and never in destruction or hate.
Sometimes what happens is so completely unlikely that it can only have been caused, although not in the usual sense of a material causation. It is pre-arranged so perfectly with such unbelievable timing and love that it could not be mere coincidence. It even feels spooky, like that lost letter you were searching for everywhere and right after a prayer it slipped out from inside the pages of an old lost book that fell off the shelf into your hands. You begin to gain faith in an infinite Mind indwelling in the universe that cherishes each of us, with synchronicity its modus operandi. The boy was still a tad uncertain until he followed the dream west.
When a young boy who does not believe in angels has a blue angel dream and actually follows it on a journey to the unknown, it is bound to be disruptive of settled expectations, especially for a Swarthmore-bound St. Paul’s graduate. For those who doubt God and a love-enchanted universe, this book can be read as an honest statement by a boy gone wildly wrong on a wasteful detour who was just lucky enough to stay out of the gutter. The boy was fifteen when he first had the dream, a natural-born starry-eyed child wanderer surrounded by colorful fall leaves at a prep school that he loved—a nice pricey orphanage where he was preparing for nothing, since nothing seemed worthy of preparation. He was happy up there in the North, where he studied hard and learned much. No one had ever told him he could amount to anything, but truth be told he appreciated being just a tad overlooked and keeping a low profile. This left the boy open to his kind of journey, when he might otherwise have ignored the dream and gone down Wall Street or to a prestigious law firm.
The boy considered the blue angel to be a symbolic expression of infinite Mind trying to break through his worldly consciousness and awaken him into awareness of the vast nonlocal Mind that underlies the universe and of which our minds are some very small part. This Mind is also a field of love in which we are all interconnected with God and one another, and it is the sole source of all that is perfectly wise, enduring, energetic, and pure. Such spiritual love is not comprised of the same uneven emotional “stuff” of human love, which is always making exceptions, and lacking in wisdom, reliability, and purity. Mere human love turns easily to indifference and even hatred or violence, which is why the world keeps burning. We need something higher.
Take this Route 80 dream-driven trip to reclaim your soul. Read on.
Interlude
The boy (left) in 1969 on his E.T. bike with friends Paul and Hap at St. Paul’s School, in the days of the dream
The total number of minds in the universe is one.
—Erwin Schrödinger
Synchronicity is an ever-present reality for those who have eyes to see.
—Carl Jung
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
—Rabindranath Tagore
How to Follow a Dream The boy, in his Sixth Form Independent Paper for Rev. Rodney Welles, wrote: “What really is spiritual love? When the happiness and security of others means as much to us as our own or sometimes even more, we love them. When any human being loves everyone who they actually do encounter in this way no matter who they are, they have far transcended the limits of human emotional love and entered the spiritual love field of the infinite Mind.” The boy received Honors.
The boy in the yearbook
You must learn to get in touch with the innermost essence of your being. This true essence is beyond ego. It is formless; it is free; it is immune to criticism; it does not fear any challenge. It is beneath no one, superior to no one, and full of magic, mystery, and enchantment.
—Deepak Chopra
The Dream and the Car: How the Journey Began
We wake, if ever we wake at all, to mystery.
—Annie Dillard
It was early morning, misty and silver-gray, at the end of a long road to the unknown west. High above the sea, a long-haired blond youth leaned outward over a ledge, about to let go, when out of the mist appeared the light blue image of an angel’s face. Speaking softly and with great love, the angel said, “If you save him, you too shall live.” Then she faded back into the silver-gray mist.
The boy’s dream was vivid after he awoke, and it stuck with him over the course of the day and beyond. It started with a silvery-gray luminosity like a Tiffany stained glass window, and then came the leaning youth. Slowly it brightened into light blue, and out of that blue appeared the beautiful angel’s face. Then spoke her deeply soothing and peaceful voice, after which she faded into silver-gray.
The boy was asleep when he dreamed this dream but felt as though he was in a state different than mere sleep, though nothing like usual wakefulness. It was a strange feeling of being beyond place and time, and, when he awoke from this dream into the quiet of the dawn, he was unsure of where he was but felt secure and in oneness with something mysterious and peaceful. But then his sense of time and place would come back, and the day was upon him with all its chronological demands, and he would get dressed for breakfast and eight o’clock morning chapel.
The boy had a fabulous sacred studies teacher, Rev. Rod Welles, an Episcopal priest who loved the Buddhism of Alan Watts, and the boy told him about the dream over a formal Sunday dinner in the school’s large North Upper dining hall. North Upper was as elegantly constructed as the great dining hall in a Harry Potter novel, with sweeping varnished wooden beams pointing skywards, and oak tables and chairs in which sat five hundred young boys—a dozen boys per table—all suited up and just returned from mandatory Sunday chapel. Rev. Welles listened carefully, nodding his head, and said, “Well, in scripture an angel is a symbol of protection and brings messages, and light blue stands for purity and truth.” The other boys rolled their eyes and smiled, but no one actually laughed because they agreed that the boy was an okay kid, even if a bit ethereal and independent.
“Who knows, maybe there is synchronicity at work, and a youth on a ledge awaits you somewhere in the future,” Rev. Welles added. “Anyway, it’s just a dream. But it could be from God; it could have a true message and reflect something more than your own classroom worries about that ‘swirling downward vortex slowly sucking you into an immoral universe,’ as you tend to put things.”
“Maybe,” the boy responded, and now his friends around the table nodded in wide-eyed approval.
The boys of St. Paul’s called their teachers “Sir” at the time. They dressed in jackets and ties, lived simple and disciplined lives, and studied hard. It was a pure and good place to be, and Anglican in style and litany as it was a school still firmly rooted in the Episcopal tradition. He had just a few close friends because he preferred to remain self-possessed and simple. There were lots of people he got along with well, but they knew they had to give him space to be himself, and that was all he wanted. He figured it was simple to be happy but hard to be simple, and not everyone valued simplicity.
These were not tough times in the boy’s life—he was not spending long afternoons under a hot sun raking fall leaves for Mr. Chapin to work off his very occasional demerit points, nor was he eating dyspepsia-inducing hotdogs
