Before Completion

I have a silly little superstition, dating back to a family joke, that whatever plastic toy I find in the first Christmas cracker I open each year will somehow represent my fortune for the year ahead! Well, in 1999 it had been a ring (relationship?) and in 2000 an airplane (life taking off?). This is not to be taken seriously. On the other hand:

S 15th December 2001: The toy was a tiny plastic centaur, which seemed a bit enigmatic. But later the same day, the day that Alice had made contact with me again, we went to see the new Harry Potter film in which the hero is threatened but saved by a centaur.

So the creature seemed to represent protection in times of danger. I had also already worked out that 100 days ahead (‘cent-’) would be the last week of March, a time which several dreams had suggested would be critical; further, it was the time of my next careers event and just before the next Planetary Alignment. But such thoughts of foreboding were far from my mind just now because everyday life was so much happier.

After months of effort I had finally tracked down my old friend Alan. We had been very close at university but lost touch twenty-five years before due to his lifestyle and travel; he was now in America and we spoke almost exactly one year to the day since my dream of ‘reunion’. I had interpreted this as reunion with Alice since they have the same initials, but in fact it was with both of them! Another extraordinary fact was that just a few days before my call he had dreamed about me, seeing me as somehow trapped yet able to bring about a healing - a beautiful symbolism.

And at least for the moment my relationship with Alice was better than it had ever been, close and peaceful. It had been very much an on-off affair especially in the last year, and I suppose many people might find this intolerable. But human beings relate to each other on many different levels - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual - and, as we all know, difficulties at any one level can prevent a relationship developing. This does not mean that our connection is not worthwhile; I believe that what it does mean is that we have something to learn from each other at those very levels of difficulty. Given enough love and spiritual ambition, many problems can be overcome as we grow in awareness of ourselves as spiritual beings. Moving beyond the problems of our lives and of our minds to a ‘higher state of awareness’ is the most wonderful and healing experience, putting those problems into a different perspective. That’s where Alice and I were now.

Of course, it doesn’t always last. We are very much Earthly beings too and the concerns of this plane keep interfering with our vision. Further, even from a spiritual perspective, one person’s path may link with another’s for a while but then move away. We cannot know how things will be. In any case, each new state of awareness brings its own new and harder challenges - the exams just don’t stop coming! Life and relationships are so complicated...But none of this means that we shouldn’t go on believing in what seems good, and go on trying to do all we can to bring that goodness into the world.

As usual, I read the I Ching for the year ahead.

IC 1st January 2002: Hexagram 5 is “Waiting” - there were no moving lines. The commentary says that “nourishment comes in its own time”, just as rain will fall but we cannot make it do so. We must wait with inner certainty (faith) and uncompromising honesty in order to overcome danger... There is a Fate at work which we cannot interfere with.

This is not suggesting that all life is governed by some fixed destiny, but that I was now on a particular course which I could do little about. The implication that it is ‘the right course’ (for otherwise I should have been advised to change things) did not make this any easier to swallow; it is so difficult for me to ‘do nothing’. But time and time again on this path I have been receiving the guidance that I “must allow myself to be guided”. In contacting the inner stream of consciousness, it seems, we must sometimes simply surrender ourselves to its flow; after all, the river knows where it’s going even if we don’t. Nonetheless, a month later I tried again to get more clues.

IC 4th February 2002: Hexagram 53 is “Development” in which “things follow their proper course”. There were three very descriptive moving lines - a man is unsure of himself yet has an honest approach, but things get out of control and dangerous if he tries to go too far, though eventually “his work is complete” and his path is “heavenly”. The result is Hexagram 3, a time of storm and chaos but ultimately new life and release from tension.

Being quite used to things getting out of my control, I didn’t find this too worrying at first! Putting both readings together, life seemed to be unfolding as it should. But something was nagging at me: in what sense could completion of one’s work be a time of chaos? It made me think back to a disturbing dream at the end of last year, the very night before my reunion with Alice and the arrival of the plastic centaur.

D 15th December 2001: It’s the careers event again, but it’s happening in an unfamiliar place and I don’t have full control over it. There are problems with the visitors, especially an artist. I go out with the woman who’s supposed to be in charge to have a drink at a nearby pub, but she becomes upset and I have to leave alone, very anxious, and I can’t find the right way back...

I still hadn’t connected the two dreams to an actual forthcoming school event, thinking that ‘careers’ represented the general course of my life. In fact I was being told both that my life would be turned upside down and when it would happen. Two weeks later (and remember this was actually a happy time in the real world) my mind went further.

D 30th December 2001: I was with Alice in a large and beautiful house which I knew to be hers. It was just before the end of term and eight o’clock. I was cheerfully planning a flight but she was annoyed with me and walked away; I followed her to a secret garden, her own private place, where she said “It can’t work”. Later I arrived at the Russian border - it seemed threatening and I didn’t have the right documents. But an immigration officer (in white!) was friendly to me and said that people would help me. My ‘wife’ was with me and we felt happy and strong.

The house in a dream represents the person and, yes, I saw Alice as a beautiful spirit; but she just couldn’t let me get that close. The end was approaching. Yet even as I sensed this, I was apparently looking ahead again to the period of eight and arrival in a new world. As time passed the dreams became absolutely unequivocal.

D On January 15th, I got into the wrong car, caused some damage by reversing, then came back to find my own car missing.

D On January 23rd, I was walking happily with Alice in a city, on a hill and near the bus stop for home; then she went to greet someone she knew and never returned. I searched desperately but couldn’t find her, eventually seeing myself back in my office alone and at night, grief-stricken, putting things back on the shelves. Just before I left, someone opened the door - a tall, slim and blonde woman I didn’t recognise.

It was astonishing that I was seeing the inevitability of the end, yet also beyond it.

The momentum of the inner stream was building to a tidal wave! Here on the surface, Alice and I had grown close again and it was clear that she was feeling nervous of that. Even she dreamed of being in her car but unable to control it (though she was in no danger) and of hearing her `phone ring despite it being switched off - unwanted messages insisting on being heard...

S 17th February 2002: I did some work in her garden, cleaning the paths, digging out brambles, cleaning the pond and so forth. On the way there I saw the car L 875 UKE which is an extract from the parable of the sower: “...some fell among thorns...others on good soil.” When the work was done she said it felt like her mind itself was being cleared out and that it was very disturbing!

S Also that week I spring-cleaned my own garden and house, and washed all the windows ‘to let in clear light’.

The mental clarity achieved was terrifying.

D 6th March 2002: I was in charge of two prisoners, tied together at the ankles, a man and a woman. We were at a school, outside a dining room. It was my task, a solemn and formal duty, to release them so that they could go in for a meal. I knelt tearfully to remove the ropes, saying “Please forgive me” to each prisoner. Later, feeling great relief, I went into a different dining area where beautiful food had been specially prepared for me.

This was one of the most emotional dreams I have ever had and its meaning was clear: the right thing for us, for our nourishment, was the breaking of our ties. At such a time, it didn’t really help to ‘know’ that something better lay ahead. Three days later, Alice said that she just couldn’t reconcile our relationship with her loyalty to her family. She began to withdraw. The 20th March was Oestre, the pagan festival of spring and the day of the careers event; she came to see me as it closed and we went for a drink in a pub (which of course I recognised from the December dream). We agreed to separate. It was as the I Ching had foretold in February, the “completion of our work”. And a time of chaos.

IC 21st March 2002: A question about the relationship yielded the descriptive and uncompromising Hexagram 29, “The Abysmal”. Water rushes through a ravine. It cannot be controlled. There is danger. One must just hold on and remain sincere. There were no moving lines to suggest change.

S Less than a week later, major reconstruction work started on the buildings of the school where I worked. You may recall that in my dreams the school represents relationship.

I was surprised at the time by my own reaction to this new devastation. Another ending. A path, which I had believed so deeply in and worked so hard for, seemed almost to have come to nothing after all. But most of the time I was quite calm, much more so than four years earlier when Eve had left. Perhaps I was in shock, refusing to accept reality. But I think there were other reasons.

Firstly, a huge amount had happened in this world and in inner worlds over the past few years, and while I had often stumbled nonetheless I had come to recognise that there was a rhythm and a purpose to it all. There may have been many mistakes and misinterpretations, but too many signs, dreams and readings had proved absolutely correct for me to deny that life was somehow unfolding according to a true pattern. The sense of guidance and protection brings a certain feeling of security, of inner peace. And while I knew there was a long way to go, I also knew that I was living and relating in a better way than ever before - I was being reconstructed.

I was learning that the divine pillars of human life are faith and love. Now was the time for faith.

S 23rd March 2002: Alice and I met to exchange a few possessions. This should have been very upsetting but in fact I felt quite peaceful. At home that evening I picked out at random a film to watch, recorded weeks earlier. It turned out to be The Prophecy, featuring the Archangel Gabriel (complete with horn), and its theme was the testing of human faith and love.

Another reason for calmness was that I had very clearly understood by now that all our relationships are learning grounds. If we connect closely and lovingly to someone then we may naturally believe and wish that the relationship should continue. But it is not necessarily so. Apart from the interference of other factors (material or psychological, for example), perhaps there simply comes a point where we have learned and achieved all that we can together. It’s time to move on to a new school course, or even a new school! This can be a difficult wrench, a fearful time, especially when the connection has been on a spiritual level because such a connection can never be lost even though we may go separate ways in our earthly lives. The spiritual is the world of the indivisible and unconditional and it doesn’t care two hoots or even one hoot for our petty mind games or transitory circumstances. So while it may be perfectly right for our relationships to change and for us to move on, we can find ourselves still getting drawn back to that other world.

S 13th April 2002: I had spent a week in Devon, in fact writing the first draft of this story so far. Driving home on the motorway I began to feel a strong build-up of psychic energy. I saw two different cars with the number plate B...MAD, which didn’t ease my mind. Just as I finally approached home I saw M 540 ARK, which is the same reference that I started this whole account with (although in Mark’s Gospel rather than Luke’s) - the miracle of healing despite others’ disbelief. I just knew that ‘something was about to happen’. At about 10.30 p.m. I took some rubbish out to my bin at the front of the house; precisely as I opened the door, I saw Alice’s car driving slowly past. She had been out with friends, felt upset, and ‘something’ made her drive past my house on the way home off her normal route. She hadn’t intended to stop and had I not come outside at that moment there would have been no meeting. She came in for a while and some of our pain was healed through our conversation.

The forces that connect people can be very powerful and, to some extent, beyond our control. This can cause problems for one’s new life and for new relationships! It certainly did for me and for some time to come. And there were of course times, being human and simply feeling the pain of loss and of loneliness, when all the so- called spiritual learning seemed a lot more trouble than it was worth.

At such times, you cannot imagine how much I longed for an end to all this, an end to the signs and dreams, an end to all the lessons so that I could just have a normal life. But having entered upon this path it cannot be abandoned. Having awakened consciousness of the soul, it cannot be ignored.

The door cannot be closed.

To do so would be to deny one’s Self.

And somehow the Self always knows what we need. In February I had decided (why?) to do a repeat Reiki healing course, a renewal of my awareness perhaps. Or maybe I sensed that I was going to need it, just as I seemed to have done in 1998. Acting on instinct, I picked out a particular course from a page of advertisements even though I rather took exception to the teacher’s self-publicity; I just knew it was the right course, and wrote off for information about dates and venues. That same night there were three linked dreams.

D 25th February 2002:

(1) I cleared out a pond of much silt and overgrowth, then found ‘something valuable’ at the bottom.

(2) I was revisiting Warsaw having been there a few years before, and being driven through the city in a large white car by a guide who knew exactly where to go. When I expected to take a right turn he went left, saying that the journey was easier by train and only two stops. Then I was in a building waiting for a lift apparently with the woman I’d seen in the dream of January 23rd. We went up two floors; I was supporting her because she didn’t feel strong, and the muzak was ‘Sexual Healing’!

(3) We watched a six-a-side football game. My son had a pain in his head and I thought he needed to see a specialist.

Well, I had cleared Alice’s pond a week before but nonetheless the dream seemed to me symbolic of healing, of cleansing the view of the spirit (the pond water). Certainly I was being guided in the right way, carried along, perhaps taking an unexpected turn, perhaps repeating something, receiving a ‘train-ing’ that would lead to improvement (the lift) and healing. A period of two seemed significant. This healing would also be for me (my son). Intuitively, I thought that the football match suggested ‘a weekend’ and a time period of six; but I didn’t understand Warsaw at all.

The next available course turned out to be over a weekend in six weeks time (the 6th April), just two weeks after the break-up. It was to take place in a room hired at a Polish cultural centre. The room was on the second floor next to the lift. The teacher’s name was, of course, Allan. Note once again how many factual details may be dreamed in advance, when there is no way that they could have been known at the time of the dream.

S 6th April 2002: On the first day of the course I parked my car next to a van advertising “Mark’s Decorating” with a `phone number. Reading this number as a reference in Mark’s Gospel describes the healing of Legion (almost my name in reverse!). Next day, two cars right outside the centre had registrations M 935 ARK (transfiguration) and G 59 DAN (the writing on the wall - remember the name Alan on my garden stonework and the similar car number that day?). As I left the centre on the last day, the car JON 15 pulled in front of me: “the light shines on in the darkness...”

Well, at least I knew I had been in the right place! True, I did have difficulty with some of Allan’s presentation but nonetheless he was undoubtedly a powerful and sensitive healer and the training left me feeling much stronger, liberated to a great extent from past traumas.

Great movements were also afoot elsewhere as the major planets once more now started to come into alignment just as they had a few weeks before meeting Alice. Another realignment now seemed entirely appropriate. My life quietened almost to the point of standstill. I was tired of the pain and effort, impatient for clarity, and there were many days of sadness when I almost lost any sense of purpose.

In dark nights one does doubt one’s own sanity. Wasn’t all this guidance just an expression of my own desires after all?

Yet I’m sure it would have been far worse but for the healing course. And however feeble I might have felt at times, something was very insistently trying to tell me something I needed to know...

D 15th April 2002: This was the day after my unexpected meeting with Alice and I had been praying for healing of our situation. I dreamed that I was about to take part in a school six-a-side football tournament; I got changed and ran out carrying a corner flag. The pitch was a large rectangle divided into two by a centre line, with six flags around it. A boy was explaining the arrangements, reassuring me that I (and someone else with me - I don’t know who) would definitely participate.

The football theme seemed to echo the dream in February which had been about the healing course, again the number six being cleared ‘flagged up’ and repeated. In the back of my mind, however, I also somehow linked it with the dream in December 1999 about two football pitches side by side - but I wasn’t sure why. The meaning wasn’t clear except that the dream referred to ‘change’ and there was some reassurance about my future with ‘someone’! But I was obviously missing something that my mind was determined I should know, because three nights later I awoke in the early hours, sweating and with heart pounding from another dream with extraordinary similarities.

D 18th April 2002: I was definitely in the room where the healing course had taken place but now it was almost filled by a large snooker table, marked out like the earlier football pitch and with of course six pockets. I was playing with Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins and ‘someone else’, a woman, was sitting nearby. Alex fouled the pink, giving me six points. For my turn I had to move around the table to a position directly opposite my initial position, aiming to hit the pink into the middle pocket. But I couldn’t see clearly because there was a bright light in my eyes, so the curtains on the far side of the room were closed for me. Then, strangely, more curtains were brought out from underneath the carpet in a corner of the room where they had been ‘hidden’. I was joking with Alex that I would have to get married in order to take this shot...

The room suggested the healing theme again and perhaps Al- referred to the healer Allan. (Oddly, just a few days later I saw a television programme about Alex Higgins.) But I was being told that there was something which I wasn’t ‘seeing clearly’; I had to ‘change my position’ completely and there had to be a ‘closure’. The most striking feature of the dream was the emphasis again on the number six, and the similarity of the table to the football pitch; again I connected it to the earlier dream which had clearly described an overall period of eight years for this path. It would be another eighteen months, as the eighth year ended, before I finally understood the meaning of these numbers.

There were other enigmatic details in this dream though:

who was the woman waiting nearby, what was this reference to marriage, and just what was it that was hidden?

S On several occasions around this time, the car E 898 LUC seemed determined to draw itself to my attention! On a whim, I took a different route home one day and got stuck in traffic with this car ahead of me. Another time, it approached from the opposite direction then made a u-turn right in front of me and stayed there for eight miles; it then turned off but reappeared in front of me a couple of miles further on. The Bible passage explains the parable of the sower and says that ‘hidden things will come to light’. When this car had turned off it had immediately been ‘replaced’ in front of me by ...115 JOB, which asserts that “God speaks” to us.

The clue kept being repeated.

D 24th April 2002: England are playing in the World Cup and ‘about to make a change’. I’m wondering who is available and say insistently to someone “Tell me when the exams are over”.

Again, there had to be a ‘change’ and, if I had understood other signs, the period of testing would be over in 2003. More immediately, however, England were indeed due to play in the World Cup in early June just as my school’s exams ended...

D 20th May 2002: I changed my clothes for a size ‘one sixth’. Then I was in my garden, walking along a network of paths and through an archway, hearing the word “sixth” again. The dream moved to a school lunchtime when I was offered a delicious dessert by a friendly serving lady; I took it to my parents’ bedroom to eat, then went back for more - there seemed little food left but ‘something special’ was found for me. Finally I was walking across the school playground alongside a colleague named Alan; I had been asleep but it didn’t matter because I was now ‘free’.

‘Change’ and ‘six’ would be essential to my path. Special nourishment would be offered on the way ahead (my parents’ room suggesting a new relationship), where there would be healing and freedom. It was impossible not to relate this to that terrible dream in March of the prisoners’ release being followed by a beautiful meal.

Yes, I think I knew even at the time what all of this insistent information meant. My relationship with Alice - which began on the fifth anniversary of this path and which was also the fifth important relationship in my life - was indeed over. It had to be closed and I had to change in order to move forward to the final stages of this learning. But however ‘beautiful’ and ‘nourishing’ the ‘secret destiny’ that might lie ahead, we were both finding it very hard to ‘move forward’. The same strange inner force that had drawn us together that night in April just wouldn’t let us break apart completely: she hurt her leg and asked me for healing; we went to a show which I had arranged months before for her birthday; we went to art exhibitions... and all the time I was aware of the deep connection we had made with each other even though I knew that our paths in life were now diverging. As the weeks passed since our separation, the sense of loss and grief remained almost unbearable. It was a mistake to go on like this but both of us seemed powerless to help it.

This was the hardest lesson I had faced so far - learning to let go of the past. I turned again to the I Ching for guidance.

IC 5th May 2002: A question about the future course of the relationship yielded Hexagram 17 which concerns “Following”, not in the sense of unintelligent sheep but rather the way in which the human spirit can pursue beliefs and ideals, sometimes unrealistically but also often to great achievements. The first moving line of the reading described the nobility of holding fast against all the odds to a belief in that which is “beautiful and good”. The second moving line seemed to be a prediction: an eternal union is formed between a follower and an evolved spirit, who has withdrawn but then ‘returns’. The result is Hexagram 21, “Biting Through” - an energetic clearing away of obstacles and an application of ‘natural law’.

This question, of biting through the ties that hold us to the past and prevent us from truly growing, is surely one of the most difficult problems for many of us. Often it is because we feel very wounded by painful circumstances, or by some injustice or by what we perceive as others’ mistreatment of us. This can go right back to our earliest years and to family relationships and events that seem to have ‘marked us for life’ at a deep level; then we are especially sensitive to more injustice and mistreatment as we get older, in our close relationships or perhaps in our careers. The difficulty is no less when the wound is caused by the loss of something or someone that brought us joy.

But if we carry this pain around with us in our minds - whether it be anger, hatred, resentment or grief - it becomes a dense cloud that obscures our vision of the beauty of the human spirit and weighs down our steps as we try to move forward. It infects our entire outlook on life. We can become jaundiced or cynical, sad or fatalistic. And however much we try to go on, we find that we are attracting to ourselves the very same difficulties over and over again.

As I described at the outset of this story, I had dealt with my own pain (like many others, I think) by building walls. The trouble with walls, of course, is that while they may protect us from the potential invading pain outside, they also keep our own spirit shut away inside. We cannot express ourselves fully. We cannot grow freely. Imagine that you are a medieval king who has built himself a castle complete with ramparts and moat to keep out the enemy. You may feel safe (though beware, no castle has ever proved impregnable). You may feel strong. But as the challengers gather beyond the walls, you can’t go anywhere. You’re stuck inside. What sort of life is that?

What I had found myself being taught these last seven years was twofold. Firstly, if we wish truly to experience what it is to be human and to access the deepest levels of consciousness that our spirits long for, then we must tear down the walls. We must take the risk of being knocked about and bruised by life’s demands and challenges in order to know what is beyond them. This is hard. This hurts. It can be like scrambling up the rocky paths of a steep mountain, slipping back on gravel, cutting the hands on sharp edges, sometimes holding on for dear life, sometimes not even being able to see the path... But I had also discovered that there are signposts along the way and sometimes the hand of grace to help us through a tough patch. And best of all, sometimes we reach a ridge or a plateau where the mists clear and there is the most incredible sense of peace and achievement. In the relationships I have described there were moments of deep joy and connectedness to the world beyond anything I had thought possible before.

This only makes the second lesson even harder, for even these moments of revelation and Being must sooner or later be left behind if we are committed to resuming the path. Whatever our ‘level of development’, the task is only made more difficult if we are carrying heavy ‘baggage’ from the lower slopes, from the past.

We must let go of loss and anger and fear, of whatever holds us back.

It’s easy to say isn’t it?! In my experience, at least, this lesson is harder than the first. People say that in order to move on from some trauma we must forgive those who have wronged us. Perhaps sometimes it is also a matter of having to forgive ourselves, for our own weakness or neediness. Personally, I have always had a big problem with the concept of forgiveness - surely there has to be some justice, some putting things right, some recognition of what has happened and an expression of sorrow? (Interestingly, in ancient China at the time that the I Ching was being developed, the highest form of legal justice in criminal cases was compassion for the criminal, who would be released if genuine shame were expressed.)m I’ve never been sure whether human beings can ever totally forgive. But what I was being taught through my experience now was that we can release ourselves and others from the debilitating pain of a situation. If we can see every situation as a learning experience, an opportunity for us to grow as human beings, then the people with whom we are involved are no less than our teachers. And teachers deserve our respect and thanks! This applies to all of them, even if they don’t seem very good at the job... who are we to judge? And all lessons sooner or later come to a natural end (though they may return at a higher level later) - thus we are free to move on to the next one.

Equally, while trying to think well of others and blessing them for their contribution to our lives, we must try to be gentle with ourselves. Most of us are very much on the nursery slopes of the spiritual mountain. Do you remember how hard it was to get to grips with the quadratic equation at school? Yet that is pretty much the mathematical equivalent of infancy! How much harder is it for us as spirits to learn stuff like unconditional love and forgiveness? Of course we will make mistakes and stumble through our tests and exercises. But the student has only one responsibility (though it is an absolute one) and that is to want to learn, thus to go on trying.

And is the mistake of trying too hard to be loving not better, at least, than the mistake of not trying?

I think this is what the profound I Ching reading of the 5th May was telling me. Yes, I had to try to cut these ties. But the first and most important lesson of this relationship had been the experience and recognition of that which is “beautiful and good”, and a determination to pursue this in every moment and every situation of life. But there was a bonus. The reading also offered a prediction that, given such perseverance, there would be a wonderful spiritual turning-point, a ‘return’...

As I have said before, consulting the I Ching sometimes feels like being in the presence of a wise and loving Master. Sometimes the signs I describe seem to come from a higher intelligence. I shall probably never know the truth of this. But once in a while along this path one comes into contact with the most powerful spiritual force, which is not only humbling but which actually makes a real and significant difference to one’s life.

Miracles Do Happen.