Signposts

So far most of my inner experiences had been in the form of dreams, perhaps because I was still finding my way relatively unconsciously. But from now on other signs and omens began to play a greater part as I became more aware of the meaningfulness of life’s events and was more deliberate in my search for understanding. You might say “Well, if you look for signs of course you’ll think you see them.” The response to this, naturally, is: “You won’t see anything if you don’t look.”

I do concede that one can be silly about this if one is not careful - not every observation is a sign and not every apparent sign is helpful. Perspective and context are everything. Above all, surely we must never abandon personal responsibility for our own progress; we must exercise our free will and wisdom as best we can and make our own decisions if any one step forward is to be a genuine human advance. (Sorry, angels.)

Having made these high-flown remarks, I admit that I did get quite silly about it all for a while. For the record, over the next four year period I noted over a thousand car registrations (an average of nearly five per week) and about two hundred and fifty other ‘significant signs’ (one per week); I read the I Ching on average every three weeks and recorded as important an average of one dream per week. To be fair, a large proportion of the signs and readings were in the first year after May 1998 when I was in emotional pieces and needed help - any help going. I was looking for divine guidance. I found it too. Many signs (often in clusters of four or five on a single day) did help me at least in the sense that I felt reassured that I hadn’t lost my way and that ultimately ‘all would be well’. Despite my sadness, I never lost my optimism - I was beginning to have faith in the purposefulness of life.

However, I also began to realise that many signs, readings and even dreams were simply reflecting back to me my own state of mind; in a literal sense, I was creating them. This is why I now know how important it is to share these phenomena with others who can offer another perspective and help keep a balance (though it may be rare to find such a sensitive, kind and perceptive friend who doesn’t think you’re barking mad). Sometimes, for example, an I Ching reading would make little sense or two readings might appear to contradict each other. Surely this was because my inner mind was confused or I had not prepared myself properly or was too impatient for a definite answer. But one has to be brutally honest with oneself to know this at the time! Nor do such unhelpful readings invalidate the I Ching, and the same goes for other mystical experiences.

This path is not easy to follow, yet that is all part of the wonder and beauty of being human. So it is all the more wonderful when sometimes the clouds break and a shaft of bright light reveals exactly where we are...

D 10th June 1998: I arrived at school on a bicycle, on a Saturday. When I put the brakes on they stuck and I fell off, part of the handlebars also coming loose. But I wasn’t hurt. I mended the bike quickly and rode on, everything fine now. Someone else was arriving just behind me, also on a bicycle. I felt happy and could hear beautiful music from inside the school where people were rehearsing for a concert.

Clearly, at this point in my emotional ‘cycle’ there was a ‘break’, a loss of control and an upset. But the dream told me that basically I was fine; moreover, a new relationship (‘someone following’) was on the way in due course. Things were as they should be - it was all part of the learning (‘rehearsing’) experience. In fact, the previous night I had dreamed of being at school at four o’clock on a Friday - the end of the weekly cycle with a period of rest ahead - and the later dream seemed to be taking this a stage further.

S 11th June 1998: The day after the dream, and while thinking about it, I saw the car registration LUC 363. In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 3 verse 6 reads “All mankind shall see God’s deliverance...” I read this as a Bible reference because my son’s name is Luke and his mother is French, so she would spell his name in the French way. Therefore this seemed to me to be equivalent to my earlier observations of LUK - E plates!

At this time my Reiki teacher was being wonderfully supportive and indeed gave me much healing, which I could certainly feel within me even at a distance from her. She suggested that I now learn Level Three. This was much sooner than is normal - the traditional way is to allow a considerable period of adjustment or ‘apprenticeship’ between the levels. But she felt that I was ready and that I needed it, as it would open me up to more powerful healing energy.

S 29th June 1998: I had to travel over a hundred miles to see her, but immediately I set out I saw the car registration 698 DAN. I read this as the Book of Daniel, chapter 6 verse 9 and following verses. Here, Daniel is cast into the lion’s den, a test of his faith, and the king said to him: “Thy God... will deliver thee.” Then when I eventually arrived at my destination, outside my teacher’s house was a car with registration A11 RYT!

Many would see such ‘signs’ as fatuous, a grasping at spiritual straws. But when they are seen in their context and in conjunction with the dreams, when they are given a position in the continuum of one’s inner experience, and when they are consistent with each other as these were, they offer much stronger support than straws. I felt positively reassured that I was on track, doing the right things and would get through my present crisis safely. The Reiki training was indeed hugely helpful; I immediately felt a better balance of the turbulent energy within me. There were still some very bad days, but I recovered from them more quickly. I was getting stronger.

Nonetheless I still felt pretty detached from the real world, living inside my head, still emotionally fragile. This can be a dangerous state to be in. On the one hand, you may be actively riding the waves of the inner stream of consciousness - but what about your work and responsibilities back here on Earth? Yes, there were moments when I feared for my own sanity and seriously considered giving up on all this ‘spiritual stuff’. At just such a moment, another experience shocked me to the core.

S 7th August 1998: I watched a ‘Cadfael’ television play in which trial by Bible was depicted. This was a method used by the medieval Church to learn the ‘higher truth’ in legal cases where the evidence was inconclusive; after prayerful preparation, a high churchman would open the Bible at random and take whatever text his fingers touched as the judgement. I immediately felt the powerful inner energy, concentrated in the solar plexus, which I have come to associate with spiritually significant moments (I have had these feelings all my life but they were becoming stronger now and especially after the Reiki training). So later that night I prepared my mind and performed a ‘trial’ of the question: “Am I on a proper spiritual path?” The text I touched was the Gospel of John, chapter 12 verse 37: “In spite of the many signs he had shown them, they still would not believe him.”

Ouch! This felt like a direct reprimand to me for my doubts and lack of faith. It was as if my spiritual guides were saying “Look, young chap, we’re working our socks off here to give you more guidance than anyone has a right to expect, and you’re not even sure if you’re on the right path?” There have since been many such moments when it seems very difficult to deny the presence of an intelligent, personal guiding force. (But I still try.)

Meanwhile my own mind continued to present me with a series of important dreams which helped me to remain calm and forward-looking. Two in particular seemed to go further and offer specific yet enigmatic clues.

D 24th August 1998: I was at a sports centre watching Eve do cleaning work. It was a quiet evening and I was waiting for something. I couldn’t understand why there were two swimming pools side by side. A man in black was helping her for a while but then he left. At closing time she came towards me but then I saw another woman enter the building and begin, apparently, to check the notice boards. A group of people then started to gather in a nearby room for a meeting.

I had already recognised that this was a ‘cleansing’ period and that, in part, had been Eve’s purpose in my life. But it was less than four months since our separation and perhaps I was still hoping for her return; the dream told me there had to be a ‘closure’. (Incidentally, her relationship with ‘the other man’ later broke up - in the dream, she separated from ‘the man in black’.) Now, if water represents emotion then a pool must be a relationship, and the fact that there were two here again suggested that someone new would come into my life (there would be a ‘meeting’). Clearly, there were things here that I had to take ‘notice’ of! In fact, the meeting was two years away - and with a quite incredible link to this dream.

D 27th August 1998: In a bar, I asked for whisky but the careless barman put water in it. I decided not to make a fuss but accept it. Then I was on a trip to visit George Bernard Shaw’s house, exploring rooms which I hadn’t seen before. There was a garden outside, but unkempt and needing a lot of work doing to it. I heard an alarm and managed to get out through a fire exit. Then I was returning home, hitch-hiking, when a bus stopped for me - it was going to Victoria, exactly where I wanted to go and just 200 yards from where I had started. Later, I found myself in a new car and driving through Edgware.

So I realised that I was not going to receive what, at this time, I was still hoping for. I had to let go and look further ahead to new experiences (I had visited Shaw’s house with Eve). There was more reconstruction yet to do! But I would ‘escape’ from this danger, receive help and achieve ‘victory’ (a great pun). The dream again suggested the year 2000. Just two years later, in August 2000, I would be driving through Edgware to visit Alice.

At this time, several other dreams kept repeating the symbol ‘four’ or sometimes ‘four plus four’, presumably a time period. I began to wonder if I was getting a sense of the overall length of my ‘training course’ (somehow seeing far into the future to a time of resolution and a more peaceful life?). For example:

D 19th September 1998: I was a boy preparing for morning Assembly at school. I had four gold rings and dropped one of them but then retrieved it. People were laughing at me because I couldn’t find a seat, but then the Headmaster spoke up for me, people applauded and I got to my seat after all.

I awoke with a great sense of clarity from this. Again it pointed to a meeting (assembly) and my recovery from a position of weakness - although the ‘four’, if a time period, suggested the summer of 1999 rather than 2000. This confused me for quite a while.

However, the greatest effect of this particular dream was a real feeling of encouragement and almost congratulation (in contrast to the previous month’s telling off) as if from a high spiritual source (a ‘master’). This would happen again a handful of times later. I was beginning to distinguish between different ‘levels’ of guidance, as if I was accessing states of consciousness which are of different depth. It is difficult to explain how because it is so subjective, but sometimes there was a greater sense of ‘contact’, a deeper feeling of peace afterwards, a longer-lasting effect. There would be many moments when I unmistakably felt that it was not my mind at all at work but that I was receiving something from outside myself. This experience is humbling. Alternatively, the truth may be far more simple... Consider another example:

S My own pain during this year had made me much more sensitive to others and deeply aware of the pain that I had caused others in the past. I tried in my small way to make good by writing letters to certain people, expressing my sorrow and asking forgiveness, though I didn’t receive any replies! So one night, very upset, I made a heartfelt prayer for forgiveness. The next morning as I left home I saw the car registration - 981 DAN which I read as the Book of Daniel, chapter 9 verse 8 and one more verse: “We... are covered in shame. We have sinned... You forgive us...” This was a direct response to my prayer - how could I have created it myself?

Whatever the truth of this, as that year ended I felt much stronger due in no small way to a series of signs (mainly Bible references such as New Testament healings and miracles, or Job’s deliverance in the Old Testament) and dreams telling me that things were ‘about to happen’. Sometimes I was blessed with the long view.

D 19th December 1998: I was driving a small bus up a long steep hill. At the top were two sharp turns, difficult to manoeuvre - but I managed it, felt good, and then drove right up to and inside a larger bus! Waiting there was a friend of mine named Claire. She had to leave soon but before she went I gave her some money that I’d changed for her; it was two thousand French francs.

This was describing the struggle of my new way of life but promising eventual transformation to something better (a bigger bus!) and to ‘clarity’. There would be more twists and turns yet, though - perhaps two changes of direction? (Yes, and one of them would have a French connection.) Again the year 2000 was explicitly indicated. But this seemed a long way off - after all, 1999 was only just dawning.

S As if in sympathy, my car odometer which had been stuck on zero for two months suddenly started working again of its own accord on the 1st of January!

IC My I Ching reading for the year ahead saw “The Abysmal” leading to “Deliverance”.

The New Year heralded a flurry of psychic activity. In the first month there were nine memorable dreams, including one about rehearsals being over and the school play about to start (harking back to the dream of 10th June 1998). Signs also came thick and fast, twenty this month, ranging from Bible references such as M 106 ARK (“prepare the way”) to ... JOY, to my car mirror being broken (which I took to suggest that I must not look back!). I was sure now that an important meeting was imminent - in fact there were two.

On the 10th of January I had dreamed of being at a school art exhibition where I saw ten paintings. Ten days later I was invited to an exhibition by the mother of one of my son’s friends and herself a professional sculptress and artist; not only did we develop a good friendship, from this point I found myself drawn more and more into the world of art and of alternative perspectives on reality. This would be very rewarding, not least in beginning to appreciate things for what they were and becoming less judgemental!

Then there was a small collection of very strange signs:

S 1st February 1999:

(1) There was a short, and very rare, power failure at home which reset all my clocks to zero. It reminded me of a dream on 15th August 1998 in which I had met a sculptress and then seen a clock being reset to zero.

(2) I received some unsolicited ‘psychic’ junk mail which promised me “a new future” due to start on 13th March and a period of special good fortune “lasting 88 days” (provided that I sent some money...!) This in turn seemed linked to a dream on the 19th August 1998 in which I’d watched my old school being reconstructed (i.e. ‘new relationship’) and later seen someone wearing a sports shirt with the number 88 on it. Yes, such mail is generally rubbish, but read on...

(3) Almost the first car seen that day had the number M 292 ARK which reads as “...take up your bed and walk...” This describes a healing and represents new movement.

A few days later I met Dawn (with a French Caribbean background) and we were definitely attracted to each other, although our first real ‘date’ together wasn’t until... er, the 13th of March! (It would be the middle of summer before the ‘88’ made sense.) It was a pretty stormy relationship; we were both strong personalities and both emerging from emotional crises. But there were also wonderful times and I began to feel really alive again, my self-confidence restored and the ties to the past loosened. I believe that just by coming together we did much to heal each other’s pain, and if this was the ‘purpose’ of our meeting then we can be grateful.

D But almost as soon as my dreams had finished predicting her arrival, they began to warn me of conflict ahead and against believing that this relationship had greater significance than it actually did. Already in February I dreamed of things being turned upside down, of missing the right turning in my car, of being on a hill in a war zone. In March I missed a train, and in April my car crashed again on the A41; I also discovered a bomb in a hotel!

IC Also in early April, an I Ching reading for our new relationship promised “Obstruction” leading to the need to “Work on What Has Been Spoiled”.

S Then on the 15th of May my car’s odometer stuck on zero again!

This really wasn’t what I wanted to be hearing. Yes, there were a handful of painful scenes with Dawn, but on balance I was feeling so much more, well, balanced. It’s hard to accept that some encounters may have a very specific purpose but then must be left behind. However, my guidance was absolutely unequivocal.

D 20th May 1999: I was on a ship about to leave port and in a queue to get my ticket processed. I was jostled and lost a bag. Then I saw Dawn sitting nearby. I went through the ticket control but a friend said this was the wrong way and I should go back. I found myself out on deck where a steward dressed all in white gave me a white satin rope and urged me towards the stern by pulling on the other end of the rope. The ship was now on the point of leaving and the steward was insistent that I should get off; he kept encouraging me to jump and even got into the water himself to show me that it wasn’t too deep...

The warning could not have been more clear: I had to change direction before I got ‘in too deep’ - it even seemed (the steward being all in white) as though I was being offered angelic help!

D Five days later another dream promised a ‘transformation’ ahead and again featured the number four, and three days after this I dreamed of being ‘half-way through an eight-ball over’ in a cricket match.

This seemed to link with the earlier dream about the number ‘88’ (the eight being repeated as if for emphasis). For the first time I now felt the very clear intuition that learning ‘the new way’ was to be an eight-year path, which I was now half way through - it was just four years since the decision to end my marriage.

IC An I Ching reading in early June declared that this was “the moment to turn back” and to “bite through” (take decisive action). A further birthday reading a week later yielded Hexagram 36: “Darkening of the Light”.

S Later the same day, on a picnic, I got a splinter in one eye and needed hospital treatment!

Obviously, I wasn’t seeing things clearly... Or rather, I saw but did not respond, despite the psychic evidence being absolutely overwhelming. In the next couple of weeks a further I Ching reading yielded the self-explanatory Hexagram 39: “Obstruction”, I dreamed of driving the wrong way down the A41 with Dawn, and almost everywhere I looked I seemed to see the car registration H - ELL! The trouble is, I actually was becoming more loving so I was more prepared than in the past to ‘let things go’, to be accepting of difficulties, to be understanding. Perhaps I thought I could change everything. I couldn’t. It all ended very badly within a month and yet again I felt very hurt - this really was a very unhealthy pattern!

On the other hand, as if my inner consciousness (or the spirit world?) were breathing a great sigh of relief, there were strong and immediate reassurances for me.

D 20th July 1999: a grand and formal event was about to start at school in the Great Hall and there were many well- dressed influential people there. I was on the balcony, feeling rather lonely and unsure of myself, not knowing where to stand, so I took up a modest position in a back corner. There was a ceremonial entrance by many dignitaries led by a high churchman, a ‘holy man’. They came in at the far end, walked past almost the whole crowd and stopped in front of me; the churchman blessed me by baptising my forehead with holy water. It was a truly wonderful feeling and I fell to my knees in joy and humility.

The extraordinary feeling persisted when I woke up as if I was living in a lighter, clearer world - it was a very real experience. But where had it come from and why? For several days in my everyday life I had been in emotional pain not to mention mental confusion (thinking that “I’d got it all wrong again”). Set as it was in school, I knew the dream concerned my loving relationships but this was far more than a self-therapeutic “Ah well, never mind, things will get better eventually...”. This felt like a direct spiritual message, from beyond my own mind, that despite messing up I was on the right path and learning what I had to learn. And there was even more:

S 20th July 1999: When I came downstairs the morning after this dream I found my front door open (I have no idea how, it had never happened before and hasn’t ever since). On the mat was some junk mail offering me “The secrets of spiritual power”. As it was a lovely day I went straight out into the garden, where a butterfly came to rest on a bush inches from my face - it was a Ringlet, with just four rings on its wings.

In themselves, these events may seem insignificant but their synchronicity with the dream is amazing. The mail echoed the dream’s feeling of spiritual blessing while an open door represents opportunity and progress. The butterfly was pretty rare for my area; a ring naturally suggests emotional security, but moreover here there were four - exactly as I had dreamed the previous September when a boy in the same assembly hall at school was trying to find his place. Then to top it all, I realised that today was my parents’ wedding anniversary.

Looking back over so many strange experiences, I have often thought that either I am completely mad or I am one of the most fortunate men alive, given the extraordinary degree of ‘guidance’ I receive. I’m fairly sure that it’s not the former, because so many signs, dreams and readings have proved phenomenally consistent and accurate. But the question has then to be asked whether I am also one of the most stupid men alive, since I have so often ignored or failed to understand the ‘advice’. Supposing for a moment that we are in fact cared for and supported by loving spirit beings - mine must be the most frustrated in all Heaven.

My only defence is that I’m human. Surely I can’t be expected to understand all these things or have a calm, clear overview of life’s course while I’m actually embroiled in it. I never had an angel stand right in front of me, wings rippling, beatific light shining from his eyes, telling me to my face How Things Are. One has to work things out for oneself. (Incidentally, I have often wondered whether all those Biblical accounts of angelic messages were in fact experiences much like mine - perhaps dreams - but couched in the religious language of the time.) Then even when I do understand the signposts, I sometimes persist in making wrong turnings because of my weakness or wilfulness or perhaps emotional neediness. I behave like a small child in this great school of ours, extremely curious yet often defying my excellent teachers, falling over and grazing my knees...

The important thing, however, is to pick yourself up and try again. And if indeed I was four years into an eight-year cycle, my half-term report couldn’t have been all bad. The reliability of so many of these marvellous experiences encouraged my awareness and sense of purpose, my belief in the spiritual path I had embarked upon.

The existence of meaningful signposts means that one is on the right road!

And the small child gradually does start to grow up. Every day I was trying a little more deliberately to be more understanding and loving towards others, and the awareness of my own mistakes taught me to respond more kindly to others’. As the journey unfolded I was becoming more conscious of it as a coherent whole and recognising that it was leading to some real resolution. My dreams in particular were becoming more integrated and I was recognising cross-references between them as if I was doing a fiendishly difficult jigsaw puzzle: hesitantly at first with several errors, but then as the picture begins to emerge the pieces fall into place more easily.

I was also learning fast to trust my intuition and my feelings, to appreciate and express the non-rational, beginning to ‘know things’, to sense the ‘energies’ around people or situations, to feel the ‘quality’ of an event. Perhaps because of this, I was now beginning to have more experiences that seemed related to ‘angels’ or ‘spirits’. I had rejected Spiritualism twenty-five years before, but for all my scepticism I couldn’t help the powerful feeling that a loving and intelligent presence was often with me. In particular, the night before the solar eclipse in 1999 I am convinced that I met with a particular, individual spirit.

D 11th August 1999: This took the form of a dream but its immediacy, vibrancy and depth gave it a different quality to any I had had before. A man appeared and clearly identified himself, using symbolism, as Eve’s father. (He had died before I met her.) He showed me that my relationship with her was indeed over (I had been thinking about her a lot since the separation from Dawn) but that she had been ‘the key’ to my new way of living. Another beautiful relationship lay ahead, and again the number four was stressed.

I awoke stunned, clearly understanding the message given, and the ‘presence’ stayed with me throughout the rest of the night. All the same, I was still feeling emotionally raw and at such times it is difficult to hear that ‘happiness’ may be another four years away! Further dreams and signs kept coming of course but they were not very specific, offering general encouragement that I was going in the right direction, warning me against being impatient, insisting that I let go of the past, that I needed to let my wounds heal... This was probably very sensible, but I have always been impatient and found it extremely difficult to accept such lulls in life, times of consolidation.

Still, I kept myself busy and finally managed to complete the internal redecoration of my new home. The new look had beautiful colour and much more light than before. I also began a general clearout, which left a lot of space in cupboards and on shelves. As the end of the year approached, I realised that all this activity in the everyday world represented two important things about my inner world: firstly, there was a recognition of how far I had come and how much had been achieved; secondly, I was making space and giving up control so that my life could be more fully shared with another. Where was this leading? My mind demanded facts and eventually got them.

D 28th November 1999: I climbed very fast the 52 steps of a circular stone tower, like in a castle. Then on 30th November I dreamed of repeatedly hearing “six”; thinking this meant years, I tried to calculate the number of days and kept getting “two thousand”. I awoke hearing in my head the Strangelove song “I Will Burn”.

The first dream seemed to promise improvement for me, perhaps in one year’s time (52 weeks)? Clearly, my unconscious mind kept working on the problem and came up with the year 2000, as had been suggested several times before; in the event, I met Alice in the sixth month of that year. What was more extraordinary however, although I couldn’t possibly recognise it then (and just as well), was that my mind was already looking beyond that relationship - it would end, and I would get ‘burned’, just before my fifty-second birthday!

Then, on the day that I finished the work in my house, I got the full picture.

D 24th December 1999: I was getting changed in a school building, preparing for my second football match. Outside, there was a pitch marked on the playground with towers at each corner; a second pitch with similar towers was being prepared next to it. The other players were on a raised platform at one end so I went over, climbed the steps, and heard our coach giving an inspiring team talk. He pointed out the time to me - 2000 hours.

So there was going to be ‘change’ and a second important relationship, presumably in the year 2000 (I think I really had got this message by now). It would be an improvement (up the steps) and inspirational. But I should see it within the overall pattern: a four-year cycle had been completed, another was under way.

As the new millennium dawned, a succession of spiritual events tumbling over each other in a ten-day period filled me with optimism. Dreams described me ‘finding the solution to a difficult problem’, having ‘proof in 2000’ and the answer being related to ‘art’, having a ‘second chance’ and moving to ‘a new land at junction eight’, listening to ‘The Ring Cycle’ and again finding ‘eight as two fours’ important. In the daytime, car registrations all referred to healings or miracles or preparation. The very first car I saw on the 1st of January had the number P33ACE! Then some junk mail informed me that it was “Time to change your life”. What I didn’t understand, however, was that amidst all this there were also dreams about ‘disruption’ or ‘reversal’ to be dealt with. My New Year reading was just as enigmatic.

IC 8th January 2000: “How will this year develop for me?” yielded Hexagram 19, “Approach”. This is generally one of the most fortunate hexagrams in the book, the judgement describing a time when many things have happened and been remedied, thus a time of greatness can approach. But the moving lines of this reading spoke of ‘people being obstructive’ and of one’s place being ‘inappropriate’. Great restraint, integrity and inner belief were going to be demanded of me. Given this, the result was Hexagram 11: “Advance”, a time of peace and progress.

Putting this all together, I reasoned that a period of happiness in my emotional and spiritual life was about to dawn this year - probably a meeting with someone special - but that things would not go particularly smoothly. Then, when did they ever? One does not learn without challenges. I was going to have to be strong and patient for a while yet.

I prayed for ‘angelic guidance’ about this.

D 21st January 2000: This was another dream, like that in August, of a different quality. I was visited by a man who simply told me that his name was Jamie and then said: “Praise be the Lord. We’re nearly there.” I also saw an image of three people standing as if in a triangle.

About thirty years earlier I had visited a psychic artist who told me that I had a spirit guide who had been a Presbyterian minister named Jamie McIntyre (he drew a sketch of him for me). But I hadn’t thought much about this since then, nor had there apparently been any other ‘contact’ with him. Was he now reappearing in my life to reassure me?

And was he warning me about a love triangle?