That night Aulden had a dream - one with such impact that he woke feeling startled. This was the dream: A beautiful woman with long red hair stood at the foot of his bed. She was wearing a white hooded robe and after Aulden watched her for a few seconds she dropped the robe to the floor. She then walked, nude, to the side of the bed and crawled in next to Aulden. They embraced and she wrapped her legs around him. As they made love, the side of her face was against his own and he could feel breath from her mouth against his ear. He could hear a slight gasp with each movement. He begged her, "Tell me your name," and she whispered into his ear, "Dolly." That name - it brought to mind the hideous Barbie that Detail had tied up the night before. Suddenly startled by that thought, he woke up.

As he delivered mail during the day, walking from one house to the next, his thoughts went to his marriage and his divorce, and the reasons for the problems he had with his wife. His mind returned constantly to the books he'd been reading about the psychological concept of projection. He turned over, in his head, what projection meant about knowing or not knowing each other in a relationship. He felt determined to break this tendency in himself.

The next night, he dreamed again of the redhead woman, "Dolly." They sat at a table, across from each other, in a college cafeteria. She was wearing a blue dress and looked very professional. Aulden asked, "Are you Dolly - the woman I dreamed about before?"

She nodded and said, "Yes." He asked if she was the same redheaded angel who spoke to him at the clearing in the rhododendron forest. Again she nodded. He hardly recognized her since she was wearing a dress rather than her angel robes.

"Why are you here?" is what he asked next.

She answered, "To teach you."

The dream ended when she said those words. It was a short dream, but made such an impression on him that he knew he'd be able to find her in his meditation work.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In meditation, he sat with Poseidon at the beach hut. Aulden stood to leave, intending to search for the woman from his dream. Trying to find the right words for a goodbye, Aulden said, "I love your honesty about feelings, and the depth of your joy about life."

Poseidon didn't look at all joyful. His shoulders were slumped as if he'd been scolded, and as he glanced around the beach hut he looked like a child who was being punished. This isolated beach hut didn't seem appropriate for a social type like Poseidon. Aulden wanted to ask where that other person was - the Poseidon who was bold and audacious. But he couldn't open that topic. Instead he asked, "Do you know Dolly?"

Poseidon responded, "Who?"

Aulden elaborated, "Dolly - She's a redhead, an angelic female, and she came to me in a dream and said she was there to teach me, and she made love to me. Do you know her?"

Poseidon shrugged, almost indifferent, "No… but she sounds cool."

Again, Aulden searched for words to say goodbye, "I'll always be your friend. I want to visit you soon."

Poseidon gave him a gentle smile and said, "Come and see me when you need advice on the old cock and balls."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

He dreamed, once more, a dream related to the same subject. He found himself, again, in the college cafeteria. On a table was a magazine - a copy of Women's Day - and on the cover was the title of an article: "Transcendence Matters." He picked it up and looked at it, and then dropped it back onto the table. A student, sitting in front of him, asked, "Are you mad about something?" Aulden answered, "No… I mean, I have an anger but it's always with me." The student said, "There's a faculty member who could talk to you about how to get rid of it." Aulden replied, "I don't want to get rid of it. I only hope that it's enough anger to help me accomplish what I need to do."

The dream took an odd twist at that point: Aulden was suddenly in a deep pit, in a fetal position. But he was also standing at the top of the pit, looking down at himself, and he asked, "What are you doing down there in the pit of depression? You need to get out of there."

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
When he returned that morning to his meditation work, he was on the bus along with The Wind. They sat silently as the bus traveled through city streets. The bus pulled up to a platform that was floating about two feet above the ground. Aulden looked at the buildings around them - buildings of brick and ivy as in a university. Just like the bus-stop platform, the buildings and the sidewalks were all floating slightly above the earth.

The Bus Driver opened the door and announced, "The Elevated University."

Aulden and The Wind wandered around the campus and through the buildings until they found the door with her nameplate, "Dolly." Without knocking, he entered and found her sitting at a desk. She motioned to a pair of chairs, so Aulden and The Wind sat facing her.

Dolly began the conversation with an odd sentence, "What you want to happen will happen if you want it enough."

Aulden's response might have seemed equally odd to her. He asked, "Here?"

She answered, "Yes, here. Did you think I meant in the real world? Maybe I did."

Aulden contemplated, "Want… I want to stop projecting myself onto others so that I can really see people."

Dolly referred to Aulden's dream, "Do you remember 'Transcendence Matters'?"

"Did you write that article?" Aulden asked her.

She answered, "Of course."

"Can you tell me about it?"

Dolly explained, "You're transcending away from something. You're transcending to something: away from your fears, away from your pain…"

Aulden interrupted, "Away from desires?"

Dolly said, "Maybe. Don't finish my sentences. You're transcending to the other. You can't rise to any part of the other except to their Higher Self. And there you'll see them."

Aulden asked her, "But what if I need to see other parts of the other besides the Higher Self?"

"That's a judgement," she answered, "I'm not asking you to judge."

Aulden continued, "But to discern…"

Dolly replied, "Discern. But that's another topic. You want to see and to see the Self in the other is to love. To discern something that isn't Self - that's different."

"I need to learn that, too."

"But not from me," she said.

Aulden asked her, "So how do I do it - transcend?"

Dolly gave him an answer he'd heard before. "The same way you found me: meditate, watch, listen, wait. Do you see?"

Aulden thought about this and then asked, "I see. Is there more you can teach me?"

"So much more!" she assured him.

"Now?" he asked.

Dolly instructed him, "Wait… You have a lot of learning to do. Your bus is here to take you back."

Aulden felt drawn to her. He felt overwhelmed by the experience of being so close to this angelic figure, and he said as if was drunk, "I don't want to go back. Make love to me some night."

Dolly in a reassuring tone, answered, "I will."

Sensing their time together was ending, he asked, "Why did you call yourself Dolly?" He knew that "Dolly" wasn't really her name.

"So you'd listen to me," she answered, "We're all so much more than dolls. Remember that. Your bus is waiting."

When she said those words, Aulden and The Wind were suddenly on the bus-stop platform.