Sometimes dreams are prophetic, sometimes talking about events that will exist far in the future. I had one such dream. It came to me long ago. It has only become relevant and meaningful today, fourteen years later.

In this dream there is a circle, one that I have to go around again. I am to carry my old book with me this time. I had almost thrown it away once. I’m glad I didn’t. It contains much of beauty and wonder.
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This circle has special meaning for me. I have tried to go around it twice before. Each time I have failed to complete it. This may be my last chance.

The first time I attempted to travel around this circle began after I had just finished my Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, when I dropped out and moved from Venice to Berkeley. This was in the early seventies. Over time, I took the name Wanderer and became a wandering acid holy man. I did a great deal of acid in those days, and it was a time of magic and wonder in my life, a time when everything flowed, a time when I made a difference.

In those days, I spent a great deal of time by myself, hiking and backpacking alone in the mountains of California. I also traveled around the country, living in my VW van and staying to the back roads. I wrote it all down too, in my book that I called Wanderer’s Notebook.

Unfortunately, I never completed that circle. I never completed my book either. Instead, as I was completing the circle and returning to ordinary reality, my wife betrayed me. She cheated on me and then left, taking our baby daughter away. Thrown off center by this betrayal and loss, my life faltered, then failed. I lost the circle.

When I had finally found the circle again, years later, this time traveling and gathering with the Rainbow Family, I soon became Wanderer again. I did a lot of acid this time too. With my best friend Ramon, I left the West Coast and moved to Colorado. Together with some other brothers and sisters, we had a high acid house in the mountains above Boulder.

However, I never completed that circle either. Instead, I became inflated. I began to think that I was someone special. Soon enough, I crashed and burned.
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Since these two failed attempts to achieve wholeness of being, I have regressed to an earlier and more one-sided version of myself. I have become much less physical, more in my head, more introverted, and yes, more negative too. I have gone back to the beginning. And I have long hesitated to attempt the circle again. But it has now been fourteen years, and I am beginning it again.

The main thing I have come to understand about my life now from my old dream is that I still need to carry my old book along with me as I journey around the circle. Synchronistically, this past year, I have been rewriting my old book. This time, I have divided it into two books – The Birth of Wanderer and The Life and Death of Wanderer. The first one, The Birth of Wanderer is being published at this time in the Weekly Reader section of The Caldron (www.thecaldron.com.)

Rewriting these two books – and reliving those times as I do so – has let me see who I had been during these two previous attempts to complete the circle. Both times, I had been much more alive – more physical, more enthusiastic, and much more out there in the world of people and adventure.

Rewriting these books has also let me see how I failed to complete the two circles. The first time, I failed and lost my way because I had come to feel that my strength depended upon my relationship with my wife. When she betrayed me, when she left me, I lost my center. Over time, ever since then, I have learned to find the source of my power within myself, not in a relationship. I won’t make that mistake again.

The second time I failed because I began to think I was special. I became inflated and when the inflated ego bubble popped, I lost everything, even my connection with acid, a connection that had never failed me before.
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The goal of completing the circle has always had the deeper meaning of completing the path to wholeness of being and then bringing this wholeness back to share with the here and now collective world.

However, as a result of two serious operations and a death experience that I underwent as a young boy, I have a serious split within me. Because of my brush with death a part of me was lost. Before the operations, I was a normal healthy boy, physical and full of life. Afterwards I became very quiet and shy, very afraid of almost everything. My goal of completing the circle has always been to bring these two sides of myself together again.

Sometimes I am completely in my head, just sitting around and reading and thinking all day. Sometimes I am very introverted, focused almost entirely upon my inner life. Sometimes I am quite negative. And for the past ten years, I have been closer, probably too close, to my feminine side than I have ever been, being the mommy-daddy for our three boys. This quiet and introverted and overly feminine side of myself is one extreme.

Sometimes however, especially when I was doing a lot of acid, I was very physical, hiking and wandering about in the woods and climbing all the trees and rocks I come upon. Adventuring on my bike a lot too. Sometimes I was very extraverted, wanting to surround myself with high friends and fellow trippers. Sometimes I was very excited about my life. Seeing it as an adventure. Maybe I can let go of my introverted side and be this person again.
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This time around the circle, I want to stay in the middle, falling to neither extreme. I want to be both mind and body. I want to be able to be either introverted or extroverted, whichever is appropriate to the circumstances. I want to find a middle ground between being overly enthusiastic (inflated) and being overly quiet and subdued. I just want to be real, in touch with whatever the moment requires.

This time around the circle, I want to find my balance, my center. This time I want to complete the circle and actualize the wholeness of being that I find there – and then bring it back into the world in which we all live.