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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

A Course In Miracles

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Editor’s note: Just prior to page 600 in the Course’s “Text,” we’re introduced to new teaching-metaphors of the “dreamer” and the “dream.” These images tie together, very well, many of the earlier presented concepts of the Course.

So much could be said here, but I will be able to offer only a brief outline. However, allow me to recommend a short book, quite readable, with large print, that will aid us greatly in understanding the Course’s imagery of the “dreamer” and the “dream.”

Like a dream of punishment, in which the dreamer is unconscious of what brought on the attack against himself, he sees himself attacked unjustly and by something not himself.

He is the victim of this “something else,” a thing outside himself…

Now you are being shown you can escape [this illusion-dream]. All that is needed is you look upon the problem as it is, and not the way that you have set it up…

The reasoning by which the world is made … is simply this: “You are the cause of what I do. Your presence justifies my wrath…”

it looks as if the world were hurting you

This is the only picture you can see

Awaken and forget all thoughts of death

A brother separated from yourself [is what] you dream … Here is the cause of suffering

You are the dreamer of the world of dreams

Accept the dream [God] gave instead of yours. It is not difficult to change a dream when once the dreamer has been recognized. Rest in the Holy Spirit, and all His gentle dreams to take the place of those you dreamed in terror and in fear of death

Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence

The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world … it acts as if it were a person to be seen … It takes central place in every dream … Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule

The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to prove it is autonomous and real… [the body is] the “hero” of the dream

you [the false self] are not the dreamer but the dream

It is a joke [within the dream] to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, [because eternity] means there is no time

The world [of the dream] demonstrates an ancient truth: you will believe that others do to you exactly what you think you did to them … you want the guilt to rest on them…

You judge effects, but [the Holy Spirit] has judged their cause

The secret of salvation is but this: that you are doing this unto yourself. No matter what the form of the attack, this still is true... For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that you were dreaming. Let them 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 learned will set you free from suffering.

You’re in bed sleeping, having a dream. It could be about anything. Let’s say you see yourself working as a teacher, interacting with students.

Who’s the dreamer?

Well, you are. But, who is this “you”? – the teacher which you perceive as yourself within the dream? or the background witnessing presence that sees you – yourself – as a teacher?

Both of these are aspects of “you.”

But wait. What about the students? You might say, these are “not me.”

In one sense, we see the logic of this, but, from another view, we have to ask, “Do these students have an existence apart from this dream?”

No, of course not. They exist only within the dream.

And who created the dream? “You” did. The superintending witnessing presence created the dream. But this overarching entity also created “you” as the teacher. It did the same for the students.

And so, we see a link between all persons in the dream. They’re all connected. They all represent aspects of the witnessing presence.

The Course is telling us that bodies, whether in this world or the next, derive existence from a witnessing background presence, a Universal Consciousness.

All elements of creation, as the scripture uses the phrase, “live and move and have their being” within this Great Spirit.

The essential essence of what we are – each of us, all of us – in reality is a manifestation of Universal Consciousness. This Great Spirit is holy, perfect, unmarred, forever pristine. And therefore, at the level of the “deep inside,” so are we.

This is why the Course, time and again, so very often, will belabor the point that we – in our truest essences – have never sinned, are perfect, whole, and complete. It is only the “false self,” the ego, which takes the heat. Further, the Course repeats, and repeats again, that we are all connected, all part of “the Sonship.” It goes so far as to say that God has only one Son! It entertains this artifice to emphasize that we all find our life-force rooted in The One Great Spirit.

Editor’s note: The Course speaks of the pain that the unenlightened cause each other. The pain is real, and will not necessarily go away even if we perceive that this world is a “dream.” But there are different kinds of pain. As the Course points out, pain caused by misperceiving others as “separate” from ourselves will be alleviated. Even so, attack from insane ones is still unpleasant, and that part we’ll have to endure while on the “sorrowful planet.” The Course is not unmindful of this calamity as it states, "The unjust vengeance that you suffer now belongs to [you, but] ... you are set free."

However, almost everyone here is walking around in a dream-world; but they don’t know that. They think that the “teacher” and the “students,” as strictly separate entities, are all there is; but these do not reflect who we truly are, and will change over time and in other worlds.

But our true selves, derivatives of the Great Spirit, never change. Our bodies change all the time. We might be 70 and look with dismay at the disintegration of the outward form, but the essential self feels the same, knows who it is, just as it did when it was 17. This is the eternal part of us, and it's not subject to wear-and-tear.

Lucid dreaming happens when we’re in a dream and we know we’re in a dream. And lucid living is similar and what we need. As we make our way through this difficult experience on planet Earth, we need to realize that there’s a lot more going on here than we’ve known. If we have eyes to see, we’ll perceive ourselves, with awareness, as operating within a dream.