Hallucinations

"What if you recognized this world is an hallucination?  What if you really understood you made it up?  What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal?  Could you have faith in what you see, if you accepted this?  And would you see it?  Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are.  This is the healing and the remedy." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 20, Section VIII, 7:3-7, and 8:1-2

Like all spiritual scriptures, A Course in Miracles can be read on multiple levels, which results in what the Course calls level confusion.  Just like church, any spiritual teaching can be used to make the user more comfortable in their own illusions.  They just seem shinier and holier than other illusions.  In Truth, they are all made up.  All hallucinations' only value (including the Bible and the Course!) is whether they assist the mind in waking up to its own hallucinations and letting them go. I love A Course in Miracles because it reminds us of this repeatedly.  But it's so easy to gloss over those passages and latch on to the comfortable ones, isn't it?

In The Bible Jesus told us that we have to lose our lives to find Life.  He wasn't talking about the cross, although that was an extreme example and symbol of the teaching.  He was talking about losing the little self, the identification with a separate self with separate ideas and separate agendas.  He was talking about the compulsion to identify that self with a body that needs special care and special protection.  He was talking about the little self with its constant planning and schemes for pleasure and self-reliance.  He was talking about life as usual.

Nobody wants to hear this.  What little self, with its vested interest in an identity, wants to hear that it is an hallucination?  Who wants to hear that all our cherished values and ideas about how life works are all made up, and simply not even there?  Who wants to hear that we are the mentally ill, every last one of us?  This seems like a no-brainer to the little self... just focus on what you believe to be true, and live as if it is true, and ignore the fact that it keeps not being true. This is the nature of the world, where every hallucination comes to pass. 

But we have another choice!  When we change our mind about the purpose of the world, it isn't about perpetuating the hallucinations, but about letting them go.  And when the only purpose of the world becomes the healing of the mind, then every single hallucination dissolves, and the Light of the Self that is always here is revealed. 

"Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one?  Will he agree more quickly to the unreality of a louder voice he hears than to that of a softer one?  Will he dismiss more easily a whispered demand to kill than a shout?  And do the number of pitchforks the devils he sees carrying affect their credibility in his perception?  His mind has categorized them all as real, and so they are all real to him.  When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear." -- A Course in Miracles; Manual for Teachers, 8, 5:2-7

In the Light of Self that remains, there is only God, only One Self.  All hallucinations are simply the opportunity to awaken from the insanity of self-preservation.  And this is not death, but Life!

"Give up this frantic and insane attempt that cheats you of the joy of living with your God and Father [Unified Self], and of waking gladly to His Love and Holiness that join together as the Truth in You, making you One with Him.  When you have learned how to decide with God, all decisions become as easy and as right as breathing.  There is no effort, and you will be led as gently as if you were being carried down a quiet path in summer.  Only your own volition seems to make deciding hard.  The Holy Spirit [the Voice of Self] will not delay in answering your every question what to do.  He knows.  And He will tell you, and then do it for you." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 14, Section IV, 5:6, and 6:1-6

Who in their right mind would let hallucinations run their life?  Who would let an hallucination decide for them?  That's what we do every day, every hour, and every minute that we live as if we were a separate self with separate desires and separate needs.  But as we forgive the fictions and let them go, we find the One Self is ever-present, and All that has ever been.  This One Self, this Infinite Love, is all we ever need to dispel the dreams and Awaken to Joy.