Lost and Found Part 4 - Home

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The barking dog

I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then ” Alice

This story began, as I mentioned before, when my brother Sam let me borrow the first couple of series of 'Lost' on DVD. I watched them with a sense of wonder and sometimes bewildermemt at the symbology and numerology weaved into the storyline.

I soon finished the first couple of series and not long after went to visit my brother and sister again. As I was about to depart on my journey to their house I remembered I hadn’ t put the Lost DVD's in the car. So I went back and then placed them on the front seat and began my journey..

It was a beautiful spring day in April and as I drove out of the little village I lived in at the time, I saw a couple of women walking with their children and pet dog, a Labrador retreiver..

Now I am assuming this was a normal activity of theirs, as they all seemed quite relaxed and the dog was off its lead walking beside them.

Yet all of a sudden, without warning, the dogs head lifted up and looked directly in the direction of my car. It then started running directly towards my car barking loudly while staring directly at me. As it ran into the middle of the road I slammed my foot on the breaks and managed to stop only about five or six feet from this barking mad canine.

This emergency stop meant the Lost DVD’s shot off the seat and spread themselves all over the floor of the passengers side of the car. The dog then calmly turned around and headed back off to it’s owners who were standing there, in what looked like a state of open mouthed disbelief at what had just happened.

As I recomposed myself and drove off past the shellshocked people I remember asking myself, did that really just happen? It was like the dog was looking right into my eyes and then as I looked at the Lost series strewn over the floor, a thought hit me, the Dog in Lost is a Labrador Retreiver. I now had a three hour drive in front of me and this experience wouldn’t let me be, playing over and over in my mind.

I had decided to test out a new Sat Nav app for my phone, all be it fairly unsuccessfully, as following its directions took me on the ‘scenic route’ going through village after village to the point where I was getting pretty frustrated with constantly finding myself behind slow moving traffic.

Then suddenly the road ahead cleared as I entered what was probably by now the fourth or fifth village I had passed through. So I drove through it looking forward to making up some time once I was out the other side. But then a car indicating on a road to the left just ahead of me decided to pull out, I held in my frustration as I applied my breaks and then watched as he drove another 40 yards before again indicating to turn left off the road.

Oh well only a minor inconvenience, but no, there was a bus waiting on the road he was about to turn down so he flashed his lights to let it out. Nooo! Now I was stuck behind a bus as it crawled out of the village.

Still looking at the road ahead, I realised I only needed a small window of opportunity and I could easily overtake, and there was one coming up, then a thought popped into my head. “The bus is the same colour as the dog”, what a strange thing to notice I also thought.

Now vehicles and especially buses had become part of this new synchronistic experience. I am not sure what they represent exactly, although I have a few ideas, but they have become a part of my small set of metaphorical or Archetypal symbols. So having this thought about the connection between the bus and the dog, as I was about to undertake a slightly risky manouvre, made me then wonder was the dog trying to warn me of something?

As I turned the bend I saw an opportunity to overtake as I could see the road ahead fairly clearly, but I decided to wait, so instead of accelerating I counted, figuring that it would have taken me about five or six seconds at most, to pull out, overtake and get in front of the bus. As I got to three and was about to say four a small car came whizzing past in the opposite direction. Oh my goodness I thought, where did that come from?

As I drove a little further, I saw that the road had a dip in it, just deep enough to conceal a vehicle coming in the opposite direction.

When I finally arrived at my destination, I relayed the story of the barking dog, and the near miss, to my brother and sister-in-law, as well as the 'Lost' connection with the scattered DVD’s and Vincent look alike. As usual none of us knew what to make of it, but it brought to my attention the dog and this was to prove very significant.

As I worked my way through the episodes I was I must admit struggling at times to maintain my interest, yet something in me made me continue like I had to. Then I had I am not sure what you would call it, other than a communication. It said not in words but in feeling watch out for the dog its important.

Now anyone who has seen lost will realise that the dog pretty much disappears in the last couple of series, so as I watched I questioned this message, then came not only the last episode but the last scene.

We have Jack our hero with his 'Father' 'Christian' who he thought was dead. Now this perfectly reflects the death of my own Christian Archetypal ‘Father’. Jack wrestles with what he felt was the betrayal of his Father throughout the series and at the end it seems he would die alone on the Island after sacrificing himself, it mirrored my own torment only a couple of years before.

Then in the very last scene we see Vincent walk over and lie down beside the dying Jack and the recognition by Jack of what this means. To me there could not have been a more personel message, I had been inspired to look out for the dog and that scene as the last act of synchronicity told me in no uncertain terms, ‘you are never alone’. Nothing in my life has ever struck me with as much power and emotion as that scene, it was almost like it was made for me, I was lost and now I was found, this is the power of synchronicity.

It is good to feel lost... because it proves you have a navigational sense of where "Home" is. You know that a place that feels like being found exists. And maybe your current location isn’t that place but, Hallelujah, that unsettled, uneasy feeling of lost-ness just brought you closer to it.” Erika Harris

The Code Part 1