the self. This is a consciousness of oneness, of the spirit. It is a capacity within oneself and so it neither depends upon nor belongs within any one particular relationship. While it may seem, for many of us, to be focused on a special individual, it is just that our connection to hat person awakens more deeply our sense of what is within us all.

The world goes on changing, circumstances are never constant, and relationships may come and go. But this sense of love for and unity with all things and people is constant and timeless. (Perhaps those who do find this and share it with one special partner are the most fortunate people alive.)

I am quite certain that everyone we come to know has something to teach us, especially those whom we find most challenging. There are even some who believe that our souls make ‘contracts’ before birth, agreeing to teach each other certain lessons vital for our individual spiritual growth while living on the Earth. Personally I resist this thinking - too many tricky metaphysical implications - but nonetheless the purposefulness of my relationship with Bettina was clear.

Firstly, being ‘in love’ with her made every moment joyful and opened my heart and mind to that deeper spiritual love described. Secondly, the difficulties of the relationship challenged me over and over again to hold fast to what is true and eternal and to let go of any attachment to what really doesn’t matter, to what is temporary. To return to an image from my first chapter, when one knows the river, its surface waves become less important. We may still be buffeted but the inner flow sustains us.

And there was a good deal of buffeting. This relationship was never easy. Her brave spirit had chosen the most difficult of 209 paths in this life and she was carrying a lot of pain, with deep fears to overcome. Nor was I, to be sure, the easiest of characters to get on with. From the time of ‘resurrection’ in November 2004 we still didn’t see each other frequently and she was still often holding back. These were the challenges to me. For all this talk of spirituality, heck, I’m still just a man and I wanted more - more of her, more of our happy times and, yes, more security. Godliness is all well and good, but there’s nothing like the feeling of man and woman together...

She was changing, facing her own challenges, but life remained an emotional roller coaster. And even right from the beginning of this new ride, the signs and dreams began to tell me of further changes ahead. At the time, of course, I just didn’t want to know. So may this be a warning: we must never drop our guard, never close our eyes to our awareness, always judge our guidance for what it is and not for what we want it to be!

The roadworks were finished. There was the Christmas cracker ring and the I Ching references to Family. These things and more convinced me that all would be well for us - the lasting happiness I longed for. After all, hadn’t my guidance through all the terrible days been proved absolutely accurate?

But I forgot my own injunction that all things change. Indeed, within days of our coming together again, the warnings had begun.

D 1st December 2004: I was sitting an exam in a room with several others. But there was a lot of unrest in the room which made it hard to follow the verbal instructions being given; I was angry that the situation was not being treated with respect. A certain question in the exam required me to match four people, named B, A, D and E, with some personal information given so that they would be happy. I found this very hard, especially for B, and felt under stress. Two women sitting nearby were being disruptive and provocative but the invigilators were taking no notice. Eventually I complained to the Chief Invigilator who at first told both the women and me to leave the room; but then she let me stay after all, and rebuked the other invigilators.

This was clearly an anxiety dream! In recent years my personal challenge had been to find happiness with Eve, Dawn, Alice and now especially with Bettina, and life had often been unreasonably disruptive. Yet the dream suggested that ultimately ‘someone’ was being vigilant and things were under control.

However, one week later...

D 8th December 2004: My father drove me and my pregnant wife to visit St Paul’s cathedral. We had to walk the last part but she and I approached in different directions, mine involving a tricky journey around the edge of a lake. When I arrived, a big event was about to take place but I couldn’t find my wife - the cathedral was crowded with people taking turns to sit down - and I was upset. Someone told me that it was important to be there at the end of the event because there would be music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. So I left, knowing that I had in my hand a special coin that would allow me entrance later, and retraced my difficult journey to the car.

Like Westminster Abbey before, the cathedral is a holy place that symbolised the spiritual goal to which we were being guided (dreaming of my father represents God for me) on our path; her pregnancy recalled a similar journey dream of just one year before, on 24th November 2004. The present dream predicted more difficult and lonely times, and my not being ‘accepted’; I had to be very patient and trusting - the coin was clearly the American one found nine days earlier. Still, there seemed to be a reassurance that eventually I could find my place, and presumably ALW was some sort of clue as to when... This would prove true in an awful and quite unexpected way.

The clearest predictions of all appeared a couple of weeks later, ironically just as our renewed relationship became especially happy.

D 24th December 2004:

(1) It was the last day of the school year and I was discussing with others a certain teacher who was going to retire; it seems he had more than one home and for some reason this made me feel betrayed. I hurried to my class after Break but found that I was free after all. However, in Period 6 there would be ‘a penalty’.

I have noted before how intimations of bad times often occur during good times, and vice-versa, but I’ve never become any better at accepting it. One day later, Bettina and I would have one of our happiest times ever, and even that would be eclipsed a week later, but the dream clearly described the end of our relationship (the school year, retirement, break) in a period of ‘six’. A second dream on the same night was even more unequivocal.

D 24th December 2004:

(2) I was with my lover at home preparing a meal of grains and vegetables, and then she went to get ready for something. I was left with all the work, on my knees, under stress... There wasn’t enough food so I made more; I had to clear up some mess and do someone else’s washing up; a washing machine I hadn’t noticed before was coming to the end of its cycle. Den, a character from television’s Eastenders, appeared and said, with a laconic shrug: “I must have got the timing wrong”! Then my lover came back in with someone else and told me she was going out, and it didn’t matter because “We didn’t have a definite arrangement.” I felt crushed. The time was half past six.

This was truly shocking. Here was I, working hard on the tasks of spiritual nourishment and cleansing but apparently to no avail. The cycle would finally end, with my lover leaving me again; and as in the first dream of the night, there would be a sense of betrayal. I instinctively knew that ‘6.30’ meant six months time (6 x 30 days), and that would be almost exactly ten (‘Den’?!) years from the beginning of the journey this book describes. For a long time I had believed that it was an eight-year path but apparently I had “got the timing wrong”. So midsummer of 2005 would after all be the most critical time. I wondered, too, whether I should now reinterpret the ring found in December as a reference to ‘a closed cycle’...

The message was emphatically confirmed three nights later by further dreams.

D 27th December 2004: The first took place aboard a ship and ended with me wanting food but having to wait for the opening of a Club 18-30 (these numbers again representing the time 6.30). The second was described earlier on page 172, but what I omitted there was that at the end of my quest my lover was sitting in a Peugeot 306 car! The numbers 55 reinforced the prediction since my birthday was six months away. A third dream that night saw me at school at a New Year gathering with others, to be told that my relative Nell had died. I can only associate this with Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard: ‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day...’

So despite our present happiness, it seemed that there was to be another parting.

We were close again, she wanted to be with me and I was more than ever sure of my deep commitment. Yet the messages over the next few months were decidedly mixed.

S 31st December 2004: I gave a close friend a Fortune Cookie, chosen at random from a bag. The hidden message read: “A friend of yours will get engaged this year.”

S 22nd February 2005: I saw the car 798 DAN, referring to God’s wonderful power, just as I listened to a marriage proposal in a radio play.

S 10th March 2005: As I was thinking about our second anniversary the next day, I saw the registration TWO 1.

S 27th March 2005: At a restaurant for Bettina’s birthday, we walked through several small rooms to choose a table (there were several vacant). When she eventually settled on one, we found a white feather, not at first visible, lying on it.

Several other registration numbers at this time referred to ‘resurrection’ and to ‘miracles’. There was even a... TRU followed by a ... JOY when we left a restaurant on Valentine’s Day! But were all these happy signs merely waking dreams reflecting my own inner desires and beliefs? Other dreams were giving warnings.

D 5th February 2005: I was a sailor on a ship in port, preparing for a voyage to start, knowing that at some point there would be a sudden signal to start. A couple of big waves came over us and I managed to keep a young woman safe, for which I received a commendation; I wore the letters ‘I V’ on my sleeve. Then I went to sleep, knowing that we would have to wake up and be ready to go in the middle of the night.

Quite a few dreams at this time were featuring ships and imminent voyages while several car signs also related to Jesus ‘entering a ship’, further echoes of the November 2003 dream. The new journey was not far off (perhaps the letters I V could be read as Roman numerals, and four months from now would correspond with the other predictions). And while I wanted this journey to be with Bettina, I had to start facing up to a different possibility...

D 14th April 2005: I was living with Bettina but there was great tension between us. She complained that my radio was too loud; she was running a bath and the water was almost overflowing. Someone named Burns was about to come and take us to visit a hospice. I then drove into the countryside and across a bridge to a roundabout at a T-junction. I tried to go right but was feeling anxious and overshot the turn, coming to a stop facing another car going the other way and driven by a woman. So I turned left instead and found that my father was now driving. We were on a wooded hillside overlooking a broad river, where I saw a speedboat set off in our direction.

Such tension was not evident when we were together, but I was clearly sensing it under the surface. Was I inadvertently putting her under pressure (the loud radio) and was the emotion we shared too much for us to handle (the bath water)? Was the relationship going to ‘flare up’ and ‘die’? It was deeply upsetting but mercifully the dream also offered some reassurance: through ‘trying too hard’ I might lose my way, but I would be guided on a new path (my father again driving) where things would progress rapidly (the speedboat). In the next few days, road signs reinforced this message. M 106 ARK means “be prepared”, then I nearly ran over a broken cycle, then M 406 ARK refers to the sower’s seeds falling on stony ground while M 531 ARK mentions the ‘breaking of ties’.

Acting purely on instinct, as I had done twice before, I suddenly decided now to take my Reiki training a step further. I had never intended to become a Teacher, thinking it unnecessary, but now it seemed imperative; in my mind, it was going to be for Bettina’s sake, to help ease her troubles. But in the back of my mind I remembered that the earlier levels of training had been at times when actually I had needed strength and guidance, ahead of the losses of Eve and of Alice... The first day of training was arranged for the end of May, which as it turned out was cutting things fine.

In the middle of that month, a close and dear relative of Bettina’s died and she fell into a period of great sadness and anxiety. A week later she was at my house when an awful misunderstanding arose between us.

S 21st May 2005: She left the house angrily and, in tears, I followed her into the road and asked her not to leave. At that very moment, the car M 886 ARK approached us. This is a reference to “...a sign”. I knew immediately that this sign meant that she would leave.

We made up, but in the next two days I saw:

S 22nd May 2005: M 406 ARK again - the stony ground.

S 23rd May 2005: S ... HOK followed by ... BET.

During this week, I spent a few afternoons clearing her garden and planting flowers. Then I set about cleaning the paths and drive, the symbolism of which (for me) I have described before. But she arrived home tense again, there were more misunderstandings and then the worst argument we had ever had. Some air was certainly cleared, and new light shed on several things! We made up again, but...

S 26th May 2005: ... 137 ACT refers to the power of the Holy Spirit. Then in quick succession there were two different ... ALY cars, which made me think of the initials AL(W) in the dream of 8th December 2004.

S 28th May 2005: M 404 ARK describes the sower thwarted again.

S 6th June 2005: I left a flower and a loving message at her house, but saw the car H ... ELL.

Next day she telephoned to end our relationship. I don’t know why. It was the day of my students’ AL exam.

I was in shock, and felt grief and pain for a considerable time, but I did not break down. For one thing, I had found inner reserves of calm and strength through the Reiki training. But more than this, even, somewhere in my mind I had known not only that this was going to happen but also that it had to happen. I could now begin to see that the ‘mixed messages’ of the last six months were not at all contradictory but indeed had all been accurate. On the one hand there had been so much joy; on the other hand, this parting and loss had come exactly as predicted, days before my birthday, marking the closure for me of a ten-year cycle of powerful relationships through which I had changed greatly. The wonderful continuation of the relationship had been as necessary as its ending. And now it was time to move on for, in the words of the I Ching a year before, all was gathered in.

Admittedly, I had wanted to believe that the cycle would end with a happier and more peaceful relationship, and of course my mind focused on Bettina. This was the intrusion of my own natural desires into the analysis of my spiritual guidance - after all, I am only human and merely a man at that. I had not anticipated several weeks of heartache and mourning.

But simultaneously I found that a very strange thing was happening: beneath the pain, at deeper levels of the mind, was a great peace and a completely unaffected sense of love. No anger. No blame. No resistance now. Just understanding, acceptance and love. I may have ‘lost’ Bettina but she, and all the others with whom I have been blessed to share this life, had given me the most precious of gifts.

IC 18th June 2005: Appropriately, my birthday reading was simply Hexagram 49, “Revolution”.

And so a new journey began.