A distinction between being in the dream and being the dreamer makes the case that enlightenment is not a heightened state within the dream of life but an awakening from it entirely — the shift from being at the effect of the dream to recognising yourself as its cause. Simulating is oriented toward the same awakening: not an upgraded version of the life you are living, but direct experience with the dreamer dreaming the dream.
How do you play your part in undoing the ego? This is achieved through a certain kind of advanced forgiveness, but not the kind of forgiveness that most of the people in the world think of, if they think of forgiveness at all. The traditional form of forgiveness makes the illusory world real to your mind, thus keeping it and the ego intact in your mind. But true forgiveness does not make the illusory world real, and does not keep it and the ego intact.
There are people who will teach you that you should “make friends with your ego.” But I’ve got news for them. The ego is not interested in being your friend. Your ego wants to kill you. Because if you can be hurt or killed, then you’re a body. And if you’re a body, then the entire ego thought system of separation is true. The only thing you can really do with your ego is undo it.
A Course in Miracles is about undoing the ego, or the false you that has come to identify itself with the body and separation. But the real you has nothing to do with the body or separation. As the Course says many times, “I am not a body, I am free. For I am still as God created me.” And God created you to be exactly like God, the same as its Source forever, completely and eternally in a state of oneness.
This seemingly separate existence is actually a dream. The teaching that the world and the universe are an illusion is thousands of years old, but the Course refines that teaching into the idea that this world is a dream that you will awaken from, and it’s that awakening that is enlightenment. This is what Buddha meant when he said, “I am awake.” Today, most spiritual students think that when Buddha said, “I am awake,” he meant he felt amazingly alert and ready to manifest like hell. Indeed, that’s what passes for enlightenment in most of today’s spirituality.
But Buddha didn’t mean he was more awake in the dream, he meant he had awakened from the dream. And that’s not just a minor distinction. It’s everything. Buddha realized that he was not the dream, but the dreamer. He was not actually in the dream at all. The dream was coming from him, and he was not an effect of it, but the cause of it. This is why A Course In Miracles is completely relevant to Jesus and Buddha.
You cannot attain enlightenment without a total shift from being at the effect of the dream to being the dreamer—to being the cause. Then it becomes possible to awaken. And in order to do that, the ego, which is keeping you blocked in a dream state of separation, will have to go. We can’t awaken from this dream without help that comes to us from outside of the dream, from outside of the system.
An analogy I like to use is this: Let’s say you have a three-year-old daughter and she’s in bed at night, sleeping. You peek in on her, and you can see she’s having a bad dream; she’s tossing and turning and has an unhappy look on her face. What do you do? You don’t go over there and shake the hell out of her, because that could make her even more afraid. So perhaps you intuitively sit on the side of the bed and whisper to her. You might softly say something like, “Hey, it’s only a dream. You don’t have to worry. What you’re seeing is not true. In fact, you made it up, and then you forgot you made it up. But you’re seeing this with your mind.” And when you think about it, what is she seeing that dream with? Her eyes are closed!
And you continue whispering to her, saying things like, “Everything’s all right. I’m here with you, and I’m going to take care of you.” Then an interesting thing happens. Your daughter can start to actually hear your voice in her dream. The truth can be heard in the dream. The truth is not in the dream, ever, but the truth can be heard in the dream. And if your daughter listens to the right voice instead of the voice that speaks for the reality of the dream, she starts to relax. Maybe she begins to think that this dream she thought was so important isn’t that big a deal after all.
Then when she’s ready to wake up without being afraid, she wakes up. And when she wakes up, she realizes she never left the bed. She was there the whole time. It’s not that the bed wasn’t there, it was just out of her awareness. And when we woke up this morning from the dreams we were having in bed last night, all we awakened to was a different form of dreaming. A Course in Miracles says, “You are at home in God, dreaming of exile but perfectly capable of awakening to reality.”
And into this dream, which is not reality, the Holy Spirit is whispering the same kinds of things to us that we might whisper to a three-year-old who’s having a bad dream in bed at night. The Holy Spirit is saying to us right now, “Hey, it’s only a dream. You don’t have to worry. What you’re seeing is not true. In fact, you made it up, and then you forgot you made it up. But you’re seeing this with your mind.” The Course tells us we are “reviewing mentally what has gone by.” In addition, it makes the uncompromising statement, “All your time is spent in dreaming."
The reason this dream seems so much more real than the dreams we have in bed at night is because of levels. There are no levels in Heaven, where there is only perfect Oneness and no differences. But the ego’s world is full of levels and differences. This is a trick to make us believe that because this dream seems so much more real than the ones at night, then it must be reality. Yet even many physicists of today will tell you the universe has to be an illusion; it can’t possibly be here.
Some are even becoming convinced that this is all a simulation. But whatever you want to call it, the fact is that you dream that you’re born, you dream that you have this strange life, you dream that you die, you dream that you have this in-between period, you dream that you’re born again, and it goes on and on. Our lifetimes are like serial dreams that occur one after the other, so we are always in an unreal state. The form of the dreams appears to change, but the content is always the same: separation.
The Course teaches that this is an unreal state, and in a state of unreality and confusion there is always an underlying anxiety, whether conscious or not. Yet if we have the willingness to listen to the right Voice that speaks for the reality of Spirit, instead of the ego voice that speaks for the reality of the dream, we start to relax. Maybe we’ll begin to realize that all these things we thought were so important in the dream weren’t such a big deal after all. Perhaps there is a greater reality that is just beyond the dream, and yet everywhere. It’s not that it’s not there; it’s simply out of our awareness.