the CONSCIOUSNESS series#8

your dream world:
clue to your awakening

Ok. We’re now drawing near to the end of the consciousness series, the end of the road.

We talked about entering the world of form in order to experience this reality, and then forgetting it did so. I also said you left clues all around to help you awake from it.

Well, the biggest clue of all is the dream world.

It is an analogue of the waking one. People miss this because they go looking for meaning, or symbols, or something in it. But the dream world is not like that at all.

The dream world is the ultimate form of subjective reality. Everything in it is your own making. All the characters of your dream, including the dream landscape, are an emanation of your mind or a projection of yourself.

So then, where is the self in the dream?

Just think.

You’re strolling along Malibu beach with a lover of twenty years past, or you’re running through a dark forest from a slimy green creature.

That’s you, isn’t it?

Except it can’t be.

Because at this moment you’re in bed nowhere near Malibu, and there is no green slimy creature.

So you see the one you think of as ‘you’ in the dream is itself another projection!

We dream in images

When you think about someone, however vividly you picture them in your mind you know it’s not really them. When you look at a photograph or film of someone, while an exact facsimile, you’re also aware that this is not the actual person but an image captured on celluloid. In the same way we saw people and places in dreams are just projections of your mind. Likewise with the people in your life, the people you meet and see every day, they’re not actually real in the way you see them. Yes they’re real, but what you encounter is in fact a representation of a higher reality which they are. As are you. Your life is like a dream writ large.

Everyone exists in your life for a reason. But you don’t create them. To believe this is to give one of the characters in the dream – you – all the power, and to forget this character, along with all the others, is but a representation of a higher reality still. To say you create them is to make your dreams real. They are emanations of the Source (as are you), streams of pure love if you like.

Everyone exists in your life for a purpose. You may be in their world, or you may not. It doesn’t matter. If you have a need for a particular teacher in your life you will draw that person in. Likewise with a lover. Or indeed an enemy. If you hold a lot of anger around your heart you will create a response to that, a perfect fit, and that may be in the form of an enemy or singular misfortune.

So be careful of the projections you make, they are reflected back at you. Treat everyone you meet as though they were your teacher.

Yes, reality it is a product of mind. Yes, there is no outside. But if you think it’s puny, ego you that’s doing it all, you’re wrong. It is a higher you, immortal, dreaming the world into existence with the Great Mind of God. Hence the pitfalls of pure subjectivity.

Death appears real in the dream. And it feels as if the monster can kill you. But this is a fabrication of your mind and the real you is elsewhere (in your bed!) perfectly safe. And likewise in the larger dream, death appears real. And you fail to realise that what you fear is but a projection of your mind.

“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. 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. It is the figures in the dream and what they do that seem to make the dream. You 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.” (ACIM.)

Without fear the ego-mind will lose all power over you.

Change your perspective and the dream will change

I talk about the dream world in detail here. In it we experience visual, auditory and tactile sensation.

The nightmare’s totally real and terrifying when you’re in it. But upon waking its terror loses its potency and is soon forgotten. Come mid-morning and you’re chatting with colleagues around the water cooler you’re hard pressed to recall the details. It is fast disappearing and its going causes you no grief.

So it is with all you see around you.

So you can see your waking reality is a lot like a false awakening in a dream. We think we’re awake and moving around but all the time we’re still asleep. The Great Awakening is coming to realise this. It is a knowing that what we do every day is just another dream.

“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 awaken 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.” (ACIM.)

In very simple terms this is all awakening is. It’s really a call to Get Real.

NEXT

We conclude the consciousness series.

The Consciousness Series:

What is Awakening?

In the lair of the Ego-Mind.

The Illusionist.

Knowledge.

Subjective and Objective Reality.

Belief and Expectation.

What do you have to sacrifice to be spiritual?

Remember Love.