V. The Happy Dream
1. Prepare you now for the undoing of what never was. If you already understood the difference between truth and illusion, the Atonement would have no meaning. The holy instant, the holy relationship, the Holy Spirit’s teaching, and all the means by which salvation is accomplished, would have no purpose. For they are all but aspects of the plan to change your dreams of fear to happy dreams, from which you waken easily to knowledge. Put yourself not in charge of this, for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success.
2. Never approach the holy instant after you have tried to remove all fear and hatred from your mind. That is its function. Never attempt to overlook your guilt before you ask the Holy Spirit’s help. That is His function. Your part is only to offer Him a little willingness to let Him remove all fear and hatred, and to be forgiven. On your little faith, joined with His understanding, He will build our part in the Atonement and make sure that you fulfill it easily. And with Him, you will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith and rising even to Heaven. Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone.
3. Through your holy relationship, reborn and blessed in every holy instant you do not arrange, thousands will rise to Heaven with you. Can you plan for this? Or could you prepare yourself for such a function? Yet it is possible because God wills it. Nor will He change His Mind about it. The means and purpose both belong to Him. You have accepted one; the other will be provided. A purpose such as this, without the means, is inconceivable. He will provide the means to anyone who shares His purpose.
4. Happy dreams come true, not because they are dreams, but only because they are happy. And so they must be loving. Their message is: “Thy Will be done,” and not, “I want it otherwise.” The alignment of means and purpose is an undertaking impossible for you to understand. You do not even realize you have accepted the Holy Spirit’s purpose as your own, and you would merely bring unholy means to its accomplishment. The little faith it needed to change the purpose is all that is required to receive the means and use them.
5. It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. Nor is your holy relationship a dream. All that remains of dreams within it is that it is still a special relationship. Yet it is very useful to the Holy Spirit, Who has a special function here. It will become the happy dream through which He can spread joy to thousands on thousands who believe that love is fear, not happiness. Let Him fulfill the function that He gave to your relationship by accepting it for you, and nothing will be wanting that would make of it what He would have it be.
6. When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by anything, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, in spite of fear, to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one that you would rather have. He will never fail in this. But forget not that your relationship is one, and so it must be that whatever threatens the peace of one is an equal threat to the other. The power of joining its blessing lies in the fact that it is now impossible for you or your brother to experience fear alone, or to deal with it alone. Never believe that this is necessary, or even possible. Yet just as this is impossible, so is it equally impossible that the holy instant come to either of you without the other. And it will come to both at the request of either.
7. Whoever is saner at the time the threat is perceived should remember how deep is his indebtedness to the other and how much gratitude is due him and be glad that he can pay his debt by bringing happiness to both. Let him remember this, and say:
I desire this holy instant for myself, that I may share it with my brother, whom I love. It is not possible that I can have it without him or he without me. Yet it is wholly possible for us to share it now. And so I choose this instant as the one to offer to the Holy Spirit that His blessing may descend on us and keep us both in peace.[1]
God’s Will for you and me is to be happy, to learn that there is no fear in love, to give us a relationship that is perfectly loving, joyful, and peaceful. When you and I remember God’s Love we will never be content with the substitutes for love which we find in this realm. Always disappointed in the substitute, doomed to failure, if we make the mistake and accept the substitute for love, we bring fear where no fear can abide.
The holy instant is our means to remember the perfect love that we have for one another in the realm that is forever. The holy instant delivers us from our fleshy differences. When we are delivered from our fleshy differences all that stands between our pure and divine love for one another disappears. We will no longer be intimidated, jealous, or otherwise defeated by the accomplishments, beauty, wealth, intelligence, or the way in which the light of the other outshines us. Getting beyond flesh, our vision is no longer skewed against our union. We will be so aware of our own glorious light that we would not dream of retreating to our own little corner to pet, delight, and hoard our light all to ourselves. But rather we join in and delight in our light together, becoming one, joining in the Great Rays in which we were created.
All desire for specialness is gone in the light of God. All desire for secrets and hidden agendas and ill motives go away in the light of that perfect love. When we are made one, my delight is your delight, and my holiness cannot exist without your holiness. All that we have gone through together in the dream of specialness is no longer there upon awakening. We learned all we had to learn about our desire to be the favorite one, the anointed one, the holier-than-the-other one. All thoughts of distinguishing ourselves, our relationship, our seeking to thwart the egoistic cravings of being-more-than in each other are gone.
In Heaven there is only the equality and mutuality of Sonship. There are no favorites. There are no hierarchies. There is no popularity and idolatry. There are no thousands of different versions of truth to come between us. No wars: no controversy we bask in peace. No lineages that boast our bloodlines nor trace our worth through DNA; we are freed from the chain of bondage to characteristics, diseases, or traits that trap us in ongoing cycles of death and despair. No longer are we helpless in the face of karmic curses and historical mistakes. We leave our female parts and our male parts where they originated, along with our ridiculous affectations based upon skin tone and motherland. We move beyond the past. We have learned all we need to learn of war, of opposition, of opposites. We are free now to be trustworthy creators extending only Love and Truth, done forever with any hint of falsehood and secrets, for we are transparent in the light of His Love.
All this freedom and liberty begin with the holy instant. This is our practice. This is what we do. We bring it all to the holy instant – the darkness, the fear, the shadows that plague all our flesh relationships, the past misdeeds that mar our happiness in ourselves and in each other. We bring to the holy instant all the ways in which we project our own mistakes and blame the other. We come before Holy Spirit with all the shadows that plague and pervert our love for one another. She did this to me. She did that. I love her but I also hate her. He failed me. He was such a liar and a cheat. They are hypocrites. We bring all that childhood trauma. All the ways in which people abused our bodies, touched us inappropriately, acted out karmic cycles upon our defenseless bits of flesh. We bring all our insecurity. All the ways in which we despise others for the better deals they got in life. We bring our hatred and jealousy toward other races, cultures, religions, and political idealism. We bring it all. We lay it down. We do not hide it. We do not provide it any cover. When we expose it to the light we do not want it anymore. When we do not want it anymore we are freed from all its sticky goop. It holds no fear.
Jesus says to never attempt to clean ourselves up. Do not try to bring holiness to flesh for this is backward and we will not only waste our time, driving ourselves mad inundating ourselves with thick lawbooks, taking ungodly measures, doling cruel punishments, needlessly prolonging the reign of guilt and terror.
Packed full of everlasting love, life, and laughter, the holy relationship is the promise of God. We are not to take this lightly for this is the way we return to God. We join with one another by taking each one our relationships and interactions to Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit will help us shine.
In your personal devotional practice today commit yourself to bringing at least one of your special relationships to the holy instant. Trust not your good intentions to do it at a more convenient time. The holy instant takes place now, while you are in the bathroom, while you are at the kitchen sink, while you are on your way to work, while you sit in your cell contemplating escape. The miracle is in the daily grind. Memorize the prayer that ends our section today and bring it to your practice, inserting the name of the special people, places, or events that loom large in your mind. Remove your ego from this relationship by simply bringing it to Holy Spirit and trusting in God to heal and restore and make happy.
Today during my devotional practice I inserted the name of a beloved family member. We had a falling out several years ago – she blamed me, I blamed her. And we have not spoken since. Memories of past hurts, lies, accusations, and disappointments flood my mind at times and make her despicable to me. I remember all the ways in which I failed her as well. The hurt I caused, the lies I told, the accusations I made, the ways in which I chose to judge and condemn rather than uphold her in love and appreciation. And so I take this relationship to Holy Spirit. I take all the shadows to Him. I share it with you so you too can have the courage to share your holy instants with others, to show them how simple it is, what we say, how we remove the ego and all its arrogance and self-pity. We do not talk in riddles. We do not try to make ourselves look good. We do not let pride deny our hurt and pain, the sense of loneliness and despair we endure the one without the other. We bring it all to Him. For there is no heaven without her in it; there is no happy dream in which she does not play a part!
[1] A Course in Miracles. Chapter 18 The passing of the dream. V. The happy dream. Foundation for Inner Peace, Second Edition (1992).
For daily 2021 Workbook lessons visit www.i-choose-love.com courtesy of Linda R.
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