ARCIM

Daily Lesson 201 ~
July 20

Introduction to Review of Lessons 181-200

Review Lesson 181

Introduction to Review of Lessons 181-200

For this final review of our Part 1 lessons, we take only one Idea each day and practice It as often as possible. Besides the time you give morning and evening, each of which should be at least fifteen minutes, and the hourly remembrances you make throughout the day, use the Idea as often as you can between them. Each of these Ideas alone would be sufficient for awakening, if It were learned truly. Each would be enough to give Release to you and to the world from every form of bondage, and invite the Memory of the Divine to come again.

With this in mind, we start our practicing in which we carefully review the Thoughts the Holy Spirit has bestowed on us in our last twenty lessons. Each contains the whole Curriculum of awakening, if accepted, understood, practiced and applied to all the seeming happenings throughout the day. One Thought is enough. But from that One must no exceptions be made. And so we need to use Them all, and let Them blend as one as each contributes to the whole we learn.

These practice sessions, like our last review, are centered round a central theme with which we start and end each lesson. It is this:

 

“I transcend the body. I am free. For I am still as the Divine created me.”

 

The day begins and ends with this Thought. And we repeat It every time the hour strikes, or we remember, in between, that we have a function that transcends the world we perceive.

Beyond this, and a repetition of the Thought we practice for the day, no form of exercise is asked, but only a deep relinquishment of everything that clutters up the mind, and makes it deaf to reason, Sanity, and simple Truth.

We will attempt to go beyond all words and special forms of practicing for this review. For we attempt this time to reach a quickened pace along a shorter Path to the Serenity and Peace of the Divine. We merely close our eyes, and then forget all that we thought we knew and understood. For thus is Freedom given us from all we did not know and failed to understand.

There is one additional practice to include in this time of review: permit no idle thought to go unattended. If you notice one, deny its hold and move without distraction to assure your mind that this is not what it would have. Then gently let the thought that you denied be given up to Spirit in sure and quick exchange for the Idea we are practicing for the day.

When you are tempted to entertain an idle, unrelated thought, hasten to proclaim your Freedom from the temptation to think amiss as you say:

 

“This thought I do not want. I choose instead _____.”

 

And then repeat the Idea for the day, and let It take the place of the idle thought that came.

Beyond such special applications of each day’s Idea, we will each day add just a few formal expressions or specific thoughts to aid your practicing. With these, we give these times of quiet to the Teacher Who instructs in quiet, speaks of Peace, and gives our thoughts whatever meaning they may have.

To Spirit I offer this review for you. I place you in Its Care, and let It teach you what to do and say and think each time you turn to It. It will always be available to you each time you call to It to help you. Let us offer It the whole review we now begin, and let us also remember to Whom the review has been given, as we practice, day by day, advancing toward the Goal Spirit set for us, allowing It to teach us how to go, and trusting It completely for the way each practice period can best become a loving gift of Freedom to the world.

 

Review Lesson 181

 

I transcend the body. I am free. For I am still as the Divine created me.

 

Lesson 181. As I trust my sisters and brothers, I remember our Oneness.

All are my sisters and brothers. I am blessed with Oneness with the infinite and eternal Universe and the Divine, the one Creator of the Whole that is my holy Self, forever One with me.

 

I transcend the body. I am free. For I am still as the Divine created me.

 

Corresponding Text Section

 

Chapter 19: The Passing of the Dream

 

1. Shifting into the Happy Dream

Everyone acknowledges that a world arises in dreams that seems quite real while you are in it. But think what this world is. It is clearly not the world you perceived before you slept and again after you woke. If you could observe this dream world clearly you would see that it is, in fact, a distortion of the world you perceive while awake, constructed around what you would prefer the world to be. In dreams you are “free” to make over whatever isn’t to your liking in your waking world, including whatever seems to insult or attack you, and change it into what you want, whether the content become pleasant or unpleasant. Such dreams become a tribute to the ego, which is outraged by the perceived insult or attack that you “suffer” while awake. Constructing such dreams would not be your wish unless you believed yourself allied with the ego, which always looks upon itself, and therefore on you, as under attack, and highly vulnerable to it.

Chaotic dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting wishes. And therefore they have no concern with what is true. They are the best example you could have of how perception can be utilized to substitute illusions for Truth. You do not mistake dreams for the waking world on awaking because the fact that, in them, the waking world is so outrageously distorted becomes apparent. Yet dreams are a way of perceiving the world, and can be used to attempt to change it to better suit the ego. They provide striking examples both of the ego’s inability to tolerate anything real, and of your willingness to attempt to change the world on the ego’s behalf.

You do not generally find the differences between what you perceive in dreams and on waking disturbing. You recognize that what you perceive while awake is forgotten in dreams, and what you perceive in dreams is forgotten when you wake again. Yet on waking you do not expect that what was there before you dreamed to be gone.

In the part of your unconscious where your dreams take place, you arrange everything. People become what you would have them be, and what they do you determine. No limits on substitution are laid upon you. For a time it seems as if the world were given you, to make it what you want. You do not realize that in these dreams you are attempting to triumph over the world and make it serve you. These kinds of dreams could thus be characterized as perceptual temper tantrums, in which you figuratively proclaim, “I want it thus!” And thus it seems to be in the dream.

And yet dreams cannot escape their origin. Anger and fear often pervade them, and in an instant the illusion of satisfaction can be invaded by the illusion of fear. For the dream of your ability to control Reality by substituting for It a world that you prefer is fearful. Your attempts to forget Reality are frightening, but this you are not willing to accept. And so you substitute in your mind the fantasy that Reality is frightening, and not what you would do to It. And thus does guilt appear to be made real to you.

Dreams show you that you have the power to make a world as you would have it, and that, because you want it, you perceive it. And while you perceive it, you do not doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world clearly within your mind that seems to be outside. While in the dream world you do not respond to it as though you made it, nor do you realize that the emotions that the dream produces must come from you. It is the figures in the dream, and what they do, that seem to make the dream. You do not realize that you are making them act out for you, for if you did you would also realize that the guilt is not theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction for you would be gone.

While reflecting on your dreams when you are awake, these features are not obscure to you. You seem to waken, and the dreams seem to be gone. But what you fail to recognize is that what caused the dreams has not gone with them. Your wish to make a world that is not real remains with you. And what you seem to wake to is just another form of the same world you perceive in dreams. Because of this, all your time until you truly awaken to Reality is actually spent in a form of dreaming. Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same. They are your protest against Reality, and the fixed and insane wish to change It.

The special relationship has a special place in your waking dreams. It is the means by which you try to make your sleeping dreams – in which you have the power to make a world as you would have it – come true while you seem to be awake. From waking dreams you do not ever seem to awaken because you believe you are already awake. The special relationship is your determination to keep your hold on unreality, and to prevent yourself from truly awakening from all dreams. And as long as you place more value in sleeping and dreaming than in awakening, you will not let go of dreams.

The Holy Spirit, ever practical in Its Wisdom, accepts your dreams, and uses them as means for your awakening, even as you would have used them to remain asleep.

This Course once said that the first change before all dreams disappear is that your dreams of fear are changed to happy dreams. That is what the Holy Spirit does in your special relationship. It does not destroy this dream, or snatch it away from you. Your special relationships will remain with you, not as a source of pain and guilt, but transformed into holy relationships that become a source of Joy and Freedom. This transformation will not be for you alone, for in believing that a relationship was special – for you alone – lay its misery. As the unholiness of the special relationship kept the relationship as a thing apart, its new holiness will become an offering to everyone.

Your special relationship transformed into the holy relationship will be a means for undoing guilt in everyone blessed through your relationship. It will be a happy dream, and one that you will share with all who are touched by the relationship. Through it, the Blessing that the Holy Spirit has placed upon it will be extended. Think not that Spirit has forgotten anyone in the Purpose It has given you. And think not that It has forgotten you, to whom It gave this Gift. It uses everyone who calls on It as Means for the awakening of everyone. And It will awaken everyone through you who offered your relationship to It.

What Joy is yours as you recognize Spirit’s Gratitude for your holy relationship! And mine through Spirit’s! For we are joined as One in Purpose, being of One Mind with Spirit. Let not perpetual dreams keep your eyes closed. It is not strange that dreams can make an unreal world seem real. It is the wish to make such an unreal world that is incredible. Now what was your special relationship has become one in which the wish to make an unreal world has been removed, because the purpose of the relationship has been changed from one of dreams to one of Truth. You might not yet be sure of this, because you may think it is this change of purpose that is a dream. You are so used to choosing between waking and sleeping dreams that you do not yet see that you have made, at last, the choice between awakening and dreaming, between the Truth and all illusions.

Yet Heaven is sure. Your holy relationship is no dream. Its coming means that you have chosen Truth, and It has come because you have been willing to let your special relationship meet Truth’s Conditions. In your relationship the Holy Spirit has gently placed the Real World, the world of happy dreams, from which awakening is so easy and so natural. For as your sleeping and your waking dreams represent the same wish in your mind, so do the Real World and the Truth of Heaven join in the Will of the Divine. The dream of awakening is easily transferred to its reality. For this happy dream comes from your will joined with the Will of the Divine. And what this Will would have accomplished has always been.