A Dream of No More Dreams

. . . on the utility of dream as a metaphor

In my study and practice of A Course in Miracles it is helpful to give attention to what the Course sometimes calls "the dream." I don't worry about defining or explaining it. I don't worry about undoing it. I just give attention.

This looks and feels like living an ordinary life, one in which I am always learning how to be a friend to all my brothers and sisters, by recognizing Christ in them, which is the symbol of God's perfect love in which all differences are undone.

. . . all perception can be given a new purpose by the One Whom God appointed Savior to the world. Follow His light, and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty . . . (W-pII.3.4:2-5).

Leo Hartong, a nonduality teacher whose work I admired, and whose ad-hoc sangha was profoundly helpful to me at a certain juncture in my study, also used "dream" language.

Awareness is Self-luminous and does not need to be aware of anything outside itself. In other words, Awareness is all there is. In the universal dream, just as in the dreams we have at night, there is the illusion of this and that, near and far, past and future, self and other, which creates the relative experiences of space and time, but space and time in and of themselves have no reality. The "mind-generated objects" in this universe are temporal occurrences and only have size and form relative to each other. Ultimately, however, there are no distinct objects or events separated by space and time, nor does the dream itself have a fixed size or time span. The dream and the dreamer are one-and-the-same Self-aware reality.

So "dream" is a helpful metaphor. But it is a metaphor. The question, then, is to what does the metaphor point? What connection - what insight or understanding - does it seek to convey?

For example, in "Some Keep the Sabbath," Emily Dickinson uses a bobolink and an orchard as metaphors for church.

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

Bobolinks and orchards are not literally a church. Dickinson uses them to make a deeper point - that God and Heaven cannot be mediated by human construction and religious convention. Rather, God and Heaven are implicit in experience itself. They are given; and they are revealed in and through attention.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.

When I say "give attention" I am extending an invitation (the one Dickinson, Hartong and others extended to me) to notice the very experience occurring in all its plenitude here and now. The sense of self, the sense of the other, pretty fall leaves, the smell of woodsmoke, what the lake sounds like rippling on the shore, the ache in your knee, the longing in your heart. Whatever.

It is an invitation - in the context of the dream - to give attention to the dream. Don’t deny the dream - look into it. When Emily Dickinson did this, she discovered that God was as close as a bobolink or an apple orchard. She discovered that religion, churches and preachers were a fear-based wall designed to keep God out.

Joan Tollifson, another non-dual teacher I admire, extends the utility of giving attention this way.

Seeking the extraordinary, we overlook the bare truth. You are here. You know it beyond any doubt. You don't need a mirror or an outside authority to confirm this fact. It is undeniable. But are you the character in the story of your life, or the inconceivable awareness through which all stories (and all perceptions) appear and disappear?

That is a very good question to answer.

Come back for a moment to Dickinson. Her poem - and its thesis - didn't surprise or shock you, did it? On the contrary, it probably affirmed something you already know. Of course we don't need churches to be close to God. Of course we don't need religion to know God.

The question then (which is essentially the same question Tollifson asks) is why didn't Dickinson's poem shock you? Why didn't you resist it?

What do you already know that Dickinson merely confirmed? Could it be that on some level you already know that you are - to borrow Hartong's phrase - "Self-aware reality?"

A Course in Miracles does not really rely on that kind of language but its foundation is (because really what other foundation is there) non-dual awareness.

Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same (T-18.II.5:13-15).

Compare this to a point made by Ramana Maharshi.

The world vision which appears in the waking state and the world vision which appears in the dream state are both the same. There is not even a trace of a difference. The dream state happens merely to prove the unreality of the world which we see in the waking state. This is one of the operations of God’s grace (The Living Words of the Bhagavan 232).

What happens when we fail to realize it's all a dream - up to and including the dreamer? Conversely, what does it mean to realize it's all a dream?

Ramana Maharshi again.

Every jiva is seeing his own separate world but a jnani does not see anything other than himself. This is the state of Truth (The Living Words of the Bhagavan 236).

To merge Ramana's language with that of A Course in Miracles: we are jivas living out a sentence of separation, but it is possible to be taught how to remember what we are in Truth, and thus to become jnanis who recognize in Creation their own Self, which is inseparable from Creation. We are “Self-aware reality.”

Hence the promise of A Course in Miracles: that our dream of separation and suffering will be replaced by a dream of joy in which we are happy and peace-filled, of service to the world because we finally have something to offer it - namely, forgiveness - and in that joyfulness we will remember at last what we are in Truth.

Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And from this dream the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son (T-27.VII.15:1-2).

Thank you, as always, for dreaming softly with me.

Love,
Sean