Lure of the Dream

Have you ever woken up in the morning in the middle of a dream and felt torn between two options: fully rising to start the day, or drifting back into warm, comforting sleep, attempting to reenter the dream?

A practical part of consciousness urges us to get up. But the lure of the dream is so tempting, particularly compared to the drudgery of the day.

Wake up or drift back into sleep.

Which do we choose? Most often, we want the sleep. We want to succumb to the dream's alluring pull. We crave the tender embrace of sleep, wrapping itself once more around consciousness. And choosing to slip back into slumber feels so welcoming.

"Just ten more minutes," we bargain with ourselves, "then I'll get up." The dream's siren call is nearly irresistible.

It's a strong appeal. Hard to resist. And it provides us with a wonderful analogy for what is referred to in spiritual practices as awakening.

Awakening is the knowing awareness of non-dualistic oneness. The pure essence of infinite love. What various religions refer to as heaven. Enlightenment. A state of perfect, blissful, unconditional peace.

Not a state to be achieved through heroic deeds or penitent atonement, but simply a choice in the mind to return awareness to the realm of unity.

Given this idyllic reality of awakened consciousness, why don't we readily and definitively choose it?

The lure of the dream.

The dream offers what is impossible within the domain of pure peace: distinction, uniqueness, identity, self-hood. A me. A sentient, conscious entity. And that is what makes the dream so enticing. And that is what makes awakening seem so disturbingly chilly: no me, no others, no specialness, no textured existence.

To separated selves who identify as a name and body, awakening holds little surface attraction. We discount concepts like "infinite love" and "unconditional peace." Pleasant sounding phrases, to be sure, but what of experience? Relationships? Communication?

What we fail to realize is that oneness is infinitely grander than any sense-based conception. As we read in A Course in Miracles, returning awareness to the right mind transports us to a realm "beyond all suffering, beyond all dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life."

Join me in Thursday's class where we'll explore these concepts and how we can transcend the lure of the dream into the waiting arms of eternal love. I look forward to seeing you then.