ACIM Mentor/4 Habits for Inner Peace

            A Course in Miracles teaches us that there is only One Mind, but when it seems like your only experience is being a unique individual mind among many unique individual minds it is very hard to understand that there is only One Mind! I was given a means of explaining One Mind and I share this metaphor below. Keep in mind that the more ego-identified you are the more what is written below will just be theory to you. But as you peel away the many layers of your ego-identification, and individual identity begins to fall away from you, the way this story explains One Mind will make more and more sense to you. Eventually, it will be the concept of many minds that will not make sense to you!

In the process of going over this story I found that it provides the answers to many of the questions that students ask: If God is all there is and God is Perfect, how could the separation have happened? Are we born into the world with egos? What happens when I die? Is there reincarnation? What is my purpose? What is true forgiveness? Should I try to fix the world?

            God is Formless, Infinite, Eternal Being. God cannot be described, but the experience of God is Boundless Love, Peace, and Joy. Only God is Real.

            God’s Mind, being All, must encompass even the idea of Its Own opposite. But the opposite-of-God can never be more than an idea because What is All can not have an opposite. As soon as the idea of not-God arises in God’s Mind it is undone by God’s All-encompassing Nature. Yet God is Eternal, and the idea of not-God contains the opposite of Eternity: time. In God the idea of not-God is over the instant it occurs, but in time it seems as though a part of God’s mind separated from God to make not-God eons ago, and that this separation will all be undone in an indefinite future. In time, time itself, and all the illusions of not-God it contains, seem very real, but in God all of this is impossible, and therefore meaningless.

            God’s Mind is One and does not have “parts”, but to discuss the idea of not-God from the perspective of not-God we must refer to this idea as though it is a “part” of God’s Mind. (In A Course in Miracles God in Totality is referred to as “Father”, and the part of God’s Mind where the not-God idea occurs is called the “Son of God”.) This part cannot leave God, so it seems split between God and not-God. God in this part is called the Christ Mind, or the Holy Spirit. Not-God also cannot really leave God, but it denies that it is One with God. Its denial makes it like a mind that is asleep and dreams that it is the opposite of What it really is. Its dream, then, is a limited, time-bound universe of form. It takes shape as a world with many separate, diverse dream figures (bodies), all of which seem to have their own private minds (egos), but which are in fact the same mind taking many forms. This one mind - the dreamer of the dream – is still part of God through Christ, so it has free will. But since the dream of not-God was undone as soon as it was thought of, the undoing of time and the dream it contains began as soon as time began. So the dreamer’s free will can be expressed in time in only one way: It chooses when it will awaken. In the dream, then, each dream figure, who is the dreamer of the dream, chooses when he or she will awaken from the dream as the manifestation of the undoing of not-God that has already occurred.

            The Christ Mind, which is Reality in the mind of the dreamer, shows up in its dream of not-God as dream figures becoming aware, however dimly, that there is more to reality than the world in which they find themselves. Each dream figure is born into the dream to be part of the dream, but if he or she chooses to become aware of Reality then he or she becomes the dreamer awakening. The Christ Mind will then use that dream figure to teach the dreamer that it is dreaming, and that the dreamer’s Reality is not the dream, but God. This shows up in the dream as the awakening dream figure becoming more and more aware that the dream is a dream, that he or she is the dreamer, that the Christ Mind is his or her Reality, and that he or she can choose the Christ Mind. These dream figures learn to identify with the Christ Mind, but not as he or she once identified with a limited dream figure. This Identification is not limited to a personal self; It is an Identification with the Limitless Being of God, Which is Everywhere.

            Since each dream figure is the one mind of the dreamer they do not have individual spirits or souls. Each one falls away at some point within the dream, and the only question is: Did he or she serve the continuation of the dream, or the awakening of the dreamer? A dream figure that has allowed the Christ Mind to break into the dream through his or her willingness to put aside (forgive) their identification with the dream and let the Holy Spirit (Christ Mind) work in and through him or her is the dreamer awakening, and this brings closer the end of dreaming and time. Awakening through these dream figures brings Peace to the mind of the dreamer, and this motivates the dreamer to awaken even more. This motivation manifests in the dream as more and more dream figures choosing to awaken to Reality.

Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not deciding at all. (T-6.V.A.1)

            But if a dream figure does not choose to be aware that he or she is the dreamer of the dream then nothing changes; the dream figure “dies” in the dream, and the dreamer is not awakened through that dream figure’s “life” in the dream. A dream figure who lets the Holy Spirit into the dream through them is using time to facilitate, to whatever degree they have done this, the awakening of the dreamer; a dream figure who does not allow the Holy Spirit to use time through him or her to awaken the dreamer has done no more – and no less – than wasted time.

All dream figures have a beginning and an end in the dream, but the dreamer, as part of God, has no beginning and no ending. Those dream figures that have not chosen to awaken fear their inevitable falling away from the dream as “death”, or oblivion. But those who no longer identify with the dream know there is no death because they know they are the dreamer, not the dream. They only know God is. They are at Peace within because they identify with the Eternal Christ in the dreamer’s mind, not with a dream figure in the dream, so it is the same to them whether they are aware of the dream or not. They do not believe in it.

            In the dream the concept of individual “souls” or “spirits” that continue on after “death” is meant to give reality to the dream figures. It is an attempt by the dreamer at a compromise where its dream gets to take on an Attribute of Reality (Eternity).  But dream figures exist only in the mind of the dreamer, and it is only the Christ in the dreamer that is Eternal. What is considered “reincarnation” in the dream is merely dream figures accessing other dream figures’ stories in the mind of the dreamer. This is why many dream figures can claim to be the “reincarnation” of the same famous past dream figures.

Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God’s teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs. (M-12.6)

            Dream figures who have chosen to awaken are what A Course in Miracles calls “teachers of God”. They know that only God is Real, and they have accepted as their purpose the Holy Spirit’s Purpose of letting go of, or forgiving, the dream. This may begin as a barely conscious awareness and choice, but they have played their only part in the awakening of the dreamer by making this choice, and the Holy Spirit now takes over their part in the dream. In fact, they are not longer a passive figure in the dream; they are the awakening dreamer of the dream. They may resist this awareness for a long time and think that they can change back to being a figure in the dream, but through them the dreamer has let the awareness of dreaming in, and they can never fully deny this again. A teacher of God’s resistance, then, will become more and more painful.

            A figure in a dream cannot awaken, but a dreamer can. So a teacher of God must first accept that he or she is the dreamer of the dream. They must look out at the world and recognize that the diversity they see is all a dream in one mind, which is theirs, so it is all the same, despite appearances. Diverse dream figures become meaningless to them as they become aware that each one is really their perception of the one dreamer of the dream – their self - in many forms. Dream figures do not have choice because they are part of someone else’s dream, but by accepting themselves as the dreamer a teacher of God can choose to see the dream or the Christ Mind. A teacher of God’s focus, then, moves inward, away from the dream, and toward the Christ Mind. They bring into the dream the awareness that God has not left the mind of the dreamer. The Holy Spirit’s Work in and through each teacher looks unique in the dream, too, but is the same in content. The content of the Holy Spirit’s Work is always forgiveness of the dream. This is why all teachers of God are the same.

            When a teacher of God first learns that he or she is the dreamer of the dream they are still attached to the dream and are tempted to use their growing awareness of Reality to change the dream to suit their individual dream figure desires instead of to awaken. This is an attempt at a compromise where the dreamer tries to have the power of the dreamer while still being a figure in the dream, but in the end this will fail because a dream is not real; it will always leave the dreamer feeling empty, and seeking for wholeness. Only awakening from the dream will make the dreamer feel whole again. Through awakening the dreamer’s experience of the dream does improve, but only because the dreamer realizes that it is a dream.

            The Holy Instant, in Which the teacher of God steps out of time for a moment to be with God, is the greatest tool that he or she has to undo the dream of time. In that Instant time is over; there is no dream. The more a teacher of God practices the Holy Instant, and lives in the present with the Presence of the Holy Spirit, the less time means to him or her. The dream recedes in value and importance, and the experience of the Holy Instant becomes more compelling to the teacher of God than anything in time.

            In essence, time is the dreamer living the one instant of not-God/undoing not-God over and over again, but in the midst of time this takes so many forms it is almost impossible to see. The teacher of God, however, begins to see it the more he or she experiences the Holy Instant. They begin to see the nothingness of the dream, and how silly it is to give it weight and to take it seriously. All that has happened is a thought that can never be reality. There is really nothing to forgive because nothing real has happened. God is.

The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. (T-2.I.3)

            As more and more dream figures accept that they are the dreamer and choose to awaken, the one mind which dreams them awakens more and more. Finally, the individual awakenings in the dream reach critical mass, and the dreamer awakens completely. Despite what appears to be happening in time this has already been accomplished in God because the idea of the opposite-of-God can never be real.