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Chapter 28: The Two Dreams

9. The Secret of Awakening

The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There is no dream without it, nor does it exist outside of the dream, in which the body acts as if it were the person, to be perceived and believed. It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by other bodies, born into the world outside the body, lives a little while and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies dying like itself. In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its allies and casts others as at best neutral to its aims. The body’s safety is the main concern of these dreamers. Its comfort is their guiding rule. They try to look for the body’s pleasure, and avoid the things that they judge would hurt it. Above all, they try to teach themselves that the body’s pleasures are different from its pains, and can be told apart.

The world’s dreaming takes many forms because many ways are sought to prove that the body is autonomous and real. The dreamers put things on the body that they have bought with little paper strips or plastic cards the world proclaims as valuable and good. They work to get them, often doing senseless things, and often exchange them for meaningless things they do not need or even want. They gather things and hire others to protect what they believe is theirs, and look about for special ones who can share their dream. Sometimes they dream they are triumphant over their conditions or over others, but in frightful dreams they are bullied by those who do not wish them well, or otherwise do not fare well in their attempts to proceed through the world of bodies. But in all cases they dream that their body is eventually snuffed out and all their attention that went toward it comes to naught.

The body’s serial adventures, from the time of birth to dying, is the theme of every dream the world has ever had. The “hero” of this depressing dream will never change, nor will its purpose. Though the dream itself takes many forms, and seems to show a great variety of places and events wherein its “hero” finds itself, the dream has only one purpose, taught in many ways. The dreamers try to teach this single lesson to themselves again and still again, and yet once more: that the body is cause of experience and not effect of thought. And you are its effect, and cannot be its cause. Thus are you not the dreamer, but the dream. And so you wander idly in and out of places and events that the world’s dream contrives.

It is true that this wandering is all the body does in the world’s dreams, for it is only a figure in these dreams. But who reacts to figures in a dream unless they perceive them as if they were real? The instant you see these dream figures as they are, they have no more effects on you because you understand that you gave them their effects by causing them, and making them seem real.

How willing are you to release yourself from all effects of all the dreams the world has ever had? Is it now your will to let no dream appear to be the cause of what it is you experience and do? Then let us merely observe the dream’s beginning, for the part you perceive – the effect – is only the second part, the cause of which is found in the first.

No one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers their initial attack upon themself. And few believe there really was a time when they knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real. They would have seen at once that the ideas that conceive this world as real are a single illusion, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious these ideas now appear to be! And no one can remember when they would have been met with laughter and with disbelief. We can remember this, if we simply see the cause of these ideas. And we will behold the grounds for laughter rather than a cause for fear. Let us return the dream unto the dreamer who gave it away, and who therefore perceives the dream as separate from themself, and done to them.

Into Eternity, where all is One, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which some of the Children of the Divine forgot to laugh. In their forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together we can laugh this idea away, and understand that time cannot intrude upon Eternity. It is a jest to think that time can come to circumvent Eternity, because Eternity means there is no time. A Timelessness in which is time made real, a Part of the Divine that can attack Itself, separate sisters and brothers as adversaries, a mind within a body: all are forms of circularity whose ending starts at its beginning, ending at its cause.

The world you look upon depicts exactly what you thought you did in that instant of falling asleep into the dream of time. Except that now you think that what you did is being done to you. The guilt for what you thought has been placed outside yourself, and on a guilty world that dreams your dreams, and thinks your thoughts instead of you. It seems to bring its retribution to you, not your own. It seems to keep you narrowly confined within a body, which it punishes because of all the “blameworthy” things the body does within the dreamer’s dream. You have no power to make the body stop the hurt it causes in the dream, because you did not make it, and cannot control its impacts or its purpose or its fate.

In reality the world merely demonstrates an ancient truth: you will believe that others do to you exactly what you think you did to them. But once deluded into blaming them, you will not perceive the real cause of what they appear to do because you want the guilt to rest on them. How childish is this petulant device to attempt to keep your innocence by pushing guilt outside yourself, but never letting it go! It is not easy to perceive the jest when your eyes look upon its heavy consequences all around you, but without seeing their trifling cause. Without recognizing the cause do its effects seem serious and tragic indeed. Yet they simply follow their cause. And it is their cause that follows nothing, and is merely a child’s jack-in-the-box.

In gentle laughter does the Holy Spirit perceive the cause, and see beyond its apparent effects. How else could It correct your error, who have overlooked the cause entirely? Spirit bids you bring each terrible effect to It, that you may together see its senseless cause, and laugh together a while. You judge effects, but Spirit interprets their cause. And by Its Interpretation are the dream’s effects removed. Perhaps you come to It in tears, hearing It say, “My sister, brother, Holy Child of the Divine, behold your idle dream, in which this could seem to occur,” and you will leave the Holy Instant with your laughter and your sisters and brothers’ joined with Spirit’s.

The secret of awakening is just this: That you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what the form of the dream or the attack that seems to come toward you from outside, this still is true. Whoever takes the role of adversary and of attacker, still is this the Truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is still true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming, and the cause of. Let these figures be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they could have no effect on you unless you failed to recognize it is your dream.

This single Lesson truly learned will set you free from all suffering, whatever form the suffering seems to take, be it pain or pleasure. The Holy Spirit will repeat this one inclusive Lesson of Deliverance until It has been learned, regardless of the form of suffering that distracts your attention from the Answer. Whatever distress you bring to Spirit, It will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one Answer takes away the cause of every form of suffering and sorrow. The form affects Its Answer not at all, for It would teach you the single cause of all illusions, no matter what their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement:

I have done this thing to myself, and it is this that I would undo so I can remember my eternal Source and my holy Self.

Bring, then, all forms of suffering to the Holy Spirit, Who knows that each one is like the rest. It sees no differences where none exist, and It will teach you how each one is caused. None has a different cause from all the rest, and all of them are easily undone by just this single Lesson truly learned. Awakening is a secret you have kept only from yourself. The Universe Itself proclaims awakening. But to awakening’s Witnesses you have previously paid no heed at all. For They attest the thing that you have not wanted to know. They seem to keep it secret from you. Yet you need only learn that you chose not to listen and not to see.

How differently will you perceive the world when this is recognized! When you forgive the world your guilt, you will be free of it. Its Innocence does not demand your guilt, nor does your Innocence rest on its wrongs. This will yet become obvious, and be seen as a secret you kept from yourself. And it is this that has held you separate from the world, and kept your sisters and brothers separate from you. Now need you only learn that both of you must be either innocent or guilty. The one thing that is impossible is that you be unlike each other, that one of you be innocent and the other guilty. It is only this to learn. And then it will be no secret that you are healed.