Awaken from the Dream

Based on the teachings of
A Course in Miracles – Original Edition
published by COURSE IN MIRACLES SOCIETY

What a dream-like quality these recent days have had. It feels as if we are dreaming. And we must be! How else could this be so? It has to be a dream. And we’re going to wake up and then everything will go back to normal. Right?

And yet, in the next moment we realize that the world is still changed, and that it may stay changed forever.

Now it seems like we are awake, and it is real and yet everything is different. There is a sense of foreboding that encompasses everything. There is a sense that things are out of place and out of sync and nothing makes sense anymore, as if it did before. It’s as if someone took the playing board and threw it up in the air and now all the pieces are scattered. How will we put them back together? And can we?

And yet there is also a sense of Awareness and Presence and Aliveness that somehow feels familiar. Perhaps we remember having experienced all of these before, even though they didn’t last for long. Eventually, they dissolved, and everything went back to how it was before; but that’s not happening this time. This time is different.

This time the Awareness and Presence and Aliveness aren’t fading away and there is something else that is astonishing. We are not alone in our experience. The whole world has joined us.

Over the last decade the world has been united through electronic communication as never before and for the first time we, as a species, are experiencing a global event that impacts every one of us, with no exceptions, all at the same time.

The global event, of course, is the deadly and contagious virus that has reached into every facet of life for all the billions of people on our planet and has changed everything.

We seem to be awake now and yet it is still a dream. In A Course in Miracles we learn that we are awake within a dream of separation in which we all play a part. It teaches us that we are all waking up together to the Reality of our Oneness and to our Eternal nature and immortality.

“…your banishment is not of God and therefore does not exist. You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality. Is it your will to do so? ACIM OE T.9.65

What is our will? So many of us have indeed responded to this viral threat as if, somehow, we were being called to once again make a choice. It is in these times of deep turmoil that everything peripheral and non-essential slips away. Everything trivial falls away and all that remains is a stark decision—- to choose Love or fear.

Initially, the fear may have been so overwhelming that many of us may have faltered as we searched for some relief. As students of A Course in Miracles we may have finally recalled that we have been given so much incredible Guidance to be used in all situations, especially where there is lack of love.

And so, we recall this Guidance that is simple and yet the resulting peace is so complete and total. With these words, our Soul is quieted and our strength returns:

Know first that this is fear.
Fear arises from lack of love.
The only remedy for lack of love is perfect love.
Perfect love is the Atonement. ACIM OE T.2.83-85

What has been so inspiring to witness, during this Pandemic, is how many people have truly made this choice for Love and then have given away the gifts they have received.

We witness as one man creates a YouTube Channel with “Some Good News – SGN” filled with inspiring video stories of people coming together to support one another, whether it’s a ballet troupe weaving together a choreographed production, each in their own homes yet each joining in the movement and the music; or a community in a locked-down city, spending the evening on their window sills and porches toasting each other and singing together; or hundreds of thousands of parishioners joining in a rosary, each in their own homes, yet joining with one voice.

The strength and power in realizing our One Self has become palpable.

  I am One Self, united with my Creator,
 At one with every aspect of creation,
 And limitless in power and in peace. ACIM OE Lesson 95

Now, in this Holy Instant, our true faith enters. We may have, in the past and during most of our lives, put all of our faith in what our limited minds have told us; and we may have put our faith in what mankind has been listening to for centuries. Thus, the journey has been a perpetuation of the same illusions, the same dissatisfactions, and the same heartaches.

Today, we have reached a turning point.

The undeniable call to choose love has gone out in these stark times of loss. Can you feel it? It’s a Call sent to every one of us with no one excluded.

“I cannot choose for you, but I can help you make your own right choice. ‘Many are called, but few are chosen’ should read, ‘All are called, but few choose to listen. Therefore, they do not choose right.’ The ‘chosen ones’ are merely those who choose right sooner. This is the real meaning of the celestial speed-up.” ACIM OE T.3.49

Perhaps we are getting that chance now, in this Pandemic, to choose right sooner.

Now we are realizing that every Holy Instant gives us a chance to choose again. It is a call to shift our awareness from the unreal [limitation and fear] toward the Real [Unlimited Creativity and Love] and it is this very shift that is the Miracle.

Of course, we can resist the call to awaken to the New and thus fall victim to what we fear; but when we do this, we will always feel exhausted, depressed, and defeated.

We have all been called to choose Love as our Guide, and yet, we do not have to do this alone. We have help. How tender and loving are Elder Brother’s words as He whispers in our hearts:

“In peace we will continue in His way and trust all things to Him. In confidence we wait His answers, as we ask His will in everything we do. He loves God’s Son as we would love him, and He teaches us how to behold him through His eyes and love him as He does. You do not walk alone. God’s angels hover close and all about. His Love surrounds you, and of this be sure: that I will never leave you comfortless.” ACIM OE Workbook Epilogue par 6

And so, it is.

======================

*Reverend Reja Joy Green is one of the founding members of the Course in Miracles Society [CIMS] publishers of A Course in Miracles – Original Edition; She is the CIMS webmaster, produces & distributes the Daily Lesson & Text mailing, and facilitates the Course in Miracles study group in Omaha, NE Rev Reja Joy was ordained by Community Miracles Center and was a presenter, with her husband Chris, at the 2018 Annual ACIM International Conference in San Francisco.

As a registered Yoga Instructor, Rev. Reja Joy teaches Yoga from the perspective of A Course in Miracles. She also initiated a Daily Conference Call Study Group that began in 2013 and hosts several social media groups for those who wish to share this journey.

Course in Miracles Society (CIMS) is an international group of Course students and teachers organized to discover, authenticate, and propagate the divine teachings of A Course in Miracles. As students, we seek to increase our knowledge of Jesus’ words and to deepen our experience of his teaching. As teachers, we work to circulate the message of A Course in Miracles throughout the world by our words, by our deeds and by the example of our lives.  Jcim.net