Things I Say to Myself to Wake up from the Dream and Sink into the Peace of God

Walking around in the dream, I too often forget the truth of what I am. Remembering that I am God’s holy Son requires great vigilance and determination and dedication. The temptation to forget that I am already safe at Home is very powerful. It is always a matter of forgetting and remembering, moment to moment.

It’s like walking into a movie theatre, finding your seat, settling in while the lights dim and the credits roll, then watching the images projected onto the blank screen, getting caught up in the story, losing all sense of your surroundings, until the ending credits begin to scroll down the screen and the lights brighten. You slowly come to our senses, putting on your familiar persona like your coat, and walk out of the theatre, forgetting that there’s absolutely no difference between the images on the movie screen and the images that are now flooding your screen. They are equally unreal.

I find myself walking through the day usually absorbed in these images. When I become aware of this absorption, I ask for help to remember that they are simply thoughts I have made, thrown out onto the blank screen by my personal projector.

God has given you the means for undoing what you have made. Listen, and you will learn how to remember what you are. T-10.V.11:6-7

It helps me to remember what I am by saying these things to myself.

. . .state of mind

I frequently repeat this sentence from Brother Laurence, “It’s not what you do, it’s the state of mind in which you do it.” This reminder quickly takes me to the realization that there is only one state of mind, the peace of God, but there appears to be another, the state ruled by a little speck in my brain called the ego, having no source in reality. From this state are projected thought-images that are over the moment they occur.

. . .not of the world

In that sense, I am in the world, but not of the world. I am walking around in a projected world, but I am not of this world because I can choose to ask for help to be in the state of mind of the peace of God. In this state I am lifted out of the world of my projections.

. . .the eyes of Christ

When I am in this state, the only state there is, I see through the eyes of Christ. I am always looking into a mirror. Through Christ’s eyes I experience the reflection of peace, joy, love, light, truth, perfection, oneness, reality.

. . .the body’s eyes

When I see through the body’s eyes, I experience fear, guilt, conflict, pain, anxiety, depression. It is always either/or, Christ’s eyes, or the body’s eyes. It’s on or off; it is always my choice, Heaven or hell.

. . .joining with my brother

I experience hell when I see my brother’s body and his behavior and find myself making judgments, using the pronoun you, attacking and blaming him, putting everything outside of myself. I experience Heaven when I look through his body and behavior and see the face of Christ reflecting back to me, using the pronoun I, taking full responsibility for what I am experiencing. In this state of mind we join, and I can experience His bright reflection.

. . ."I” need help

I always need help, and it always helps me to take a look at who this “I” is. First of all, there is only one I, the one created by God. But this separate “I” can appear to be seduced by the ego, taking on the ego’s persona and allying with it. I need help to break away from this unholy alliance and join with my Christ Self, and then I am at safe at Home, still as God created me.

. . .familiar versus the Real

This seduction is a result of my conditioning as a body. I find that trusting the body’s senses of sight and sound and smell and taste and touch make a world that is completely familiar, natural, habitual, normal, ordinary, and universal. I forget that this is an unholy alliance made by my projected thought-images. I come to learn that what cannot be sensed is Real, and what is Real is perfectly natural.

. . .the Holy Spirit

Thank God, help is already here in my mind. The Holy Spirit’s is the bridge between my states of mind, my state of dreaming and my state of reality and peace. It is simply, and profoundly, a matter of remembering and forgetting. When I truly ask for help to remember, all of the power of the universe rushes in to help me because that is what I am as God’s Son. When I forget, I am making up a world where nothing is happening. An image appears and quickly vanishes; it’s over. As a waiter said to me the other day as he served me my lunch, after he had recited to me a long list of personal woes, “I said to myself, it ain’t happening.”

. . .gratitude

When I come into the awareness of the only thing that is really happening, now, I am filled with gratitude. When I am grateful and my mind is still, I find that I am most receptive. In this state, I can more easily hear the Voice for God speaking to me all through the day. This Voice prompts me, and I simply do the next thing.