Day 72
6 Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. God’s teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God’s teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God’s teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs.
There are three things in this paragraph that stand out to me. First that I am fully aware of the choices I make and their consequences. Second that my function is to be aware that I am dreaming. And third that only Oneness heals.
The one that really surprised me is that all choices are made consciously and with full awareness of the consequences. I have accepted that on some level I knew and understood what I was doing as I made choices, but I’m getting a different picture of this now. It seems that I am fully aware when I decide on a thing, and then I am hiding my culpability from myself. It makes even more sense now, to realize that I must take 100% responsibility for everything.
My function is to be the observer of the dream, to be aware it is a dream. I have been practicing this for awhile now and I can do it some, then I slip back into being fully involved in the dream. It seemed that this just happened, and yet, in light of what Jesus is telling me, I deliberately choose to give my full attention to the dream character, and to forget I am actually the dreamer.
When I go to sleep at night I have all kinds of crazy dreams that I seem to have no control over. And yet, I have had a number of instances in which my dreaming became lucid. I made a deliberate choice to change a dream right in the middle of it. I have also had times when I would be in a dream and then said, “This is a dream.”
I think this new “ability” to have some control of my dreams at night is a reflection of my willingness to accept responsibility for my dream state during the day, and this section of the Teacher’s Manual is encouraging me to accept full responsibility.
Those times when I am simply watching the show without involvement in the drama are pretty rare right now, but there are many times that I remind myself that this is what’s happening and take a deliberate step back. This is how I practice so that I will be willing to more often be the observer. Its kind of like putting my toe in the water to test the temperature, and then occasionally I decide to dive right in, only to surface again and climb back out.
I must be insane to want to lose myself in the story like this. It so often goes from mildly interesting to very upsetting, and eventually to nightmarish. It might be an interesting story to observe but its often painful to experience, and sometimes unbearably so. And yet, I have made a deliberate choice to be the character rather than to watch the character, and I make that choice again and again in every moment.
Something that has been happening for me is that a lot of old guilt stories have been coming up for my healing. They arise as painful memories into my awareness. Its very unpleasant and I want to push against them, and yet, I know that I asked for this. The confusion is extending the process longer than necessary and making it more painful than it needs to be.
I asked Holy Spirit for help, and He whispered into my heart that I should surrender to the process. I don’t know how to do that, but I am willing. Can I watch Myron suffer all the while knowing that it is an illusion of suffering by an illusory figure in the dream? Would it hurt less? Would it be done sooner? Is doing this from the point of view of the character keeping me in this purgatory of memory without the relief of healing?
When I think of surrender I equate it with a willingness to suffer more and so I push against it again, and yet I know that these errors must come up in order to be healed and this is actually my decision. Its like encouraging a splinter try to rise to the surface of my finger so it can be extracted. I want to stop squeezing because it hurts, and yet leaving it in is painful too.
What I really want is to see this from the viewpoint of the observer. This is my function. It is the way I remember that it is all illusion and that I am One with All That Is. Then I see there never was a splinter or a finger or pain and suffering. Oneness and sickness cannot coexist.
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