The Fire

We can never know exactly what are the inner purposes of our experiences. We can never know the full extent of what it is we need to learn in order ‘to be all that we can be’. We can never know whether we have ‘succeeded’ or ‘failed’ or what still lies ahead to challenge us. We are like small children in a great school, gradually working our way through the levels, the pleasures and the tests, always developing yet always with much, much more to learn. We might reach the relatively senior levels of a school, with some achievements under our belts, but there will always be another more senior college after that where we will start as freshers. Our teachers are also always (hopefully!) at least a few steps ahead of us and showing us the stage to which we can aspire. But even they always have further levels of growth to achieve.

All we can do - if we choose to accept the challenge - is to throw ourselves wholeheartedly into the school experience and accept the knocks as well as the plaudits that come our way, with trust in our teachers and faith in the educational process. We just have to keep trying. And the key to a meaningful life - one that we can be proud to have lived and which makes a difference in the world - is awareness: we must notice what goes on and try to fit it into our understanding, and know that it will fit in some day even it makes little sense now.

Of course this kind of analogy can be stretched too far! But in my experience of teaching young men, it is not at all necessarily the most talented or those with privileged backgrounds or the most attractive or those who are most at ease socially who are the most ‘successful’ in the sense of becoming well integrated people best able to recognise and take advantage of the opportunities that life presents. Rather, it is simply those who have cared most about doing their best, those who involve themselves most in all that the school and life outside it have to offer.

In the summer of 2003, eight years after my deliberate intention to set out on this path of learning, I knew that I had achieved (with the blessing of many others’ teaching) something very special. The depth of love and sense of divine union, beyond thought itself, which I experienced with Bettina, was far beyond the imagination of the man who had started out. My gratitude is eternal. The spiritual purposefulness of these eight years was undoubted. But all the same, I was still only just beginning.

At that time, driving home so happily from our holiday at the end of August, it would have been impossible to imagine the horror to come. Simply as a man, I felt joyful and believed that this could continue. Don’t we all long for that contentment? But just as we can never know what it is we have yet to learn, so we can never know what life will present us with: yes, I have shown that it is possible to see a little way forward and around us, but we cannot know the truly critical turning points. Perhaps this is because, obviously, we do not yet have the experience of them to be able to understand their impact. We may have presentiments, but life- changing moments, whether disastrous or happy, have a natural habit of appearing out of the blue. This is the very nature of human life, when we are thrown back upon naked faith.

“Wake up there, for you do not know when the Lord will arrive among you.”

(The Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, verse 40.)

Within a couple of days of that happiest of days I entered the most extraordinarily intense and painful period of my entire life.

Immediately on our return from holiday there developed an inexplicable distance between us. Maybe, having been so hurt in the past, she was now fearful of our very intimacy. Everything seemed to be misinterpreted and gestures of love were dismissed, as the barriers went up and she demanded ‘space’. The breakdown of communication spread.

S 1st September 2003: I had recently bought a new portable radio. It stopped working.

I had been so looking forward to the new year at school, feeling optimistic and strong, but instead my days were starting with tears. In this very dark state, I read the I Ching for us.

IC 5th September 2003: Hexagram 37 is “Family” and the moving lines described the roles and moral responsibilities of the man (consistent care) and woman (balance) required for family union. The result was Hexagram 49, “Revolution”.

S 6th September 2003: Next morning I went out into my garden to find several black feathers by the door (an earlier symbol representing Bettina).

So I prepared myself for testing times and changes in our relationship. But I was still inwardly confident of life’s new direction because the love I felt was entirely unchanged. I had no idea how bloody the revolution was to be. But as things developed it was as if a stream of events and signs and dreams presented themselves to warn and protect me.

S 7th September 2003: The Internet service provider Freeserve sent me a free trial horoscope. It warned of “tense moments this week”, “harsh words being exchanged” and said that “What you are facing is truly a turning point”. (Despite my scepticism of press astrology in general, this particular site proved so astonishingly accurate that from now on I took notice of it.)

D 8th September 2003: That night I had a shocking and powerful dream in which there was an angry breakdown of communication with Bettina. She told me that “It’s your baby!” Then I found myself, struggling with luggage, in the foyer of my hotel but unable to open the four-digit combination lock of the door. I could see someone through the glass but they couldn’t or wouldn’t help me. A woman who had been with Bettina came in and continued to chastise me in French, but I couldn’t understand much except that she referred to Bettina as “ton mari”. In a while she became calmer and opened the door for me, then left saying that she would return later.

I awoke cold and frightened. The upset was somehow my responsibility (‘my baby’) and my past experiences (‘baggage’) was blocking the way (‘locked door’); yet I wasn’t understanding the situation (‘foreign language’). It was odd that despite her anger the woman used the familiar “ton” and the incorrect “mari” which means husband - was this a punning reference to ‘marriage’? The only reassurance to be gained from the nightmare was that the door was opened and the woman would return... I had to search my behaviour and motives, and be strong and patient. Next day, to reassert for myself my commitment, I changed the four-digit PIN on my mobile `phone to a number that represented Bettina. And then:

S 10th September 2003 : The `phone was stolen from my private office at school (although the pocket tape recorder, which still held the dream account and which was next to the `phone on my desk, was not).

You may recall that I had seen this new `phone as representing a time of new communication and that I had received it just before meeting Bettina. But the theft meant more than a breakdown; I had a distinct feeling of being under personal psychic attack and, without denying my own responsibility, I knew that some outside agency was threatening our relationship. We had now been together just six months and indeed we spent a happier evening celebrating this, but there were undercurrents...

S 13th September 2003: I still had my old mobile handset but when I tried to use it found that it was ‘security locked’. A new SIM card had been ordered but I couldn’t contact Vodaphone to activate it. Similar frustrations and misinformation continued for a full week before this situation was resolved and I was ‘back in contact’.

S 14th September 2003: Twice this weekend I had unusual trouble with my contact lenses, managing to put both into one eye at one point and then losing one while out driving with Bettina. This was just after seeing, having changed route and become stuck at a junction, M 121 ARK (“be prepared”). When I got home later, I saw several spiders in the house.

From the inner levels of consciousness I was now getting strong hints about what was building up. There was a situation that I wasn’t ‘seeing clearly’ (the lenses) and it was to do with Alice (dream references to my past, reversion to my previous `phone, and the appearance of spiders). I knew that Bettina felt insecure about this but I really had worked hard to reassure her, and there had been no contact since the issue had arisen earlier in the summer.

S 15th September 2003: Nonetheless, the FS horoscope this week was insistent: “...family issues... emphasised. Expect a blast from the past, or perhaps even the return of an ex-lover.” It also promised that emotions would “get churned up”! When I left home today, the car ... 442 JOB pulled in front of me (“your words can heal...”) and then I saw a white feather stuck to my rear window.

In the present context, the feather of course also represented Alice (the rear being in the past). And it was entirely appropriate that next day Bettina and I went to the theatre to see the play ‘Power’, which is about the changing nature of personal power in relationships.

S 17th September 2003: BLACK WEDNESDAY.

On the way to work I saw the unusual registration M1 11GHT followed by ... 115 JOB, which refers to an attack.

Then I was given a rune reading about the current situation by my friend who has been mentioned before. It described “a total blockage” and my partner being “unable to free herself from past troubles”; there is a “path to freedom” but it is also blocked, while I am also unable to be my true self due to the stress of the time.

I turned on my office computer to find an email from Alice. She said that her life had been very hard recently, she was low and just wanted me to talk to her.

The signs of two days before now made perfect sense, but what was I to do? I felt that I couldn’t ignore a call for help especially from someone who, yes, I cared about. This was my test, my baby... and the decision that closed and locked the door. I didn’t want to be furtive. Our relationships surely mean nothing if we cannot be open and honest, and accept one another completely. I wanted to be open about this event and reassure Bettina that it did not affect my love nor threaten us. Who can ever say whether this was a mistake?

S 17th September 2003: On the way to her house I saw the number ... SAD.

I didn’t even get a chance to be reassuring. She was dreadfully upset and sure that I had been betraying her. It was clear to her that I wanted to break us up. What terrible, terrible experiences her soul must have endured before. It was “over”. I drove home numb with shock and trembling with fear.

S 17th September 2003: On the way I collected my mobile `phone, now repaired, and exchanged my portable radio for a new one. Communication restored... For what it’s worth, I also realised that today was the eighth anniversary of meeting Eve.

IC 20th September 2003: “What’s happening?” yielded Hexagram 43, “Breakthrough”, which I had also received as my birthday reading in the summer. An incredibly apt moving line described “a man in an ambiguous situation” who must try to be true to himself despite loneliness and others’ misjudgement of him. The result, unaccountably, was Hexagram 58, “The Joyous”.

S 21st September 2003: The FS horoscope helpfully pointed out that there could be “all sorts of complications if you aren’t aware of what you are doing”, and added that I was likely to make a difficult situation even worse!

Yes, there was certainly plenty of complication and misjudgement about now by all three of us in this unsought-for triangle. How could I not be ambiguous? Throughout the eight-year path I had tried to learn to be more honest and loving, but perhaps I was also very naïve - it doesn’t always seem to work in the real world. Apparently it is not acceptable to care for more than one person, all others must be totally rejected. I now felt like a complete stranger on this planet, unable to make out more than the odd word of its foreign language. It crossed my mind now that perhaps the ‘evil’ I had done, for example, by turning my back on those I cared for, was being revisited on me.

All I could do now was try to be true to myself, though it was unimaginable how this situation could ever again become ‘joyous’. I tried again and again to approach Bettina but she, her friends and family rebuffed me, even though Alice selflessly wrote to reassure her. And the universe wasn’t being very helpful now, as continuing signs themselves seemed ambiguous.

S 23rd September 2003: In one of my maths classes, a boy repeatedly and pedantically made an issue of a particular multiplication sum. I realised that the numbers involved were, exactly, those of my `phone PIN (which I had just reset in the old `phone). Later the same day my office computer developed a fault. The engineer thought it had been interfered with; fixing the problem in my absence he reset my password to a random numerical one - again, Bettina’s numbers.

S 27th September 2003: I delivered a loving letter and flowers to Bettina hoping to clarify matters, but on the way there saw the numbers ... TAO... WOE and ... NRP (my initials). Sure enough, another negative reply came later.

IC 28th September 2003: Had I got it all wrong before? Was my belief unreal? I consulted the book again for my relationship with Bettina, and received Hexagram 26, “The Taming Power Of The Great”. This is a time for holding firm when everything depends upon perseverance and self- renewing strength of character so that even the most difficult undertakings can succeed. The two moving lines were unbelievably encouraging: harm is prevented, the obstruction is overcome and one’s principles prevail, leading to “the way of Heaven”. The outcome was again one of the most fortunate possible, Hexagram 34 being “Power Of The Great”. This describes union characterised by fluent strength, “in harmony with Heaven”.

Such an auspicious response seemed inconceivable given my dark state of mind and the actual evidence of the real world. Could the situation really turn full circle for us? But on the other hand I have mentioned before the danger of interpreting dreams or readings according to our desires; perhaps this reply was more personal to me than for us - that is, I must continue to persevere in what seems right and thus the present harmful obstruction to my path could be overcome...

Access to the unconscious is a wonderful thing but understanding the information is quite another. As September ended I was still in turmoil and at my lowest point for years. I felt reduced virtually to nothing, my efforts having failed, my beliefs broken, my ‘guidance’ seeming false. I felt close to death.

I had to try to renew my strength and clarity. Symbolically, I bought a more powerful battery for my `phone and cleaned my entire house including the windows. I carried out a personal prayer ritual at Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, asking for healing and guidance. But a group of Bible references didn’t seem to make sense. First someone put up a notice outside my office (advertising a meeting) quoting Luke, chapter 12, verses 1 - 12 (“...things that are hidden will become known...”) and then in quick succession I saw the cars 629 DAN (the lions’ den, faith tested), S ... HOK and ... 41 LEV (where God spoke to Moses). Within a day of this they certainly were, it definitely was, and He did!

I had recently begun investigating my family tree, so as better to understand my forebears’ characters and patterns of behaviour (and thus to know myself better). I now received simultaneously a horrible letter from a family member reflecting several of my own (hopefully now past) most difficult characteristics, and a devastating letter containing previously secret information about, in particular, my father. (Incidentally this research would later make sense of some things that the medium Grace had said months before, about a family member I had known nothing about previously.) The knowledge and awareness I gained through this work was of incalculable help to me in understanding how we go about relationships and deal with personal challenges; it also helped to continue the healing within the family that had begun the previous year. But although for the first time I found that I was able to mourn properly those who had gone before, the process also released a lot of grief at a time when I was not in any case emotionally strong. In a sense, it both strengthened and weakened me. It may have been an important spiritual step forward, but I wasn’t sure I could take any more...

Perhaps it was not surprising that at this new depth of inner awareness I should now experience one of my most powerful dreams ever, from which I would awake with an absolutely clear sense of ‘a spiritual presence’.

D 3rd October 2003: (The dream was very long and detailed so I have abbreviated it here.) I found myself having to defeat the threats of a powerful vampire along with other lesser demons, which I managed to do but sustained wounds in the process. After a long and difficult journey across a wilderness back to safety, the wounds were healed. But then I couldn’t find my car and was refused help by certain figures of authority. However I received a text message guiding me across a large empty car park and out through a gate, where I was told that I was safe. Then I was rescued by a woman in a French car, but only after I had forcibly removed another car blocking the way and my rescuer had driven on a long detour through the empty space that I had crossed. A man sat patiently nearby in another car. I was told that he was ‘my Master’, and there was an enigmatic reference to marriage in Westminster Abbey.

Nearly every part of this dream except the ending was immediately clear to me, from meeting the personal emotional challenges of my blood family (the vampire and demons) though not receiving the support I needed, to being guided (by texts!) when I lost my way. I was being told, it seemed, that although things would take time and I had to go through some ‘emptiness’, nonetheless I would be safe. An obstruction had to be removed but then there would be a new relationship. My partner would also have had to go through that emptiness, so I must be patient. The reference to the man in the other car left an inescapable sense that this loving reassurance had indeed come from a spiritual Master. I felt that I had received a direct and holy response to my prayer. But why a French car, and what was the significance of Westminster Abbey? I would wrestle with this for months.

S 3rd October 2003: On the way that day I heard a radio play about having faith in Jesus and in healing.

The week continued to be difficult but Bettina and I were in touch and agreed that we were missing each other. Unsurprisingly, I looked forward hopefully to the Jewish Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), a time for forgiveness and reconciliation.

S 6th October 2003: The weekly horoscope spoke of “a turning point in a relationship” and “a time to change the pattern”; I had to be able to “let go and move on”. I talked to Bettina on the `phone later that evening, then turned on the TV just as a character said the words “God has a plan”. Well, I wished He would let me in on it...

S 8th October 2003: 42 DAN says that “God shows us signs and wonders” while M 23 ARK describes healing, but soon after this there were two cars with registration H ... ELL! The latter has nearly always been followed shortly after by difficult times. It struck me that the reference in Mark included the numbers “one in four” and I wondered if this could represent a time period (as in my dreams): one quarter could mean three months or perhaps three weeks...

S 9th October 2003: One after the other I again saw S ... HOK and ... 41 LEV where “God speaks”. A little later, on the way to Bettina’s house, my driver’s side mirror was broken by another car passing too close; surely this means “Don’t look back”? Then as I left her house I turned on the radio just as the song “Move On” by Santana was playing.

S 10th October 2003: There were notices up at school quoting the same text that has come to characterise this whole period - Luke, chapter 12, verse 35: “Be ready, the Son of Man is coming when you least expect him.”

For more than a month now I had been living every moment of every day in a heightened state of awareness and, yes, of some fear. I could feel the surging waves of the river of consciousness within, in what can only be described as a tide of fate carrying me along. It was a momentous time and a dangerous time and I could do virtually nothing about it. My heart was full of love and entirely open, vulnerable to every knock and rejection. But I knew that Bettina too was in pain. I couldn’t turn my back or close my eyes and walk away however much ‘God’s signs’ seemed to urge me.

And just how were all these consistent (and ultimately truthful) warning signs being caused? Perhaps I was achieving some strange level of consciousness where we can read the patterns of that inner stream, and so in the world around me I intuitively took notice of those things - such as car numbers - whose meaning resonated with that esoteric awareness (and of course did not notice those that didn’t). Even so it is astonishing just how many small events could be synchronous (such as the numbers in the maths class and ‘random’ computer password).

These experiences suggest that everything around us is meaningful. But this still doesn’t really explain, for example, how often I seem to turn on a radio or television to hear something absolutely apposite to the moment. I surely cannot have unconscious awareness of every radio or television broadcast, or of every other electromagnetic signal, being made at any one time! (Critics may argue that for every apparently meaningful such moment there are a dozen meaningless ones and I’m just being selective. This is of course true, but quite irrelevant - all that matters is that meaningful synchronicity does sometimes occur.) As I have said before, there have been so many phenomena where the ‘simplest explanation’ is that of some sort of spirit guidance. This should be borne in mind during the next few pages because something, somewhere, was definitely somehow protecting me.

Meanwhile there was another in what was to become an extraordinary sequence of vivid dreams.

D 10th October 2003: I was having problems with my computer, similar to what actually happened two weeks earlier, except that now the voice-recognition software (which I don’t have) couldn’t understand me. I tried all I knew to fix it with some limited success but it still didn’t work properly. In particular it was misreading the word “suspicion”. I explained the problem to a colleague named Dave who is a computer expert and who might have solved it - but I still wanted to try to do it myself first.

It was clear enough that I wasn’t being understood however hard I tried and indeed that Bettina was ‘suspicious’, or wary, of my loyalties. Perhaps I needed some professional, expert help? Something was trying to help me, or at least prepare me:

S 13th October 2003: The weekly horoscope said “you might be knocked off balance” by coming events and have to “cope with more than you bargained for”; there would also be a very difficult conversation. Great! In the morning I saw ... CLU just as I turned on the cassette player to find that I’d recorded in error a play about a healing miracle. Later in the day I again saw S ... HOK, though a different car and in a different place than before.

D 14th October 2003: Against my will I found myself persuaded to enter a drama competition and, very unexpectedly, I won it. Only then did I realise that it was a very prestigious award and would bring great opportunities, including travel to southern Africa, and indeed almost a new career for me. There was also a prize of £20,000. Another dream the same night saw me entering a ‘dating competition’ and being given a ticket which was drawn third! I expected to meet a blonde woman but something interrupted the event and there was a long delay. Later, however, I did meet her and we travelled happily in a bus to the seaside which was twenty minutes away.

Yes, I was certainly and reluctantly involved in a life drama now, though all the evidence was that I wouldn’t win it. That very evening Bettina came round and again said that our relationship was over. The conversation lasted three hours and was horribly painful (so the horoscope was spot on there): although she loved me and the relationship was very important, we were “too different” and she didn’t trust me. The dream of four days earlier was confirmed while last night’s seemed ridiculous. In what sense could all this represent a happy and successful new path in life and winning a ‘third dating prize’? And what clue was the repeated number twenty offering me? All I could think of was that twenty days hence would be the anniversary of my father’s death.

I felt close to death myself now. I had tried everything I could to be loving and honest and to live spiritually, trying to be mindful of what is good and to care for others despite my own wounds. Of course I still made many mistakes, but as I had set out to do eight years before I had changed my way of being and I had found the deepest joy. And lost it. The warning signs were all true. The encouraging ones must have just arisen from my own desires and optimism.

It seemed that I had nowhere left to go. I felt myself begin to break into pieces.

I’m not sure how I survived the next week or so, my job also being very demanding at this time. I woke up each morning longing for unconsciousness and with no idea how to get through the day. The next weekly horoscope urged me to “let go... to make room for the new” and warned that I might encounter my “deepest fears” and feel that my “security is threatened”. Spot on again. Except that I simply could not let go.

IC 20th October 2003: A question about the future of the relationship yielded Hexagram 19, “Approach”. This describes a time of increasing greatness and success, although there could be “misfortune in the eighth month” (and this was indeed now the eighth month since meeting Bettina). But one must “persevere inexhaustibly” and with a great-hearted approach. The result was Hexagram 41, “Decrease”, a time when one must be still and draw upon one’s inner strength and the power of the heart to compensate for what is lacking in the outer world.

I couldn’t tell from this what sort of future was being indicated. We were certainly in a period of ‘decrease’ but the commentary speaks of this as a time of spiritual good fortune, while the moving line also urged me to continue to be loving and sincere. And despite my state of mind I again began now to receive reassuring signs...

S 21st October 2003: After several frustrating delays I finally obtained a replacement mirror glass for my car, and thus ‘new vision’. Immediately afterwards I saw JOY ... and then, to the rear, T ... SAP; reading this in the mirror it suggested that the PAS...T was now behind me! I recalled the sign of ‘Move On’ when the mirror had been broken.

S 22nd October 2003: Again after much delay I tracked down a special battery I needed (new power). Just as I left the shop I saw ... 442 JOB: “...Your words have helped others...Now trouble strikes you down and you are afraid. Shouldn’t you... trust in God?” This was followed a few minutes later by S ... AFE.

Extraordinary small synchronicities were beginning to tell me that, whatever was happening in the world, I was on course and would be all right. As a result of my work on the family tree I visited some relatives with whom I had had virtually no contact for many years; this proved very revealing and helped further in healing my grief especially concerning my father. But also while I was there my relative had insistently and for no apparent reason shown me a picture of a dragon and then a little later produced a large (dead) dragonfly from the garden, thinking that this would interest me. Four days later, having just returned from a trip to China, Alice gave me a gift of a small phoenix emblem on a pendant. Apart from the phoenix representing new life arising from the fire of destruction (and I had just started listening to the Harry Potter book ‘The Order Of The Phoenix’ on tape!), in ancient Chinese culture it was the symbol of feminine (yin) energy; the symbol of masculine (yang) energy was the dragon. So within these few days the two complementary images came together as if to remind me of the January I Ching reading for the year ahead which spoke of the meeting of Heaven (male) and Earth (female).

S 22nd October 2003: I received some junk mail from ‘Luna’ who promised me all kinds of joy ahead, if I sent her some money. It went into the bin of course. But on the way to the theatre that evening a new character named Luna was introduced in the Harry Potter book I was listening to. Then outside the theatre was the unusual registration number E 1 GHT, and on the way home I saw M 933 ARK which refers to the transfiguration.

Suddenly I remembered that the lunar eclipse, which I had associated with the ‘Dissolution’ reading in January, was now imminent, as was the anniversary of my father’s death. Three weeks after that there would be a solar eclipse too, on the eighth anniversary of moving into my new home. I realised that I was now entering the Final Act of this drama.

I made one more attempt with the I Ching to understand how things might develop with Bettina. I had asked the question only a week before so this was not a proper use of the book, but the circumstances were critical and the oracle clearly understood this, and let me off.

IC 26th October 2003: Hexagram 55 is “Abundance”, a time of outstanding greatness (which, one is warned, may not last long). The moving lines not only described our relationship beautifully - “a union of clarity and energy” between two people “who suit each other” - but also its present difficulties - “one intent on greatness is overcome by darkness”. The lines were completely consistent with the earlier readings: one must have great inner strength because “movement now is prohibited” and there will be a time of “total eclipse and darkness” when one cannot do anything (although is not to blame for the situation). Yet incredibly the outcome was Hexagram 40, “Deliverance” - the emergence from danger with difficulties and tensions resolved.

D 28th October 2003: two nights later the message was reinforced by another deeply emotional dream. I came out of a large country house and was showing someone the way around the side, but then I felt weak and collapsed. Several figures immediately came to help me; they were cheerful and supportive, I knew that they were ‘spirits’ and indeed I recognised one of my dead relatives. One of them carefully removed something from my mouth that was obstructing my breathing. A little later I recovered and left the gathering though I don’t know where I went. I heard an uplifting song and returned to the others, running strongly up an escalator. The people were still there in the garden of the big house as if at a party, but they soon drifted away until I was left alone - with Bettina. Throughout the dream I kept seeing pages of typescript flashing in front of my eyes and also images of someone sewing something into the hem of a garment.

Leaving the house can symbolise a loss of safety - I was taking great risks in trying to ‘find the way round’ and it would prove too much for me. But even as I stumbled through this dark time, someone or something was reassuring me that I had spiritual support and that even beyond ‘eclipse’ there could be recovery (I also recalled the escalator dream of July 2002). I would be ‘delivered’. I also gained a little strength this week by reading Paolo Coelho’s book Manual Of The Warrior Of Light (that is, one who tries to follow a spiritual path).

All such ‘warriors’, he writes, make mistakes, experience fear and failure, lose the way and lose courage and sometimes believe in nothing... But the true warrior is open to God’s guidance and never stops searching, he believes in miracles and ultimately is willing to face any danger.

I now wonder if the writing I saw in that last dream was a reference to what you are reading now, a draft of which was begun two months later. The sewing of a hem certainly suggested that things were close to being finished off... Yes, indeed.

S 28th October 2003: On the way home I saw 798 DAN which is a reference to the final victory of the angels and to the majesty of God.

But in the evening there was yet another Goodbye message from Bettina. So ‘victory’ in what sense then?

This was too much for me. When I arrived for work the next morning I collapsed with a serious panic attack; I had difficulty breathing, all the energy drained from me and I thought I was dying. Yesterday’s dream had been a literal warning. Somehow I managed to telephone for help before giving way to it.

For the next two weeks I had little grasp on life, and slept for days. When awake, the light burned my eyes, I was only able to make shuffling movements and I was frightened of being among people. There were more attacks of breathing difficulty and of explosive migraine flashes, uncontrollable tearfulness and all the while a deep pain near my heart was draining my energy. My mind was flooded with wave upon wave of grief while simultaneously, and irrationally, it felt like a fire was raging through my inner consciousness. This, then, was the “Dissolution” and the “end of the day” foretold by the I Ching, the death I had been fearing. This was the eclipse.

I felt utterly alone as ‘friends’ melted away and the medical services proved (it seemed to me) pretty uncaring. Apart from Alice, who looked after me lovingly in the first few days (and, unknown to me, selflessly tried to persuade Bettina that she was the one I really needed), those near me who certainly did care just couldn’t cope with the intensity of it. In these moments I could see no future whatsoever. In any case, surely I had now done enough, tried hard enough? I’d changed my ways, tried to become more caring, brought up my son lovingly and fulfilled my job conscientiously.

Enough. I planned how I would die and rewrote my Will. The horoscope said that life “may appear chaotic” this week...

But something would just not let me go. Somewhere, love was still alive and my inner mind perversely insisted on believing in it. Only five days into this wilderness and one day before my father’s anniversary, I had another strikingly optimistic dream!

D 3rd November 2003: I was driving home on the A40 in London after a very long journey, a woman sitting happily beside me. We then turned right into a road I had lived in as a child in Wolverhampton, then right again into the drive of my old house. On the radio there was something funny about silly new laws being passed, such as it being illegal ‘to be five feet away from a robin’. In high spirits, we started singing the old song ‘Side By Side’.

The dream was undoubtedly suggesting despite everything that I was approaching safety (home), that things were going ‘right’ and were improving (the road is called ‘Highlands’). The song seemed to promise partnership while the robin is one of the most fortunate of all dream symbols, representing great happiness - in a period of ‘five’? It was odd that the dream started in London on a road called The Westway, but this and the allusion to new laws seemed linked to my earlier dream in October about Westminster Abbey which is of course across the road from the Houses of Parliament (though I still didn’t understand it). The numbers involved, however, were extremely significant and referred to recent I Ching hexagrams: the house number is 49, “Revolution”, and 40 is “Deliverance”.

Where on earth was this belief coming from? It kept coming, too.

D 7th November 2003: I was back in a classroom after an absence from school, the atmosphere noisy but good-natured, and I felt strong and in control. The boys had just done a test and I had the answers prepared. A particular boy who’d been in trouble with me before showed me three books of his work - the third was very creative and colourful and I praised him for it. (I awoke from the dream with the song lyrics “You and me, always and forever...” running through my mind.)

Unfortunately, my conscious mind couldn’t tell me what those ‘answers’ were! But it seemed that my ‘test’ was now over and that there would be an answer to it all - perhaps on the ‘third’ attempt (recalling the ‘dating competition’ dream). The waking song also suggested my belief, at least, in a secure and peaceful future.

The lunar eclipse was now upon us (the 8th November) and with it what some were calling a Harmonic Concordance - a Star of David alignment of planets. Astrologers described this as representing a time of intense expansion of spiritual awareness, of the unity of Heaven and Earth (as the I Ching had predicted for me) and a time for healing deeply felt emotional wounds... Important planetary patterns and events had accompanied several of my own significant moments in recent years and, very slowly, I began to see this terrible time in a different light. It seemed that my inner life was somehow coming into greater harmony with events in the outer world. Moreover, my breakdown could be seen as a life-changing opportunity - no, it was not something to be recommended, but it was a final clearing out of the old ways and a cleansing of the mind. What is this if not a healing of the old wounds? Some might call it an atonement. In its peculiar and unexpected way, it was exactly what I had set out to do eight years before and these events marked the ending of that path.

However, I have to say that it would be another five months before I would begin to feel that I was genuinely emerging from the wilderness. For the moment, I had very few answers, but perhaps someone else could help. The last time we met, Bettina had told me about “a loving and spiritual psychiatrist” whom she had met and she suggested that I see her. Her name was Davies (see my dream of 10th October!) and she was presently in Zambia, southern Africa (see my dream of 14th October!) and I made contact with her twenty days after that last dream. This seemed rather promising and I met her for the first time a week later.

S 11th November 2003: As I left this meeting, the car ... 20 JON was parked outside a nearby church. The text refers to “resurrection”.

S 13th November 2003: I had just begun writing again, a draft of this account, and I wrote the passage describing the dream of 5th February that had predicted Bettina and ended with my ‘knighthood’. I then went out for a walk to find, parked outside my house, the car with registration S 1 RNP.

This astonishing sign was a jolt, reminding me of the need for courage. In the next few days I suddenly did begin to feel more calm and strong, though still easily tired, as if drawing on some inner resources. Perhaps, too, I was receiving spiritual healing? As the solar eclipse and eighth anniversary approached, even the weekly horoscope became more optimistic again too, suggesting “a big chance to make a fresh start in relationships...”! That week I visited the Royal Observatory with a friend to deliver artwork and found that the place we had to go to was just a few feet from the zero line of longitude, marking ‘a new beginning’. This reminded me that just the week before I had had a water meter installed at home; for the unconscious mind, the flow of water represents emotional life - I now had a fresh start, with my meter reset to zero! In the shop at Greenwich I also found a kaleidoscope (I hadn’t seen one for years): the psychiatrist had used this just the week before as a symbol for breakdown, an opportunity to reform the pieces into which we have broken as a new, beautiful and more stable pattern.

It also seemed important to me now to visit the medium Grace again for a different sort of perspective on what was happening. Surely some spirit guidance was called for? I `phoned her but the only available appointment was at a time when I had a medical appointment already booked so I had to decline. Then ten minutes later my doctor’s receptionist called to change the time of the medical! Someone or something was interfering and making things happen... It proved to be a very significant meeting with Grace, but not for the reasons I had anticipated. Once again she was extremely accurate in describing my circumstances and said that there was nothing I could do about the situation, it was just out of my hands (which was consistent with the I Ching). But I couldn’t help feeling that much of what she said thereafter, though caring and well-meant, was of her own intuition rather than any spirit message; it was as if she couldn’t make a proper ‘connection’.

Even those horoscopes that had proved so revealing in recent months began to seem less and less relevant to me from now on. And when, with high hopes, I saw the psychiatrist again it only led to disappointment - shall I just say that she proved to be rather less ‘loving and spiritual’ than she had been billed... I found that I was going to have to get used to this sort of thing in the next few months. Perhaps the disturbances in my mind had caused some damage or had affected my psychic ability to connect with and receive information, help and guidance?

I began to realise that in almost every sense I really was on my own now.

Paolo Coelho has written of such defining moments in the spiritual life, of reaching a point where one must choose between “leaving a familiar world wherein are stored all the things you ever wanted and for which you struggled long and hard” and “entering a dangerous, unfamiliar world where everything you have learned up until now will prove useless”. (Manual of the Warrior of Light, page 96.) One faces the truly daunting challenge of letting go of everything - and of everyone. If one is to continue to grow and to experience the depth of human life, to become more of what one can really be, then one must risk it all. It feels like nothing less than accepting the possibility of annihilation.

When one steps through that gateway to the new world, the new life, there are no paths to be seen, no lights or spirits or doctors to guide the way. There is, to begin with, only wilderness and shadow. This is the end of the day. Dissolution.

S There is a curious footnote about finding one’s new path. I have already described how the A41 road has held a particular significance in my life and dreams; I drive to work along a stretch of it every day. In the summer of 2003, the signs went up and the workmen arrived to embark upon “major reconstruction works” along the very section I use. I mused to myself that this seemed an entirely appropriate symbol for what I was anticipating - the climax of my path and renewal of my life... And it was encouraging that the signs promised “completion” before the end of the year.

The work was hugely inconvenient of course, this being a major trunk route into London, but as I sat in the morning queues I calmed myself with the thought that it was all spiritually inevitable and necessary! Everything would be seen to be worthwhile once the work was done.

But as time passed it became clear that all was not as it ought to be. Certainly, the road was duly resurfaced and the pavements renewed. The old central crash barriers were removed... but then nothing seemed to be taking their place and we commuters sat in our coned off crossover lanes wondering where all the workmen had gone. For long periods, absolutely nothing was being done. The road was dangerous now and there were daily jams and minor accidents. Moreover it was obvious that the work wasn’t going to be finished anywhere near on time.

The events of my own life unfolded in parallel. Far from there being a smooth and happy transition to a new path, there was disruption, danger, frustration, delay and (apparently) broken promise. Throughout the winter, the A41 and I were strewn with rubble and incomplete sections!

By the New Year, the matter was just so appropriately symbolic that I got in touch with the contractors to find out what was happening. (Even that was suitably metaphorical since no-one in the various highway departments of various agencies seemed to know quite who was responsible and I was given several wrong names and telephone numbers.) It turned out that the original road signs had been misleading, or rather had not given the whole truth about the job; they only referred to the road surface and not to the replacement of the central barriers, or the reshaping of parts of the carriageway, which were “not due for completion until the end of May 2004”...

I therefore reasoned that my own new path would not be settled and ‘safe’ until the next summer. And after all, this was not the first time that signs had been incompletely understood.