Co-Creating Happy Dreams

Notes on control, relationship and happiness

Control is an Illusion

The suggestion is that control is an illusion. It's like the moon, right? The moon rises in the east, floats through the sky and then sets in the west. But that's an illusion - the moon doesn't move, the earth rotates, creating an appearance of lunar movement.

When we learn that the earth, not the moon, is moving - that the moon's movement is an illusion - what changes? Moonlight doesn't change. The phases of the moon don't change. It even still seems like the moon is the moving object.

All that really changes is that we know our perception is illusory. There is an interior shift in the direction of truth.

When we realize that control is an illusion, the "interior shift in the direction of truth" points us toward participation and relationship. It facilitates co-creation of a happy dream.

Participation

Participation means living our lives with a kind of cheerful indifference to what is real and what is not. Since love is the most helpful response in both cases - because it is the most helpful response in all cases - who cares? Metaphysics are a distraction in the end. Moonlight is moonlight. Let your yes mean yes.

Participation is hard when we think we are in charge, but when we realize we are not it becomes easy and natural.

A Course in Miracles teaches us that we did not create ourselves (T-1.V.1:8). Whatever is happening, we are not the source. Believing that we can create ourselves - and that the direction of our creation is up to us - is a fundamental confusion underlying separation (T-2.I.1:12).

Superficially, A Course in Miracles trades in familiar pop idioms of "change the thought" or "the power of positive thinking." But a turtle or two down, it is far more radical and thus far more disruptive to "the sleep of forgetfulness" (T-16.VII.12:4). The course suggests that every thought of which we are aware is not a real thought (e.g., W-pI.10.1:2).

There is no relationship between what is real and what you think is real. Nothing that you think are your real thoughts resemble your real thoughts in any respect. Nothing that you think you see bears any resemblance to what vision will show you (W-pI.45.1:3-5).

In experience, this sugars out as the difference between planning a party and just showing up at a party. Planning a party takes time, energy and effort. Did invitations go out? Can the caterer do gluten-free? Do we need a rain date? Et cetera. But attending means just showing up.

That's not a perfect metaphor! But it does somewhat capture ACIM's emphasis that its goal for us - in these bodies in this world - is peace, relaxation and freedom from worry (W-pI.11.3:4).

We're at the party. We're not hosting the party.

Relationship

If life is basically a get-together for which we are not personally responsible, then what do we do at it? What is the party for?

One answer is: we are here to relate with our brothers and sisters (broadly defined) on terms and conditions set by the host.

But the host is very generous! If we want to lean into small talk, Dad jokes and the weather, okay. If we want to organize into activist groups to address economic inequity or white fragility, great. You want to knit over tea? There's a place for you. Quiet space for meditators? Right over there. You want to dance all night to surf rock? There isn't even a cover charge.

The question of what is the party for is the same as what are youfor? And you are here - because you were created by - Love Itself. And all Love Itself does is give itself away, in whatever form brings forth the most happiness.

The whole glory and perfect joy that is the Kingdom lies in you to give. Do you not want to give it (T-7.V.9:10-11)?

The suggestion is that our "role" at the party - what the party is for because it's what you and I are for - is helping our brothers and sisters either find their way to the party or find a way to party.

Some people are being intentionally excluded. Some people are lost. Some people don't know anyone and are afraid they won't fit in. Some people want to dance or meditate or organize but are afraid to be laughed at or otherwise rejected.

Look around, right? It's not a mystery who needs our help. It's not even a mystery what form the help should take.

So a big thing we can do at this party - which is the Kingdom of God presently recognized - is ensure that everyone is here and having a good time. In truth, we are uniquely suited to this work of welcome and thanksgiving. And nobody but us can do it.

Co-Creating Happy Dreams

So, in a sense, we are co-hosts, right? But "party" is just an analogy, and all analogies are imperfect. On the other hand, this one does point at something we can experience and know and thus share.

Being is . . . a state in which the mind is in communication with everything that is real. To whatever extent you permit this state to be curtailed you are limiting your sense of your own reality, which becomes total only by recognizing all reality in the glorious context of its real relationship to you. This is your reality. Do not desecrate it or recoil from it. It is your real home, your real temple and your real Self (T-4.VII.4:3, 5-8).

Again, gently, the suggestion is that the ACIM understanding of being that is expressed here is kin to Nisargadatta's sense (his own analogy for awakening) of the "deep blue state."

The state of the jnani, the highest state, has transcended the beingness, but the beingness is still there, so together with the beingness is the Absolute – the deep blue, benign state, without eyes.

Knowledge takes rest in that deep blue, quiet, peaceful, benign shade. When the shade is shifted aside, then he sees the various manifestations in the form of universes and worlds. But when the shade is there, it is the deep, dark blue state, fully relaxed (Prior to Consciousness 11).

In experience - in the formal aspect of being - this state reflects the realization that there are not many relationships - e.g., Buddha with a Bo tree, Jesus with a cross, Tara Singh with A Course in Miracles, and Sean with Tara Singh, Jesus Christ and the Buddha - but only one relationship. This is it! This this.

The perception of many relationships is an error, an illusion along the same lines as the illusion of control, and is undone in the same way to the same effect.

What is one cannot be perceived as separate . . . At the altar of God, the holy perception of God’s Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the spirit of God’s Son shines in the Mind of the Father and becomes one with it. Very gently does God shine upon Himself, loving the extension of Himself that is His Son (T-12.VI.7:1-3).

We begin to perceive the one relationship everywhere. No person, no creature, no blade of grass or grain of sand, no moon or star is excluded from it. The relationship, once in awareness, calls forth a way of being that has as its singular goal the happiness of all creation.

How it Works

I made a wrong turn with this material and got lost for many years. The wrong turn was, I thought that understanding and application were the same thing. I thought saying "we are here to co-create a happy dream" was tantamount to doing it.

This is a common error! It arises from a deeper mistake which Tara Singh pointed out to me on literally the first evening I read him - the lovelessness of I get it and you don't (Nothing Real can be Threatened 12).

I didn't want to see that I was the one crying out for love and forgiveness. I wanted to skip that part. I was too proud to be helped.

But "co-creation" only works when we realize that we are the ones who need help. If we exclude ourselves from the list of those who need saving, we're confused. We are the outsider looking in, the wallflower, the difficult one, the sinner. We are the one in need of the forgiveness.

Our function is to bring love to the cry for love, but in order for this to really and truly work, we have to be in touch with our own cry. It has to come from a real place of willingness which means coming face to face with despair and hopelessness and realizing they are merely effects of an interpretation that is easily corrected.

I wish it were different because it doesn't have to be so hard! That's one of the things we learn. It's like you're banging your head on a brick wall and wondering why you have a headache. Maybe aspirin or another painkiller, a different pillow, yoga or a new chiropractor . . .

. . . and all along you can just stop banging your head any old time you want.

Awakening is a human experience. It's not supernatural and it's not about being an expert. It's not rare but ordinary - so ordinary we miss it. If you open the windows, light comes in. If you walk steadily north, you'll reach the pole. What else could saying yes to Love Itself possibly mean?

Go upstream far enough - in the psyche, the soul, the mind, the cosmos - and you will reach the source that is not you and yet which, paradoxically, does not exist without you. As the course says, a parent is made a parent by their children (T-28.II.1:2). But Creation isn’t merely a two-way street. It's more like a fair, a festival, an open-air market, a vast bazaar in which our only function is to make welcome everybody else.

The suggestion is, say yes to the party. Say yes to the happy dream. Let it come forth; let it be born again in you. Bring your imperfect messy self and have fun. Ask for help and, when appropriate, offer help. Remember that happiness is our shared inheritance but to claim it we have to remember what we are. We have to remember whose Name we share.

The Name of God’s Son is one, and you are enjoined to do the works of love because we share this Oneness. Our minds are whole because they are one (T-8.IX.7:3-4).

In a sense it's goofy to say I'm glad you're here. But in another sense, it's the truth, and so it's worth bearing witness. I'm glad you're here; I'm grateful for our connection; I’m grateful for the chance to begin again with you. Apart we are nothing but together we are healed healers, perceiving nothing in one another that we do not share (T-7.V.4:3), and thus remembering that "sacrifice is nowhere and love is everywhere" (T-15.XI.7:5).

So thank you for being here, and sharing with me. Without you, it wouldn't mean a thing.

~ Sean