Opportunity

"Truth and illusion have no connection. This will remain forever true, however much you seek to connect them. But illusions are always connected, as is Truth. Each is united, a complete thought system, but totally disconnected to each other. And to perceive this is to recognize where separation is, and where it must be healed. The result of an idea is never separate from its source." -- A Course in Miracles

"You are of your father, Satan, who is a liar and the father of all lies." -- The Bible

Every day, every minute, we are projecting the world we see. When we sleep at night, we seem to project other worlds. Waking or sleeping, not one thing we see or experience is true. As ACIM puts it so unequivocally, "Not one thing in this world is true." That pretty much narrows it down. As ACIM explains it, the whole concept of Satan and illusion are extensions of the insane thought that we could somehow be separate from God, from Omnipresent Allness. Even the thinking mind can see the craziness of this if we just stop for a moment. Only wanting the world we live in to be true could cause us to believe it for even a fraction of a second. It's craziness.

Jeshua ben Joseph told us that this insane belief in illusory matter with a power other than God is the source of all suffering. He called it Satan, our collective belief in matter, and reminded us that Satan is a liar and the father of all lies. Out of this one error, this one ridiculous thought, whole fictional universes have mushroomed. This is the original movie studio, where every drama and comedy and romance and epic have been acted and re-enacted, for our viewing pleasure. We are very attached to suffering and crying and lusting and dying. We love projecting and blaming and praising and idolizing. All the stuff that dreams are made of. We worship dreams.

Out of this insane mix of distractions that hide our real motivations, there is a Voice for sanity. The Holy Spirit, the part of our mind that is always in communion with reality, our true Home in God, is quietly reminding us that this is not our Home. We are reminded that even in the midst of the dream we have a choice, and this choice has nothing at all to do with generating new and better dreams. It has everything to do with forgiving our part in the illusion and letting it go. It has everything to do with waking up. It has everything to do with recognizing each twist and turn and person in the dream as an opportunity to remember Who We Are. Choose once again.

I have discovered, as Jeshua and all of my teachers have tried to tell me for years (funny, but I really didn't want to hear this part for the longest time!), that the closer you get to really remembering Truth and seeing through the illusion, the scarier the dreams can get. I don't think this is in any way personal. It's simply that you are closer to the source of the lie of the separated self, and like all lies it fights for its delusional and illusory life. Only lies need defense. The Truth just IS.

The opportunity in every moment, in every situation, is to become aware of where our allegiance lies. We are always caught up in the dream of our own making, or resting in our true Self, in Oneness with God. Every dream is an opportunity to choose once again.

"Choose this day whom you shall serve... for man cannot serve two masters." -- The Bible