The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination (2 page)

I've been keeping a journal, on and off, since my teens, and as a dedicated daily practice for more than twenty years. If you are not currently keeping a journal, I hope you'll be inspired to start or restart one by the time you finish this book. When we write in a journal, we make room for a dialogue with the larger Self. We also become alert and alive to recurring themes and symbols in our lives, and gather first-hand data on the play of coincidence and much else.

Because there is so much material in my journals, when I can find a few moments I file the reports in various folders. One of these used to be called “Airline Synch.” Now I call it “On Another Plane.” The journal entries that go in this folder describe my experiences while catching and traveling on airplanes. Now a plane trip is hardly an exotic event in my life: as a lecturer and teacher, I fly somewhere nearly every week. Whenever I am traveling by plane, I am even more alert than usual to the play of coincidence, especially to chance encounters at the airport or on board the plane. I am extremely watchful when my plans get screwed up, as frequently happens along my flight paths. My local airport is rather small, so flying to most destinations means I need to change planes — often at Chicago's busy O'Hare Airport. Whenever I miss a connection, my antennae start quivering, because I know from experience that when we go off-plan, we enter a liminal area in which a Trickster energy comes into play. In this unexpected territory, very interesting opportunities and encounters may present themselves — if we can forego exhibiting Type A behavior over a delay or an unscheduled event.

I sometimes carry a theme or question with me as I head for another plane. This is one way of playing a game I call Putting Your Question to the World (which I'll discuss in more detail in part 2). In this version, I make it my game to consider anything striking or unusual that happens during the trip as possible guidance on the issue I have on my mind.

At all times, I remain open to the symbolism and serendipity of what is going on within my field of perception. When we operate this way, in a kind of traveling meditation, we let the universe put the questions to us — and a question from the universe can be much more interesting than what is on our personal agendas.

For instance, rushing to make a connection at O'Hare Airport, I once heard a CNN announcer headlining a story about a man who had offered his soul for sale over the Internet. “Soul for Sale” was the phrase that flashed on the TV monitor over the heads of thirsty drinkers at a sports bar. Now
there
was a sobering theme for any life, on any day, and it prompted me to ask this question: “Am I — or is anyone I know — at risk of selling their soul, maybe because we have forgotten we have one?” This led me to think very seriously about a business decision I needed to make and to have a frank discussion with a friend who was worried that his career track was leading him to compromise some of his deepest personal values.

In what follows, I've selected five personal experiences of flight, over a two-year period, from my “On Another Plane” folder. They suggest that we attract or repel people, events, and opportunities according to our energy and our state of mind. They also demonstrate what twentieth-century science has confirmed: there are no impermeable boundaries between inner and outer, subjective and objective. Enjoy!

Bears for the Beloved

April 8, 2005
I am flying to Madison, Wisconsin, to give an evening lecture at Meriter Hospital titled “Honoring the Secret Wishes of the Soul” and to lead a workshop over the weekend titled “Dreaming a Life with Heart.”

The man sitting beside me is from Pakistan. Toward the end of the flight, he asks to borrow my pen. He takes two stuffed toys out of a plastic bag. They are both bears. The first is sky-blue. The second, smaller bear is pink and blue and peachy and white.

The Pakistani is filling in little heart-shaped gift cards with my pen.

“Who are the bears for?” I ask him.

“They are for my beloved.”

“What is her name?”

“She is called Sabriha. It means ‘happy.’ But I call her by two nicknames. The first is Arzhu. It means ‘desire,’ but a
big
desire.” He puts his hand on his heart.

“Like the heart's desire.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“And the second nickname?”

“It's Kuwahish.”

“That's a tricky one.” I make a couple of attempts to get my tongue around it. “What does Kuwahish mean?”

“It means ‘wish,’ but a big wish.” He sighs.

“Like a wish of the soul.”

“That's it.”

“In Urdu?”

“How do you know my language?”

“Oh, I've been around.”

So — my pen is borrowed to write the words for the heart's desire and the wish of the soul in another language. And I give a lecture that evening titled “Honoring the Secret Wishes of the Soul” and spend the weekend helping people discover and manifest their heart's desires.

Her Dead Mom Got Her the Truck

August 22, 2005
I am crazy-busy the day before boarding my flight to Seattle. On top of everything else I have to do before the trip, my elderly Jeep has made it clear she is on her last gasp, making the sound of a propeller plane as I drive to a dealership; I'm praying she won't die before we get into the lot. Three hours later, thanks to some benign paperwork angel, I drive out of the dealership in a new car, waving farewell to Jeepie.

The last person to get on that Seattle-bound plane claims the seat next to me, breathing hard. I remark that she must have been in quite a rush to make the plane.

“You wouldn't believe it. I managed to buy a new car in two hours this morning and I drove it to the airport parking lot just now.”

“That's an interesting coincidence. I was rushing around yesterday buying a new car myself. You beat me by one hour in the transaction time.”

“Oh, I couldn't have done it if my mom hadn't helped.”

After she catches her breath, she introduces herself. She works in the accounting department of amajor insurance company. “Actually, I'm like the internal affairs of our accounting office. I'm the tough lady who looks over everyone 's shoulder making sure we don't give free car rental to some poor stiff who's totaled his vehicle if we can avoid it.”

Not the most attractive job description, but in person the lady is charming and humorous.

I am intrigued by her mention of her mother as the moving spirit in her car purchase. I have a hunch that Mom is not around in ordinary reality, and I am right.

Ms. Internal Affairs tells me, “My dad's been on his own since Mom passed. Whenever I do something nice for him, Mom does something nice for me. That's how it goes. So I went to see Dad on Sunday, and on the drive back I saw the red truck I have always wanted — the big crew-cabin, four-door Chevy S-10 — right there in a dealer's lot beside the road. I ran in this morning, and everything came together right away. Mom was always a good organizer.”

Nothing fuzzy or New Age-y about this lady trucker. She navigates by coincidence without thinking about it, because it gets rubber on the road.

Indiana Jones, Dressed by Churchill's Bodyguard

January 6, 2006
I once dreamed that the poet Yeats — who was a frequent presence in my mind when I was writing
The Dreamer's Book of the Dead
— wanted me to dress in a smarter suit than usual because he was taking me on a visit. When I was correctly dressed, he took me through St. James's Park in London — past the swans — and eventually to Number Ten Downing Street, where he left me to have a private moment with Churchill, who seemed to be engrossed in receiving information on the telephone relating to the magical battle of Britain.

The dream excited and intrigued me. Subsequent research — studded and guided by coincidence — led me to understand that Churchill was deeply interested in the occult and in alternate history. I had always admired Churchill, and I now felt drawn to study him and to write about him. In my imagination, I played with an idea for a fact-based novel with some “Indiana Jones” touches, in which Churchill and his personal network — including one of his bodyguards — would do battle with Nazi occultists, among others.

Now, as is typical, I have another plane trip coming up. Since I have several other book projects on my desk, I resolve to seek a “second opinion” on whether this book plan is really a good one to pursue. I decide that whatever comes up during this trip will be guidance on my theme. To make sure there is no vagueness or confusion about that theme, I write it down on an index card:
I would like guidance on whether writing a novel about Churchill with an Indiana Jones flavor is a good idea
.

On the first leg of my trip, I have an interesting companion, a woman who has recently decided to make radical changes in everything that is central to her life. She has left her husband and her job, sold her home and her furniture. After spending two weeks with a friend, she is now traveling back to an uncertain future. I suggest to her that “if you can
see
your destination, you are better than halfway there.”

I ask her to reach down deep inside and tell me what she wants of life.

She begins to talk about an old dream, of founding a center in her hometown that would support women who have been abused or simply defeated by life and help them to find their voice and their power and their healing.

I ask her to
take
me there — to help me see and smell this center, to go there with all of the senses. She warms to this task, and soon we are both
there
, in her dream center. She realizes as she describes the neighborhood that she now has the address — an old building in need of TLC — and that she has identified all the key players, including the financial sponsors, who could make this happen.

When we part company at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, she is juiced and confident.

But she holds my arm for a moment and says, “What do I say to that part of myself that's going to rise up and say, ‘It's just your imagination’?”

“You're going to say what the poet Tagore said: ‘The stronger the imagination, the less imaginary the results.’”

This is a pleasant exchange (and I like to believe that the center we grew in the imagination now exists). But there is no definite guidance here on my very specific theme, the Churchill novel with an Indiana Jones touch.

Now I am hurrying along the C concourse at O'Hare, dodging snackers and electric carts, heading for my departure gate.

I stop in midstride because at my gate is . . . Indiana Jones.

He has the whole kit: the hat, the jacket, the Sam Browne belt, even the canvas dispatch case. Everything except the whip and the gun.

He does
not
look like Harrison Ford, however. He 's considerably chubbier.

And while I am thinking this
may
be my sign, a part of me is also saying: This is absolutely over the top. Just too much. Don't trust this.

So I get on my plane telling myself the verdict is still not in on the theme I have proposed to the universe. I settle down to my in-flight reading, which is a copy of
The Duel
, John Lukacs's masterful study of the personal contest between Churchill and Hitler in the critical months of 1940 when Britain and her commonwealth stood alone against the Nazis. I have just gotten to a page describing Churchill driving with his bodyguard to Number Ten on the day he became Prime Minister when a man looms over me and says, “I'm sitting next to you. I swapped seats with a guy so he could sit with his family across the aisle.”

I make room for Indiana Jones, mentally noting that it is always interesting to track what happens when seating plans (or other plans) are scrambled.

“Do you have the whip?” I ask Indiana Jones when he is buckled up.

“It's at home,” he explains.

“How about the gun?”

“Got that, too.” He knows about guns, he explains. He is in the U.S. Coast Guard, working Homeland Security.

He thumbs his shoulder belt and announces proudly, “You know, this is the real stuff. It was made by Churchill's bodyguard.”

“
What
did you just say to me?”

“These clothes were made by Peter Botwright. He used to be Churchill's bodyguard. He went on to make clothes for the actors in the James Bond movies, and then in
Indiana Jones
. I'll give you his website. You can see for yourself.”

I show him the open page of my book, where my finger has come to rest on a line describing Churchill in the car with his bodyguard.

“That's quite the coincidence,” says Indiana Jones.

“You have no idea.”

Yes — I did proceed to work on a novel involving Churchill, one of his bodyguards, and a character with some “Indiana Jones” qualities.

The Bird Plane and the Other Island

October 5, 2006
I am flying to Charlottesville, Virginia, to give a lecture. Before rushing to the airport, I check my email and read a friend's vivid account of watching three immense flocks of Canada geese flying over his house.

I take off in a puddle-jumper en route to Dulles; it's the first leg of my journey to Charlottesville. Ten minutes after takeoff, the plane turns around. We are told we hit “some birds.”

When we land, I ask the pilot, “Did we fly into a flock of geese?”

“Yes. Unfortunately, we hit five.”

Back at the check-in desk at the airport, there are no seats to be had, for love or money, on alternative flights to Dulles. But a cheerful clerk conjures up the last seat for me on a flight to Charlotte that will connect nicely with a second flight to Charlottesville.

“If I could bet on names,” I tell the clerk, “I guess today I would bet on Charlotte.”

“Yes, you would.” His smile broadens. “My daughter's name is Charlotte, and she just gave birth.”

Charlotte-Charlottesville-Charlotte. Some days, we can't help but notice that
life rhymes
.

So now I'm on a different plane, with a different itinerary, and my antennae are twitching. I get goose bumps of confirmation when I see a large black dog at the departure gate. For me, the appearance of a friendly black dog in an unlikely place — like an airport departure lounge — is a very good omen.