Saturday, November 17, 2007

Lesson 322:

I can give up but what was never real….

The ego simply always wants more, more of what doesn’t matter. But giving something up is absolutely out of the question. If I’m ever asking myself if not wanting to ‘give up’ some ‘thing’ is within right-minded thinking, the answer is unequivocally ‘no’.

Spirit has all because spirit is all. And all the escapades of the dream are irrelevant. Period. Completely without hierarchy, value, or relevance. ~Boy, how that irks the ego. Spirit is in a state of grace forever. So, whatever fantasizes the characters of the dream seem to need to dream~ I say, have at it… it matters not.

Dreaming is forgiven by design, always culminating with the Atonement which cancels it out entirely and love continues to flow, without incident. You, like I did for years, might be thinking, “that’s all fine and dandy in theory, and quite appealing to want to believe, but when one is addicted to imprisonment by the dream; feeling hostage to its dictates, rewards and punishments, sufficient enough so as to render this tidbit of critical learning, inaccessible, what is one to do?”

In a statement ~Decide for Miracles. The answer is established as God’s plan for salvation. And we merely allow for miracle-minded perception, which only reflects our natural state of unity and love, to replace otherness… Ok, now, I know it seems that this is a subtle viewpoint, barely visible from within the belief structure of victim-hood, at the mercy of the dream, but here it is: DO NOTHING.

What is called for is constant mind-watching; not just when things get uncomfortable, but a genuine single-minded, one-purpose watching, without judgment… a sort of lucid dream state, if you will. And what is being watched for, or better yet, trained or exercised, is the ability to recognize that what is happening is dreaming…Its content is beside the point~ a dream is a dream. ~ If it seems, in any way, that one is actually in a body, in a world with other bodies, one is dreaming.

The Holy Spirit is our ticket to this kind of lucid dreaming, which allows us to recognize that one indeed is dreaming and as such, can choose a different dream instead. Remember the part in chapter 28 of the text called Reversing Cause and Effect? “Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone else's dream. The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the dreamer is. It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you are still asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming. Do you wish for dreams of healing, or for dreams of death? A dream is like a memory in that it pictures what you wanted shown to you…. An empty storehouse, with an open door, holds all your shreds of memories and dreams. Yet if you are the dreamer, you perceive this much at least: that you have caused the dream, and can accept another dream as well. But for this change in content of the dream, it must be realized that it is you who dreamed the dreaming that you do not like. It is but an effect that have caused, and you would not be cause of this effect. In dreams of murder and attack are you the victim in a dying body slain. But in forgiving dreams is no one asked to be the victim and the sufferer. These are the happy dreams the miracle exchanges for your own. It does not ask you make another; only that you see you made the one you would exchange for this. (T-28.II.4.-5)

Everything is all we’ve got, so there’s no point in hoping or expecting something else to change, or do it for us... The Holy Spirit is indelibly the ‘real’ part of our mind~ Spirit; being what we are in truth. It is here our attention must be placed. We do not need a new script or better role, but rather vision~ seeing as the dreamer instead of as the dream. It’s so much about where attention resides. The ego fixes its attention for acquisition; towards objects and apparitions both inner and outer. It’s just what it does; what it focuses on. It might be deliberate about it at times, but mostly it’s not. Mostly, it is unaware attention. The ego relies on addictive, self-important problematic-oriented thought patterns to demand attentiveness… to create critical diversions so we won’t feel we have time to mind-watch… The course says we are much too tolerant of mind-wandering, and it also guides that, ”The question is not how you respond to the ego, but what you believe you are. Belief is an ego function, and as long as your origin is open to belief you are regarding it form an ego viewpoint… Belief that there is another way of perceiving is the loftiest idea of which ego thinking is capable…That is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is not the Self”…. So, quite simply, we’ve got our starting place….

Attention placed can also be withdrawn. This is how we dispel illusions. We look with the Holy Spirit at everything and see that it is false. We then withdraw attention from the false. With the Holy Spirit guiding our perception with vision, transfer of learning from situations becomes generalized and we begin to allow our attention to stabilize in Being, the space between thoughts’ object and its Being’s Source. Being becomes primary, and perception secondary. One can feel the ‘right-ness’ of attention, when Being pays attention, it feels like love… like the Self, which arranges a natural order that emerges from Being and simplifies everything to one choice. Today’s lesson reminds us that we can only give up what was never real in the first place, for who we are remains forever as God created. The sacrifice is only of illusions and when we are willing to hide nothing, but look without judgment, and through the miracle, at everything we made, it dissolves back into the nothingness from which it came... talk about perfect… ~

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