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Wednesday, June 11,2003

At suppertime, I ask myself if I am getting bored on Iona. “I don’t think so, but I haven’t much experience in doing nothing. Not that what I do usually amounts to anything, but it does fill the time. Here, I have been letting the time go, as the three hours I spent on the hillside this morning. It is as if I had nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to talk to, no project underway, for the first time in my life. Not true, but as if. I am more distracted by routine customarily than even I knew.

“But my life has somehow passed me by! And what would have filled it better? Family? Perhaps family was not quite the obstacle it seemed – but it certainly seemed obstacle enough. There wasn’t much of intentional me there.”

Later, “This supper will mark the end of two days here. Is it being a success? The evenings have dragged because I have gone to bed too early. I could find a bench by the sea and continue reading The Cloud of Unknowing, as I was doing a while ago this afternoon. Perhaps tomorrow I will take a boat ride around the island. I wouldn’t want to miss seeing so much that I don’t think I would be able to, else. But I didn’t come here for the scenery, did I? Not in that sense. I came to be transformed by it. Is this occurring? Can it? Could it?

“I intend self-transformation. The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing would argue that one is transformed by God, if at all. We on earth can only – only! – add willingness, or refuse it. And he would have warned against pride, and rightly so. It is so clear that he knows what he talks of; that he intends to help his readers, even those unknown. (Could he have dreamed, would he have cared, that he was actively speaking to readers 700 years in his future?) He saw everything strictly within the Christian belief. Is he right that it is everlasting? Or is it true that the passing of the Age of Pisces means eventually the passing of the age of Christianity, and the birth and development of new forms and perhaps new content? I wish I could find a way to reconcile the truths of the different systems of understanding and belief.

“Why me? Well, who else is interested in doing it? Perhaps there are many, as anonymous as I, but if only by virtue of that anonymity, I know of them not. It seems to me I am alone.

“In Robert I saw the man of dreams, who finds God speaking to him; whose life was saved by dreams, by attention to dreams. In Michael I saw the passionate, angry crusader for social justice, the man who projects out of body routinely, the dissenter from all traditional religions. In Findhorn I saw the intentional community seeking to marry social activism with transcendent spirituality, again separate from Christianity. Inverness seemed to me only commercial activity, though of course I could not expect to meet anyone of spirit even if they were there on all sides. At breakfast that day I saw Swedes who were, it seemed, so unaware of alternative forms of Christianity as to describe themselves as Christians rather than Lutherans. And I see here a young minister-to-be, very pleasant, apparently open – yet his church insists on a Saturday Sabbath as an important point, which tells me that for him, for them, it all rests on their interpretation of God’s commands as stated (if only sometimes by implication) in the Bible.

“And then there were those lives of saints: Brendan, Cuthbert, and the one I’ve scarcely started, Wilfred. And Merton, and the Iona Community, and The Cloud of Unknowing, and in the background of my mind the readers of Magical Blend magazine, and Neale Walsch’s readers, and the varied readership of Hampton Roads.

“Perhaps it is as simple as ‘all paths are good.’ Perhaps there is no task here needed to be accomplished. Or perhaps the path to set out for people is The Pathless Path, following their heart; living, or striving to live, in love. But I do not yet know. Perhaps in a couple of days it will come clearer.”

At 8:30 I ask myself why I am going to bed so early here, and decide it is because there is nothing to do but read or go outside; I hope to be contacted by dreams or other experiences, and I am tired from active days. So I go to bed. But I’m up again half an hour later to record something I’d forgotten, and then I wind up reading some of Merton, and one thing leads to another. At one point, I play around trying to find a good acronym for the seven deadly sins of pride, anger, lust, envy, covetousness, gluttony and sloth, with no good result unless you count LEG CAPS, rather like kneecaps, but different. (Some people have too much time on their hands, says I!)

It consoles me, though perhaps it shouldn’t, that Merton had so much trouble with his life. If he did, why should I not? But he had done so much, so early, and died at only 53. But I am struck by his incessant reading and pondering. (Sound familiar?) Yet some of his concerns seem so unreal. For instance, what is meant by “the wrath of God?” Does God have a bad temper? Does it mean that he can’t stand what he’s seeing, even though he has restricted himself from interfering? What does it mean? Anger is one of the seven deadly sins, is it not?

The theology Christians take for granted, and build upon, or dispute about, seems so far not only from our stupid materialist society’s superstitions and irrelevancies, but from any honest searching that proceeds independently of churches. Yet if rooted in reality such concerns must have their translation somewhere. Where? The wrath of God – what does it mean, outside Christian thought? And if it means nothing, what does this reflect on? Christian thinking? Non-Christian thinking? Language? Translation? Where is the Perry Miller [a famous historian] who will hack a couple of trails into this forest?

Wednesday, June 11,2003

Three dreams on the tape recorder:

1) I almost didn’t recognize it as a dream, more like a daydream. At the end we are in a boat, way at the top of a hill. Lying there, feeling the motion of the boat I’d taken to and from Staffa. We – whoever “we” are – came out the back door, and there’s this long, long, long way down to the water.

2) The two ladies from the Iona Community gift shop, in the office by their desks. Suddenly they collapsed downward. That is, they disappeared, as though they had been angels rather than people.

3) There was some kind of building work being done in the church. And there was a man working who was somewhat skillful. I was involved with it at a less skilled level. The man had to quit. He couldn’t do it any more, there was something wrong. The posture hurt his feet, or something. I offered to do the work, or was asked, I forget which. The woman in charge of the thing said I had great [force?] The idea was that I could do the job, and otherwise it couldn’t be done. [Robert will send me some clarifying thoughts on these dreams after I return home. See Iona (16).]

I notice during the night that I was reluctant actually to record dreams. I was almost too reluctant to think about them. I didn’t reach for the recorder. It seemed too much trouble. Which is highly suspicious, since that is what I was waiting for, and wanting, since the night before when I had six. But again, this seems to be a case of when you search for something, it flees from you.

After breakfast, on this sunny morning, I climb to the highest point on the island, Dun I pronounced “done ee.” Not very high, a matter of 300 feet, but a nice interesting climb, what with wet heather, uncertain footing, sheep droppings, and periodic steep climbs that sometimes require a bit of thought, whether going up or coming down. After getting to the top, I find a spot sheltered from the unceasing wind, a little to the north of the highest point. I have my field glasses (one of the few times I remember to use them). Sitting there, I can see all the north end of the Island, which looks like an English village, all fields interrupted by houses, and sheep all over the place. All the east is taken up by the long island of Mull. Staffa is in sight to the north, and to the northwest and west the islands of Tiree and Coll. As I sit, I take a few pictures, and I talk to my tape recorder as thoughts come, and mainly I just exist there with the wind and the clouds, and the sea, and a few birds and many distant sheep. The shadows of the swiftly moving clouds wash over the land like little schools of fish going by. After a while a few tourists go by within sight, but none within talking distance. I have nothing to do, and half a bar of chocolate, and a container of water, and even a package of oatcakes. I could stay all day if I wanted to.

I spend some time writing and thinking. I write: “I’d like to be the one who helped restore the church but it just can’t be within Christianity as they understand it, or within the metaphysical churches as they understand it. There’s got to be a new way. And it may be that the new way won’t be called a church at all. It seems a shame, though, to have all these people in their belief systems cut off from people in other belief systems when at their roots, somewhere back in other lives, they may be united and fighting against each other [internally]. That’s not the only reason it’s a shame, of course.”

At about 10:30 I say, standing there, “Let my ministry begin here, in this place, in this time, and just show me what it’s to be – because I’m 56 years old!”

Richard Leviton had given me a mediation to do, to connect with sacred sites, and four years ago I had done it when my friend Charles Sides and I went to Machu Picchu. This time, instead of that, I go to the mental state that Monroe calls Focus 27. Coming down from 27, ready and willing to do soul retrievals, I search for anyone left over from battles between Norsemen and monks, but I don’t find anybody, so I suppose all is well.

“I’m tempted to say “I just don’t see any way to go forward,” but that’s silly. Instead I say, “here’s where I’m finding out how to go forward.” Whether I want to or not, right?”

I note how much the chocolate bar in my backpack calls to me. What a slave I am. Yet while I’m thinking about eating, I am well aware that the process of digestion will interrupt what I’m doing. “Whatever it is that I’m doing.”

About noon, I come down off the hill, go back to the Iona Community gift shop and buy some things for gifts. I stop in at the Spar store and buy a turkey and cranberry sandwich. (My favorite, and I thought I’d invented that sandwich combination!)

Back at the B&B, I play a Hemi-Sync relaxation CD. I bring nothing back but the thought that “a lot of what seem like daydreams come up during the long preparatory process, and I suspect that Bob Monroe knew it.” (The significance of that, though, escapes me as I transcribe this 10 days later.)

I begin reading The Cloud of Unknowing, a mystical classic, firmly in the center of Western tradition, written by an anonymous Christian in the 1100s. I feel very much at home with him. I know that my Gateway experiences must resemble his, and I know that love is the way. I understand what he says as he says it. Except – Except – How is it to be reconciled? Original sin? Well, the separation is real, perhaps the perversion of the soul is real. But how are we to reconcile the one central difference? It is true that Jesus is the question that cannot be talked away, though it can be – and is – endlessly talked around. Yet the author of this very clear book says straightway that its techniques should only be used by a committed Christian, lest they lead to mischief. How do we react to that?

The thing is, The Cloud of Unknowing is so clearly written out of experience. (As was my own book, for that matter.) There is no arguing with experience, only with the conclusions drawn from it, or the interpretation of it. If he has had these experiences, he speaks from knowledge. How then can we of another age, another understanding of life, reconcile his experience and ours? Truth must always tend to converge. If we cannot find how to reconcile his experience with ours, the fault must be with us; it cannot be with truth.

Tuesday, June 10,2003

So I take the little boat to Mull (I am the only Iona passenger), where we pick up a boatful of others, and then to Staffa. A fun ride. Part of me is apprehensive about going on the sea, and another part revels in it, adjusting to it like riding a horse, and enjoys the whole trip first to last. Maybe someone who died at sea is less prominent than he used to be when on the water.

Staffa from the south looks like a ship heading west, one of those low-lying cargo ships you see sometimes, where the bulk of it is in the stern and the front is just a prow cutting the water. We get off, clamber around for an hour, and get back on for the return trip. Interesting, but I haven’t had any mystical experiences in Fingall’s Cave. Just used people’s cameras to take pictures of them, and took some of my own, and was fortunate enough to wind up in the cave alone for a while. We return not to Mull but to Iona: Those from Mull are getting two or three hours to see Iona before their return trip. Hah! Tourists! I live here, for the moment. (-:

My laundry is ready, in my room. I buy a big candy bar and ask for a quiet place to read or write (my room has no convenient table) and am given the keys to the lounge at another building. So I ask my friend –

“David, before I go looking for shops and maybe supper, any thoughts on today? For today has seemed a bit touristy.”

“There’s no harm that will do you. If you fear shallowing out – do a Monroe tape if nothing else. Meanwhile enjoy your time here. You are not required to take orders in any sense of the word, just only be here at this time.”

I go out, and walk toward the 12^th century abbey that is the main religious structure on the island. I go to the Iona Community shop across the road, thinking to do some shopping for certain people, but I succeed only in buying books for myself: a volume of Thomas Merton’s Journals, and Iona: God’s Energy: The Spirituality and Vision of the Iona Community, by the current leader of the community.

In the community shop, an interaction that will lead to important consequences. A woman who is sitting in a window seat by the book section of the gift shop complains to someone of being tired, and when she is alone I go up to her and say that where I’m from, we know how to give people energy, and I’ll be glad to do so if she wishes. She asks if I’m talking about Reiki, and I say those are just words, it’s all the same energy. She sort of humors me, saying I can try but people have tried to do this before and it never works on her. Now, interestingly, as I work, I do not feel any sense that she is rejecting the energy, nor do I pick up the kind of know-it-all-ism you get from some people that ensures it won’t work so they won’t have to adjust their belief system. In fact, I can feel the flow – but she claims nothing happened, and that she’s just tired because she’s tired, etc. A mechanistic understanding of it. So we left it at that, and although I notice that she goes back to work and seems less tired, I say nothing about it. I buy my books and leave, wondering how open to reaching out this community is.

Then into the restored church itself. As I start walking the first side of the cloisters, something emerges from within, and I am in tears. But then my automatic clamp clamps, and that is all I know about it.

I make a supper of some oatcakes and a tin of herring fillets. Last night’s supper was too expensive by far, I decide, and so this makes up for it. It isn’t yet six. I could still go out, as there are hours of daylight left, but I have walked my feet off. Instead I begin to read Iona: God’s Energy, and after a while I pull out my journal and ask what relevance it has for me. Where’s my potential contribution? The author’s description of spirituality makes me ask why a church – even a seemingly ecumenical church – must be so rejecting of those who have so much to offer. The need is there on both sides, and often the willingness, and occasionally the understanding. Where is the common path?

“I had begun to fantasize some connection – perhaps based on my little interaction with the woman at the center’s store – but it is like Findhorn in a different way. Not my community.

“But damn it, there’s a far deeper issue than merely me. The question is, how is society to be regenerated? Not by a closed sectarianism, not by a spirituality so personal as to omit the community. But – mostly – not by any attempt to require belief in certain “givens.” Not by reliance on someone’s interpretation of scripture as the final word.

“This fellow Matthew belongs to a church that celebrates the Sabbath on Saturday. It is an important thing to them. Why? Who cares? They would say, “God cares,” and scarcely anyone would agree both that 1) God cares, and 2) God agrees with their interpretation. So they condemn themselves to isolation from the other churches. And those others do the same thing, insisting on doctrinal points of no significance unless one can accept that God laid down in scriptures rules for conduct, rules for precise application, tests of obedience. And this is precisely what churches do think, and there’s the source of their irrelevance. They prevent the emergence of a common accepted path. So if they will not, others will – or won’t.

“What is the significance in all this for me? When I read that the Iona community is mostly spread out, I thought, “perhaps we can create a Monroe community, an extended, geographically diverse community, dedicated to mutual support of certain values, that our exploration may be supported by society and may produce results in that society. But so far, at least, I cannot see how this can be. Perhaps I shall receive a dream showing me the way.”

Ha! Little do I know! The way forward is going to be indicated not by a dream but by something in waking life, rooted in my initial gift of love that was my offer of energy to the tired woman.

I go to bed early, but I lie in bed, twitching, unable to sleep. Too much coffee or, more likely, chocolate. I notice an undercurrent as I think about the day: a week from now I will be getting ready to return. I tell myself I must make this trip come to something. How?

“I see in the intro to Dancing in the Water of Life – volume five of Merton’s journals, purchased today – that Merton saw a private and a public function to keeping a journal; hence, to writing; hence, to the spiritual search, though this is not expressly said. One gets oneself honestly situated, then one passes whatever one knows to the public.

“Perhaps from genuine humility (of which I have more than many suspect), perhaps from diffidence or even false modesty (no shortages there either) I have tended not to contribute to the public dialogue. Partly from lack of knowledge of how things work, partly from the fact that my life is realer to me than the lives around me. But perhaps it is time, and past time. Or perhaps it is not, and perhaps it never will be!”

Tuesday, June 10,2003

At 2 a.m. I get up to record a dream. “Tagging along with Bill Hughes [the Congessman I used to work for, in my twenties], who says he was enjoying watching me on television, as part of my job working for him. I said `uh-’ [because this caught me off guard] and wanted to know how it looked on TV, as I had not seen it, and everything would depend on how it was cut. Then he’s talking to Mary [his assistant], who seemed like a difficult employee we had had at Hampton Roads. She said she would be trotting around to talk about a raise later, and they referred to something they weren’t going to buy for her successors. This while I waited to continue a conversation because I had an idea for him acquiring staff from someone I knew who was retiring. Tangled now, and I only remembered to record this at all because I had to get up to go to the bathroom. I must get back into the habit of recording dreams.”

After that first dream, I give up on trying to write them in my journal at the time. It’s too hard. Too much movement, plus the act of turning on the light floods the brain with beta waves, which of course change one’s mental state, making it very hard to bring back or hold onto dreams, which seem to be very state-specific. Instead, I begin using my hand-held tape recorder, and I bring back several more as they occur.

1) John Lennon had retired and was living in a flimsy house by the side of this shallow water – or maybe it was an ocean. His friend who visited there realized that although Lennon was filling his time with things, he wasn’t really doing anything. He had a litigious friend who spent time writing and re-writing his letter to the editor about some controversy (they never publish it), without ever getting any fresh data. And the narrator of the dream wondered, “Why doesn’t he ever go out and get fresh data, go back to the swamp that he’s writing about, and get more data about it?” But the guy doesn’t. And John Lennon is living in this house that’s quite flammable – it’s made of reeds or something – and he lives quite casually with fire. And the guy can’t figure out why he hasn’t burned the place down. I as narrator am going out to the beach early in the morning and coming to this place where there’s a spigot in a shelter. I’m trying to wash the sand off my hands, and  realize that sand has nearly covered the spigot, so I dig it out a little bit for people, and a kid with a dog comes by and wants to know where I’m sleeping – the idea being am I sleeping on the beach. I say, “No, I’m not sleeping on the beach,” but I don’t tell him where I am; I tell him where I’m not.

[Thinking about it. John Lennon is dead. A very creative artist, dead. Fooling around: not working. The question would be, what kind of work? The answer would be that Lennon was a creative individual and anything he set his creativity to would have been valid work.]

2) The mantle of authority on Columba was always very, very heavy, like a very heavy cape, and I have proceeded with that kind of mantle on me, and people have always responded to it as very inappropriate, because there was no external reason for it. I agree with that, but that’s what I’ve always seen. A sense of mounting a bus, like a town bus, where before an image of him walking in that heavy cloak. Lying in bed on my stomach, I have a sense of that heavy cloak pressing down on me, whereas once before, lying on my stomach, I had a sense of a bird lying and relying on the wind, on the spirit. Perhaps the two are connected.

3) I’m walking in the road. Someone says from a high platform, to my left, behind me, walking the other way, “Hi, Fronk” [pronounced in a Scot accent, as Michael would say it]. I’ve actually had this happen before, but I’ve never noticed it.

4) Those documents that Columba was involved with have something to do with the number 532. At first I thought it was 522, but it wasn’t. By virtue of something or other, Columba had access to all the prime numbers.

5)  My old friend Dennis was visiting my house, and had a whole bunch of photos to show me. I was so upset with my wife being in another world entirely, I went outside to mow the lawn (my mother’s mother’s house’s lawn) and was pushing the lawnmower up and down, before I realized that it wasn’t even turned on. I put down the mower and went back inside. Dennis said, “why did you take them off, I thought they looked good.” He was talking about sunglasses that I had forgotten about. He has a whole package of photographs he’s going to show me, and he says, “up or down?” meaning on the floor or on a chair. We got down on the floor, and the very first photo led to the next dream.

6) It’s some kind of day school. An autistic boy is lying on a bookshelf with the meal he’s supposed to be eating. There’s an interruption of some kind and when it’s over I encourage him to start again. He has a fish stick with tomato sauce on it, and he sort of hits his head with it accidentally instead of his mouth. I smile. I go over to this other guy and say, “It’s so touching to see these autistic children taking care of themselves.”

Busy night. I suspect we get series of dreams like this frequently – every night, for all I know – but I lose all memory of most of them. I look forward to discussing these with Robert, for although I think I see some of the meaning of some of them, clearly I can read this language only haltingly. The fourth dream, for instance. It has something to do with Columba’s access to information unavailable to common consciousness, but that is only the tip of the iceberg.

[Robert’s interpretation of some of these symbols came in a long email which I will reproduce in “Iona (16).”]

At 7 or so I am up and about. I walk as far as the ruins of the old nunnery – not very far. The iron gate is open, and no one else is around. I look around, and of course it begins to rain. The only hat I have brought is my baseball cap with The Monroe Institute logo on it. It functions to keep rain off, but only barely. I stay for a while within the one enclosed area with a roof, absorbing the vibes, so to speak. Then I walk back to the B&B for breakfast. I sit opposite my fellow American, whose name it turns out is Matthew, and I wind up talking to him about dreams and the use of dreams, citing Michael’s dream and how it affected his life.

After breakfast I go walking to the south, following one road, then another, dead-ending a couple of times until I wind up on the western side of the island, passing through a gate to a common grazing area that is open to the sea. Rocks, sea, sky (and lots of opportunities for wet feet, maneuvering through the heather or whatever it is, and often enough finding water instead of ground underfoot). Open space and no one around.

After a couple of hours I make my way back to the B&B, arrange for my laundry to be done, buy a couple of chocolate chip shortbread cookies, and go walking again. Just as I get to the pier I see that it is nearly noon, the time when the boat leaves for Staffa, a small uninhabited island a few miles north of Iona, well within sight of it. I had told Michael I’d see Fingall’s Cave, so why not today while the weather is good? Who knows what the rest of the week will be like? While waiting, I chat with an Aussie, born in 1939. He remembers that VE Day in Australia did bring some celebration, because it meant the men they’d sent to Europe would be coming home. But on VJ Day, they went wild.

Fingall’s Cave, Staffa

Sunday, June 8,2003

So here I am alone again. I take a nap, then let myself out to walk. I walk up and down the streets of Inverness looking with no success for a place to eat. (It is early for supper, and I am picky.) I finally find a hole-in-the-wall Chinese place that is mostly but not entirely take-out. It has a couple of tables. I have chicken and corn soup, Kung Bo chicken and Chinese tea. Delicious. I walk back to the B&B. shower, lay out clothes for the morning, and pack.

I spend some time running through the “river of life and health” meditation, then removing psychic cords to and from everyone I ever made an agreement with that does not now serve me and others. If I am to do my work, I need my energy. I cannot have it siphoned off or – it occurs to me – diverted into cliched paths.

I go to bed, and wake at 11:30 p.m. to note an image from a dream. A three-story-high pitcher surrounded by a tree, in the countryside. The pitcher surrounded by some liquid – water? – for the countryside. I note, “Robert will know.” The next morning, it occurs to me the image may have been a pun: “the big picture is contained within the big three.”

 

Monday, June 9

At 2:45 a.m. The only thing I remember from this rather entertaining dream is giving my old college friend Dennis a boot in the tail because he got me in trouble with the congressman I am working for. I tell him that when I’m 83, I’ll still be circling round him to avoid the return kick. At 6:40 I note that I visited my friend Kelly during the night, I think, and did the water meditation for and with her. At 7:15 I am up, packed, waiting for breakfast and the start of the day. I pull out my journal.

“So – friend David – we were interrupted in a very interesting conversation some while ago – when the plane landed in Aberdeen.” And we are off on a discussion of the relationship within us between other lives. David says, “You have within you connection to every other lifetime you are primarily connected with. Which ones you are connected with is in itself a measure of you as an individual. This may not be obvious. Those you are closest to will most closely influence you. This is how it will seem to you. And if you are compounded of primary influences that hate each other’s values, you will find yourself a battlefield, and maybe one side or the other will be overwhelmed, or maybe they will fight over every little thing, or maybe your life can be a means of reconciling them. But in whatever case, you are primary because you are at the point of application, the present from your view of reality. For each of the influences in motion, each of them is the one in the point of application, and you are the influence from afar. So it is continual flux and war of movement, you see.”

“I am sitting here in the front room of the B&B waiting for breakfast to begin in a few minutes, wishing I were the man I saw in the mirror after we visited Pluscarden.”

“And maybe he has reason to wish you could make the trade.”

Breakfast proves interesting. There are two couples from Sweden, on a driving holiday, having come over on a 24-hour ferry. They aren’t quite sure they’d ever heard of Swedenborg, though part of that may be my pronunciation. When I ask them what their religion is (they not having heard of Swedenborg) they look puzzled and say “Christian.” I say, “Catholic,” and they are a bit shocked and say no. Then I remember and say, “Lutheran” and they agree. “Christian”: The reply bespeaks a uniformity of culture we don’t have and I wouldn’t want.

In a while I am on the bus to Fort William. I say to myself, “what a luxury, to be traveling alone,” and I hear the words and wonder why I am so often tempted to again join my life to someone else’s rather than giving it to all and none.

On the bus, I interrupt my reading of  Bede’s Life of Cuthbert to mull over something David had said. “Well, it is curious, but I have felt those unconscious or semi-conscious urges, or curiosities, yet even as I have felt them, I have felt that they were somehow not me and not mine. If they well up from not the so-called subconscious but from our connections to other lives of ours, this would make sense.” But it is too hard to write on the bus, so I return to reading, and finish Bede on Cuthbert. I understand Cuthbert, and I rather think I understand Bede, which is something I suspect the educated of our day may find impossible to do. I have a nice lonely trip to Fort William.

We immediately transfer to another bus that will take us to Oban, but this trip is not solitary. I am chatted up by a Scot who had lived in Mull 10 years and in Canada for three. He was born in 1937 – just nine years before me – and is retired from a career as an engineer (among other things). He remembers the Yanks being all over Glasgow, in a part of town the Germans had bombed, which had then been cleared for the American cantonments. He remembered them maneuvering all over, driving their four-bys, and then suddenly disappearing and never coming back. After D-Day, of course.

We reach Oban at 1:15, and I buy a ticket for the Caledonian MacBrayne car and passenger ferry to Craignure, on the Isle of Mull. (CalMac runs all the ferries to the western islands.) I sit with my journal on the jetty, catching up. At about 4 the ferry leaves. For some reason, all that goes through my mind, the whole trip over, is Auld Lang Syne, playing non-stop. What’s that all about? I watch the wake of the boat organize itself into more or less parallel lines, which quickly dissolve and form new arrangements and non-arrangements. Within the pattern are patches of whitish-green alternating with the deep green that is around them, and is outside the wedge of wake. And atop the green and the whitish green is white foam in intricate patterns like lace. It could be part of a lovely painting.

A Cal-Mac ferry

It’s about a 40-minute trip, and I enjoy it greatly. The ferry boat is big enough, and broad enough, and the waters protected enough, that it is a very smooth ride. Three decks to the ferry, with a restaurant, a snack bar, a gift shop, you name it. There is even a small arcade with video games for the teenagers. You can stay inside on padded upholstery or can go up to the outer deck at the stern and sit on benches and participate in the day. A majority of the people choose to be outside. I find it chilly, but I’d have to be carrying my coat in any case (nowhere to pack it) so it isn’t a problem. Of course, while I’m in a coat and none too warm, others are in shirtsleeves and seem quite comfortable.

At the very end of the trip, as we are organizing ourselves to debark, a 30-year-old kid strikes up a conversation with me. He had been listening to my conversation with the man on the bus, and was also going to Iona. We sit on a bench in front of the little tourist center, having an hour to wait for the bus that will take us across the southern end of Mull to Fionnphort and one last ferry ride to Iona. He had just graduated seminary, was engaged to be married, and was taking his last summer of freedom to travel around Europe. Our conversation is not entirely comfortable; too many theological areas that we have to step around. After a while an elderly Scot and his wife sit down next to me, and he and I get talking about the war, D-Day, Churchill, etc. He had worked for Union Carbide, and in the 1950s or ‘60s had visited their plant in West Virginia. Then comes the bus, about an hour and a half ride, and book and journal.

“So, David, how do I deal with this boy, besides being friendly and open?”

“Nothing more needed than that. Don’t be afraid to say what you believe – as you have been doing. It will be all right, and it will help you, too, to speak your truth. Good practice – or how do you expect to deal with the bus?” [Later I look at this entry and wonder what word was meant, that I wrote as “bus.” Maybe it meant, people in general, such as were represented by the other passengers.]

Fionnphort is a little place I never do get to see – any more than Craignure, Oban or so much that I pass through. A five-minute ferry ride and I am walking up the concrete pier onto the Island of Iona.

My first view of the island, from the ferry, is disconcerting, an English-looking countryside: a series of ordinary houses strung along the coast, each surrounded by neat fenced fields. It looks so domestic, especially after Mull’s deserted look. So what did I expect? Something wilder, certainly.

Within minutes I am at the Finlay Ross B&B, then across the way for an expensive but good supper. As I eat, I recapitulate the trip so far. It has been wonderful – mostly because of seeing Robert and Michael. I am very glad I penciled them into the trip. I sit and watch the sea through fogged windows. I have been too long away from the sea. I take a short walk, but it is really too cold for the clothes I am wearing. I worry about having trouble with asthma, so I retreat indoors for the night.

Sunday, June 8,2003

I awaken from a dream, and make the effort to record it: “I am in the church that Michael and I were in yesterday. There is a service going on, I think. Two women go up to the priest – he is in the aisle. They want his help, but I from behind one of them say, ‘I know what you need, my dear, and I can help you. But it can’t be right now. This is not to do with you, just I don’t have the time right now.’ This is accepted by all concerned. From within the dream, I am concerned lest it be 8 a.m. when I’m going to awaken (alarm set) but am glad to realize that it is not yet that, but about 3:30 real time. As we were coming out of the church – but still inside, in the aisle, toward the door – there was something. The woman to my left didn’t figure directly in the dream, but the dream concerned the four of us, among so many strangers I did not know.”

I note that the priest and the women accepted that I had the knowledge and ability to help the woman. It was not presumption, nor a vying with the priest. I could help her as he (the church, I think) could not, and all concerned knew it. But not just yet – I had something else to do first. I stressed, it wasn’t her fault that I couldn’t help right away, it was that I wasn’t yet free to get to it. But I would be.

After the dream, I lie in bed and do the “river of life and health” meditation. I feel an obstruction at about my stomach, the will-power chakra. I feel the dried-up earwax in my right ear getting liquid, and I think, “no, not onto their pillow,” and forget about it. (In the morning, after my shower, I find the ear full of liquefied wax that comes out easily with tissue. Only a first step, I think, but a first step.)

Again at 6:15 a.m. I am up to record a dream:

“An experience that was almost suffocating in its intensity. I went into a church and proceeded down, down, down stairs to lower and lower – older and older – levels. I could see I was below the level of our civilization, where the steel foundations for it, the support of the structure, were. Construction was going on and I was concerned that I not interfere or get hurt. At a passageway, a ladder in front of me, a wooden ladder, very tall, of the A-shaped kind. A worker was sitting high up on the wall to the left. The ladder was tilted away from him [tilted onto one set of legs, on the right, its left-hand side in the air] though it was not falling. I gently pulled it down to sit firmly, and walked under it. I came to a level still far above the depths, I thought, though far below our time. But they had a press operating there, though it was not printing, but before printing. They asked if I would lend a hand for a few minutes – and hours later I was happily still there.

“They were not signatures but single sheets 8 ½ by 11 or larger, and were first individually written and colored – in many colors, not just red on black – and the sheets were collated and bound. It was full color printing, before printing, each sheet being individually prepared. [Here I sketched a sheet with the left third of the page being design and the right two-thirds being lines of text.] “The dream ended there for the moment.”

As striking as the dream was the sight of my eyes in the mirror. “The eyes that I see in the mirror here are mine and yet not. They are calmer, more tranquil, wiser, with lines under them as of age and wisdom. Perhaps partly Bertram’s eyes. [He is a priest of the middle ages with whom I am connected in the same way as with David.] This is a fine start to a visit to Iona, is it not?”

At 8 or so I take a little walk, waiting for breakfast, thinking, the trick will be, as always, to bring the results of a transformation into everyday life – or where is the transformation? As I am communicating with a flowering plant, a curious bird comes very near. I could have reached out and touched him, had I not thought he would fly away. He stays with me quite a while as I walk, and I naturally think, “he likes my energy.” But of course it is more likely he is someone’s pet, accustomed to surveying everyone in sight.

When Michael sees me he asks how I slept and I say “great, and I had a great dream,” and I tell him. So we start talking about dreams, and he tells one he had had as a boy that was very affirming and meaningful, though he has never known why it affected him that way. I lead him through it, questioning what each symbol means to him, and much of the meaning of the dream comes clear. I tell him I will send the dream to Robert and see what else Robert can get out of the parts of it that elude us. But what we do get is important. I recount the dream here, as Michael says he has often told this dream to others, including children he has taught.

In the dream, he as a child was in an octagonal room, with a table and a bowl on the table. On one wall ahead of him and to the left was a table on which was a coffin containing an old person. Ahead of him to the right was another table, on which were two coffins, containing two people who had died in the prime of life. He went to each coffin and stared at the bodies with interest, but not with revulsion or fear. In the bowl was a powder made up of ground-up bird wings. He ate some of the powder and knew he could fly. He woke up very happy.

He had known this was a significant dream, and for 40 years, he had prized it, but had not understood it. I lead him through the dream symbol by symbol, asking him what each one means to him. (“What’s a bird?” “Something that flies.”) Then it is merely a matter of retelling the dream using the meanings rather than the symbols. The meaning that emerges is simply that death is not something to fear. He is immortal. And the allusion to flying has another meaning, given that out-of-body experiences are a major interest of his. As a point of interest, the first significant death he experiences – one of his grandparents, I believe – occurs within the year following this dream.

(It is obvious that we miss much. For instance, why an octagonal room? Why two bodies in the prime of life rather than just one? But I have no doubt that Robert will be able to furnish what we miss.) This discussion takes us through breakfast. Then we go to Findhorn and sit and walk around and look in their bookstore. We agree, we’re glad it exists, but it isn’t for us.

We drive to Inverness, have a bit of a time finding a B&B, but finally do, and Michael and I say an affectionate goodbye. I tell him, “I was getting a little tired of paying for everything,” and he laughs, because in fact he hasn’t let me pay for a thing either day, saying I treated him when he was in Virginia. His prodigal generosity is almost overwhelming.

Saturday, June 7,2003

Another breakfast at the hotel, then a cab to the train station at Crewe, a train to the Manchester airport, and a flight to Aberdeen. Traveling is easier alone. Although one might think that another person would help find things, and avoid mistakes, and share the load, in practice, it isn’t so. I watch myself traveling very efficiently, very smoothly, except for moments of confusion that a moment sorts out without much difficulty. I watch myself glide smoothly from the train through the maze to the right place to check in for the flight, and even my movements are smooth and sure, usually. Far more so than if I were with someone, my attention half on the companion. This of course has nothing to do with the companion and everything to do with the way I operate.

I like the British ways so much more than commercial-American. At Dulles airport, every 15 minutes came a strident warning that “for security reasons” you mustn’t leave your baggage unattended; unattended baggage would be seized for inspection and might be damaged or destroyed. Here in Manchester, a pleasant voice merely asked passengers “to reduce the number of security alerts by keeping your luggage with you at all times.” No threats, no stridency. Same message underneath, but all the difference in the world how it was delivered.

We take off at ten till noon. I’m nearly the only person who doesn’t have a seatmate. During the flight, I review the previous day’s events. My travel plans had proved practical. Seeing Robert first on Thursday and then going to the hotel and sleeping all those hours helped me adjust nicely. And I note that when Rita and I get together, usually three evenings a week, we usually end the evening with a meditation that comes through me from the guys. The content of those meditations involves not only the river of life and health, but a reminder to envision a blue flame on the foreheads of ourselves and of others – a blue flame signifying the consciousness that observes our lives, which reminder helps me be more charitable, less judgmental of others. Rita and I have been accomplishing things without even quite noticing it.

I write, “David, I like your country right well, despite the strangeness of little things.”

“And don’t think I don’t like yours, despite the same things you would cite. America was a dream to us, you know. It wasn’t by chance that I – you – were reborn in America. It carried the sense of spaciousness, of newness, of opportunity. It would have been too tiring for an older man, and too hard, not knowing the right people, to find compatible minds. But it was in the dream, eh?”

“And besides you had other things to do. What were they? Were you really [as we had gotten some years before] an editor on the Illustrated London News?”

“London Illustrated News, yes. Sub-editor, actually. Your friend’s [Kelly’s] glimpse of me was an accurate snapshot of my life then – being the grand old man (in a minor way) to my boys. I was the one who had been there and seen things and could tell tales.”

[But – maddening inconsistencies! The right title for the paper is Illustrated London News, not London Illustrated News. If I was really talking to David, why would he mis-name the paper he worked at? Why, in fact, make a point of “correcting” into error what had been correctly expressed? No way to know. Maybe I was just making it up.]

We’re down at Aberdeen at 1 p.m. and I have scarcely retrieved my bag before I am met by a smiling Michael Ross, the first time we’ve seen each other since we met in Virginia when he did his Gateway at TMI. Michael, who has been involved with out-of-body experiences since he was a boy, had showed me and my friend Nancy Dorman a couple of energy exercises that were so powerful it was all we could do not to “click out.” (That’s a TMI term that means going out so far that you bring back no recollection of it. Subjectively, one minute you’re here, then you’re back – but from where?)

Michael Ross on his home turf

Michael offers to drive me wherever I want to go, by whatever route I want, on our way to Findhorn. So we go round by way of Peterhead, Macduff, Banff, Cullen, Elgin, and Forris, talking of course as we go. Among the things we talk about are Robert and his great wealth of knowledge about dreams. We pass through great stretches of green, interrupted by buildings or towns. There is less of man in the landscape than in America. Nice, but one wonders what the people live on. We stop for lunch at Peterhead, and I find a postcard depicting Iona from the air. Makes the days I’m going to spend there seem more real somehow.

At Peterhead

Just before we come to Forris, Michael brings us to Pluscarden Abbey, which turns out to be a moving and memorable experience. Pluscarden, like so much else of the medieval Catholic presence in Britain, was destroyed by the Protestant revolution. Now it is being restored, and there is a small community of priests and monks living there while the restoration goes on.

When  we walk up to the buildings, I put my hands on the old unreconstructed stones, trying to experience it. Inside, we look at the stained glass windows high above us, and we are among the stone, and the atmosphere sinks in further. We come to a portion with pews and kneelers, and I get down onto my knees – an impulse I’d had earlier – and put my head in my hands. I fall – rise – into a state of deep reverence and surrender. It doesn’t last long (I am well aware of Protestant Michael standing next to me, though I get no sense of his judging me) but it is very deep. I think, it would be well to bring the holiness back into our lives, or rather, into life, into the life of our time and the time to come.

Pluscarden window

But the sight of some Catholic literature in a rack raises resistances in me stemming back to my teen years. I have the same feelings of deep uneasiness when a priest – I suppose he is a priest – passes. My reaction is like a Protestant’s – and yet I was fully experiencing, savoring, what we might call the stone memories. As we are walking back to Michael’s car, I say to him that the Reformation, like the French revolution, was the equivalent of a nervous breakdown in its effect on our psyches – for current Protestants are likely to have good Catholics among their soul heredity, and certainly have them in their physical heredity. Thus they are at war with themselves, internally, life against life. Our stupid age, of course, believes that what is past is past, not knowing that feelings and other lives have no time. And even Catholics today are likely to be at war with other parts of themselves that have other values, other ways of being. And this confines the argument only to the west! What of the schisms between east and west, and both and Islam? And all these and others?

We arrive at the Findhorn community too late for things, but we walk around it a bit, and then find out b&b in Findhorn itself. We have a great walk out to the water in the late daylight. (It stays light in Scotland in June about 25 hours a day, or anyway from 3:30 a.m. to past 10:30 p.m.) Michael tells me of a dream he’d had, of visiting Findhorn on a beautiful day, when gale-force winds blow up, and overturn the old caravans he likes, the ones that went back to Findhorn’s early days. I help him analyze the symbols, and it resolves quite easily: the winds of change are going to overturn everything that is not substantial. In communities like Findhorn, presumably – intentional gatherings of people who would live spiritually. I wonder what else it means, how widely applicable it is.

I go to bed much earlier than Michael. I’m still adjusting.