The Road to the Observatory

While working as a computer program and wishing I were an astronmer instead, I dreamed that the road to the observatory was still being built.

This event occurred about 1981 when I worked at Hill Air Force Base as a computer programmer sometime after the manager's seminar which taught me to dream. At that time I was wishing I could be an astronmer.

Road to observatory under construction.
I dreamed I was driving along a road to an observatory where I had a new job as an astronomer awaiting me. Suddenly there was a barricade across the road with a man there. I told him I needed to go to the observatory. He replied that that was not possible because the road was still being built. Then the dream ended. I awoke from the dream encouraged that someday I'd be able to use the PhD in astronomy that I had labored so hard to receive.

There was a point in my graduate studies at Tucson when I became discouraged and nearly quit. The problem was that I could not do a dissertation on the position of the moon in ancient times because there was no expert there to supervise me. I believed I'd never have a job in astronomy so I wanted to quit with a master's degree and go to BYU and get a PhD under Hugh Nibley in Egyptology!

I made a list of pros and cons of staying to finish my PhD in astronomy and virtually everything on the list favored quitting. It was a "no brainer". I phoned my Mother told her my decision to quit. She wisely asked if I had prayed about it. I replied in the negative and she told me to do so. I received a clear answer that everything I had written against finishing was true and that I'd never work as an astronomer, but that I needed to finish the degree because someday I would write about astronomy and to be accepted I would need the PhD as credentials. It was then that I started my dissertation in astrophysics.

Alan Ashton and WordPerfect.
In September of 1988 our whole programming team at Hill AFB was laid off because our contract was not renewed. I prayed to know what to do and received the answer to go to my college friend Alan Ashton, who was now very wealthy from having written WordPerfect, and to ask him to give me a grant to work on an invention that I had in mind and also to flesh out Dewey Larson's theory of physics with the required math. Alan had offered me a job at WordPerfect three times while I had worked for 12 years at Eyring Research Institute under a contract at HAFB to do missle simulation programming, but I had declined because I felt I was do scientific programming rather than business.

As I drove up to the WordPerfect building complex on the corner of 1600 North and 800 East in Orem, just before I arrived the road was blocked. Immediately I recognized the barrier as the one I had seen in my dream many years before! I got around it, met with Alan, and to my delight he granted my wish.

After about six months, I realized I could not supply the needed math for Larson's theory and that the invention was beyond my abilities. Instead, suddenly I began receiving much inspiration about the sacredness of the Mayan Calendar Sacred Round. I told Alan that I felt strongly that this was the area where I'm supposed to work and he continued to support me for three years as the entire foundation of my work on sacred calendars was laid. Afterward I got other programming jobs and was able to continue the astronomical calendar work after hours at home. At this time (2018) there are more than 80 of my articles about sixteen different sacred calendars on my website, most of which are based on observational astronomy.

Thus, the dream was fulfilled! The road to the observatory was being built in the wealth Alan was accumulating!