CoolDreamThanks

Hmm, so it does appear that knowing you are dreaming, beyond a doubt, is a core pillar of awakening, but it doesn't bring full awakening, it's just a stepping-stone, albeit a profound and healing one. I think being focused too much on this insight can be disadvantageous if we consider that the next step is to fully transcend thought altogether. Experientially, whilst seeing it all as your dream is indeed joyful, that joy is rather surface level and does not permit alot of peace into awareness. The peace of God comes not from thoughts, but from going beyond them to the place of Stillness. I think at first it will be very captivating to constantly think that this is a dream, because it's such a novel and wonderful insight. Then, there might come an awareness that this is a dead-end in a sense, I can't awaken by only thinking that I am dreaming, no. That's why the next step is the transcendence of symbols. You still keep the insight as a fundamental understanding of what's happening here, but you also let it fall away into the background, making your primary practice being focused on formlessness, which has infinite depth and is even more healing than the realization of dreaming. In my experience, no matter what concept - God-realization, or anything else, is limited in it's effects on happiness and awakening. Yes they bring alot of healing if truly and deeply integrated into the psyche, but there is nothing more profound, nothing more healing and nothing else which has truly brought me multiple enlightenment experiences than letting go of all concepts and spending days in Silence. Jesus would call this resting in the embrace of Spirit, but that's still a metaphor, to be precise, it's resting in your True Self. There's only you, The One.

"Waking is long and a dream short; other than this there is no difference" "The present waking state is no more than a dream" -Ramana Maharshi _______ The Guru does not need to teach others Q: People often say that a mukta purusha should go out and preach his message to the people. They argue, how can anyone be a mukta so long as there is misery by his side? RM: "True. But who is a mukta? Does he see misery beside him? They want to determine the state of a mukta without themselves realising the state. From the standpoint of the mukta their contention amounts to this: a man dreams a dream in which he finds several persons. On waking up, he asks, ‘Have the dream individuals also wakened?’ It is ridiculous." Talks 498 - Ramana Maharshi _____________ “Everything that you see is nothing but a dream. There are two kinds of dreams: the dream of waking and the dream while sleeping.” ~ Anandamayi Ma _______

You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. ²No other cause it has, nor ever will. - Jesus

From the first time in my life when I heard this idea of life being a dream, I deeply desired that this would be the case. I had doubts, of course, but I was very, very hopeful that this would turn out to be true! It's not a coincidence that my main teacher for many years was Leo Gura, a brave, bold teacher of Truth, as the name suggests. Other teachers dance around the topic, or don't even know the ultimate truth; I won't point fingers (Ruper Spira ), but Leo bites into it head-on, and I love it! At that point in my life, he was the perfect teacher I created for myself - so clear, epistemically precise, and bold. I also loved that one of the wisest teachers, widely accepted and revered, Ramana Maharshi, also proclaimed that life is exactly like dreams at night. You could call one experience dream 1 and another, the waking life, dream 2, he said. Then I also found that Anandamayi Ma as well teaches that life is a dream. Nisragadata too. Papaji as well. Mooji, too, of course. Even Buddha is called Buddha because he realized that he is dreaming. Then you get into gnosticism and see that they also figured out that all this is unreal, merely a dream. Finally, you find one metaphysical masterpiece that has to be the truth, and if it contradicts other teachings, it would be a doozy, but it doesn't. It clearly states, in many clear passages, that you are dreaming, you are making all of these people up in your hallucination, you merely shift from one dream at night to another during the day, you are the dreamer of the world of dreams, you are the One Mind! And then you realize that all of these teachers are coming from your own mind, from that part of your mind that remembers who you are and wants to awaken. Of course, I am one of the handful in existence who know this, because there is no one else for whom to realize this! Wowzers! This insight, this profound realization, continues to amaze me; it always brings so much joy, especially since it is now penetrating my psyche on a deeper and deeper level every year.

³What if you recognized this world is an hallucination? ⁴What if you really understood you made it up? ⁵What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? ⁶Could you have faith in what you see, if you accepted this? ⁷And would you see it? 8. Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. ²This is the healing and the remedy. ³Believe them not and they are gone. ⁴And all you need to do is recognize that you did this. ⁵ (ACIM, T-20.VIII.7:1–8:5)

You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality. ²Is it your decision to do so? ³You recognize from your own experience that what you see in dreams you think is real while you are asleep. ⁴Yet the instant you waken you realize that everything that seemed to happen in the dream did not happen at all. ⁵You do not think this strange, even though all the laws of what you awaken to were violated while you slept. ⁶Is it not possible that you merely shifted from one dream to another, without really waking? (ACIM, T-10.I.2:1-6) __________ The past few days, when I get triggered or judgmental, I remember that I am dreaming that person, I am his Creator, and immediately I fall in love with him and see him in a positive light, more so as my companion, my child, than as someone I reject. Been feeling very joyful living like this. ______ Dreams show you that you have the power to make a world as you would have it be, and that because you want it you see it. ²And while you see it you do not doubt that it is real. ³Yet here is a world, clearly within your mind, that seems to be outside. ⁴You do not respond to it as though you made it, nor do you realize that the emotions the dream produces must come from you. ⁵It is the figures in the dream and what they do that seem to make the dream. ⁶You do not realize that you are making them act out for you, for if you did the guilt would not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone. ⁷In dreams these features are not obscure. ⁸You seem to waken, and the dream is gone. ⁹Yet what you fail to recognize is that what caused the dream has not gone with it. ¹⁰Your wish to make another world that is not real remains with you. ¹¹And what you seem to waken to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. ¹²All your time is spent in dreaming. ¹³Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. ¹⁴Their content is the same. ¹⁵They are your protest against reality, and your fixed and insane idea that you can change it. ¹⁶In your waking dreams, the special relationship has a special place. ¹⁷It is the means by which you try to make your sleeping dreams come true. ¹⁸From this, you do not waken. ¹⁹The special relationship is your determination to keep your hold on unreality, and to prevent yourself from waking. ²⁰And while you see more value in sleeping than in waking, you will not let go of it. (ACIM, T-18.II.5:1-20)

Reading reddit/r/spirituality, it seems like so many people are suffering, confused, and trapped. Began to feel a bit heavy. Thought - perhaps I should respond to some of them, trying to help? And then I remembered... Remembered that that's not happening, it's my dream, they don't exist. A gentle smile naturally comes upon my face. Seriousness fades; only lightness of being remains. Remembering that I am dreaming heals pretty much everything, it makes life so joyful to live, nothing is serious, not a single issue people complain about matters, because nothing is happening outside of my bubble of consciousness - pure happiness <3

From: Detailed Answers to Student-Generated Questions on the Theory and Practice of A Course in Miracles Q&A Supervised and Edited by Kenneth Wapnick Q #41: The events, activities, and relationships of our “waking dream” comprise our classroom and are the vehicles for learning our lesson of forgiveness. Is there any particular significance or value of our “sleeping dreams” in the process of learning forgiveness and should our response to these images be any different from our response to our “waking dream” classroom? A: It is the same mind that is dreaming both our waking and sleeping dreams. And it is one of the ego’s many tricks to try to convince us that there is a real difference between the two so that we believe we are awake when we are really still asleep, just having a different form of the same dream of separation. One of the more important insights our sleeping dreams offer us upon our shifting to a seeming waking state is the realization that our mind has the power to make up a world in dreams that seems very real while we are experiencing it, a world made up solely to meet our own personal needs. Jesus elaborates on this aspect of our sleeping dreams in a very clear passage: “Does not a world that seems quite real arise in dreams? ... And while you see it you do not doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world, clearly within your mind, that seems to be outside. You do not respond to it as though you made it, nor do you realize that the emotions the dream produces must come from you ... You seem to waken, and the dream is gone. Yet what you fail to recognize is that what caused the dream has not gone with it. Your wish to make another world that is not real remains with you. And what you seem to waken to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same. They are your protest against reality, and your fixed and insane idea that you can change it” (T-18.II.1:1; 5:2- 4,8-15). In our sleeping dreams, we have the same choice of teachers that we have when we are “awake” and we may find over time that we can choose forgiveness while we sleep, recognizing that our judgments within the dream are not justified. We may even become a lucid dreamer, becoming aware, even as we are dreaming, that our sleeping dream is an invention of our own mind, presaging the awareness that will eventually come to us about our waking dreams. And our sleeping dreams also afford us the opportunity to understand the real meaning of forgiveness that Jesus is attempting to lead us towards, when we realize, upon awakening, that the source of any upset we experience in our sleeping dreams has nothing to do with what anyone else is doing to us. Our upset reflects nothing more than a decision in our own mind to be upset and then to attribute that loss of peace to a cause that seems to be outside of ourselves. The awareness that this is what we are also doing in our waking dreams is the foundation for the process of forgiveness as Jesus presents it to us in the Course: “I am never upset for the reason I think .” “ I am upset because I see something that is not there.” (W-pI.5,6). “Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred” (W-pII.1.1:1). When we can generalize this recognition from our sleeping dreams to our waking dreams, we will be well on the way to awakening from all of our dreams of separation. ________________ It's so difficult to fully, totally, without doubt accept this as true, yet it is the only way true forgiveness and healing are possible. I notice that whenever I make the dream real, even a little bit, I begin to spiral into guilt and sin. I remember believing this to be true, then talking to one teacher who, it appeared to me, said that there are other dreamers. The first thing that happened was guilt and fear and sin rushed into my mind, bringing back the pain from the past that would have remained healed had I not fallen back into the belief that this is real and not a dream, or that there are many dreamers.

Beginning to see how I'm indeed either projecting or extending, being hateful or loving. Projection strengthens the separated, egoic state, and extension strengthens the united, spiritual side.

Very A Course in Miracle-y

Was wondering if kindness has any impact on awakening. Ken proposes that when we are kind, even though it's an illusory action in an illusory world, we are still making a step towards light, thus aiding ourselves in awakening, becoming less fearful, and more able to accept God's Love. Sounds sensible.

It also seems that God favours kind and humble people. I think it’s a law of existence — everyone always wants the good and the kind and the gentle to win. Not sure if it’s just good karma, or something more, probably something more, but includes karma. Was thinking that something can be true, but if you say it with the underlying principle being that truth is most important, yet that something is unkind, then you are actually further away from God, who is the ultimate truth, than if you looked at that scenario with merciful and kind eyes. For example : sluts are bad and disgusting creatures - very true. Merciful: that’s the only way they can get love from others, it’s their call for love — even more true.?

However, it doesn’t mean one should quit his job trusting spirit will provide. The job you have is the efortless blessing. Almost made that mistake. Ups. Well, actually not almost, I did.

Mooji’s “You will kiss alot of frogs looking for a prince” idea is the same concept applied to relationships, but should he generalized to all, even the spiritual life. Trying to earn money will be hell. Or you can Trust and you will get all you need, nothing less. A deeep surrender and trust. Also brings true happiness to the mind, beautiful.

It’s probably not so much the need for more as a deep-rooted belief which says life is something I have to take care of and manage. In turn, Jesus and all other wise ones teach to Trust in God and surrender to life, knowing that Spirit is arranging it all for my awakening. Ahhhh freedom..