If you knew this was a dream
If everything you thought of as reality was a dream, would you want to wake up from it? If not, why? And if so, when?
One reason we may not want to wake up relates to the uncertainty of it all. If we assuredly knew this was truly a dream, well then, what is reality?
How much different would the real reality be from our current understanding? Would it be better? Perhaps much worse.
And most importantly, what would it mean for the things we deeply care about? People we love, glorious experiences we encountered, and, perhaps most poignantly, our sense of identity.
What happens to me in this “awakened” condition?
Even in our pain-filled lives that we currently consider as truth, there is still a me front-and-center. An identity. A self-hood. A focal point wherefrom the world radiates and oftentimes pierces.
Each of us wakes up with a sense of me from which our thoughts project. How will various people affect me today? How will my body respond? How are my loved ones doing? How might I be able to help others? What threats will I suffer?
It’s an unending stream of thoughts, each with an explicit or implicit “me” at its core.
Thus if we were to awaken to an experience different from this one, what happens to “me”?
That is why we are so resistant to not only waking up, but even contemplating the concept that there might actually be a different reality.
By denying even the remotest possibility, we remain safely cocooned within our bubble of me.
Yet what if there was another reality? And not only that, what if it were much, much better than anything we can imagine?
What if it included any sense of love and beauty and wonderment and joy we had ever experienced? And, what if it also excluded all concepts of pain and suffering and loss.
No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the [world] again. How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of [infinite peace]? (T-4.III.3)
If you knew all that to be true, how might you then feel about awakening?
That glorious state is the condition toward which all great spiritualities lead. Which we deny in every moment by choosing not to awaken.
As such, the most helpful question we can ask is not “if” but “when” we want to wake up.
This spiritual awakening has nothing to do with bodily death. When the body dies, we simply experience yet another incarnation of an illusory reality. Perhaps the contents of the cocoon might look a little different, but the experience is the same.
True awakening has nothing to do with the body. Rather, it's of the mind.
In each moment we are making a choice for a limiting, fictitious belief in bodies and the world, or for the limitless truth of perfect love.
This choice is in the mind. Thus learning how to return awareness to the mind so we can make a different choice is the best practice we can undertake.
Join me in Thursday's class where we'll explore the seeming reality of the dream and how we can learn to awaken in joy. I look forward to seeing you then.