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"The dream of
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“For as your sleeping and your waking dreams represent the same wishes in your mind, so do the real world and the truth of Heaven join in the Will of God. The dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this dream comes from your will joined with the Will of God. And what this Will would have accomplished has never
not been done.
”
Par 23
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ACIM OE TEXT
CH 18 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY
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Workbook for Students
Part I
Introduction to Lessons 181-200
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1 Our next few lessons make a special point of firming up your willingness to make your weak commitment strong, your scattered goals blend into one intent. You are not asked for total dedication all the time, as yet. But you are asked to practice now in order to attain the sense of peace such unified commitment will bestow, if only intermittently. It is experiencing this which makes it sure that you will give your total willingness to following the way the course sets forth.
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Lesson ARCHIVE
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Workbook for Students
Part I
Lesson 198
Only my condemnation
injures me.
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1 Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion. If you can condemn, you can be injured. For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you till you lay it down as valueless, unwanted, and unreal. Then does illusion cease to have effects, and all it seemed to have will be undone. Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave.
2 Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge. To condemn is thus impossible in truth. What seems to be its influence and its effects have not occurred at all. Yet must we deal with them a while as if they had. Illusion makes illusion. Except one. Forgiveness is illusion that is answer to the rest.
3 Forgiveness sweeps all other dreams away, and though it is itself a dream, it breeds no others. All illusions save this one must multiply a thousand fold. But this is where illusions end. Forgiveness is the end of dreams because it is a dream of waking. It is not itself the truth. Yet does it point to where the truth must be and gives direction with the certainty of God Himself. It is a dream in which the Son of God awakens to his Self and to his Father, knowing They are one.
4 Forgiveness is the only road that leads out of disaster, past all suffering, and finally away from death. How could there be another way, when this one is the plan of God Himself? And why would you oppose it, quarrel with it, seek to find a thousand ways in which it must be wrong, a thousand other possibilities?
5 Is it not wiser to be glad you hold the answer to your problems in your hand? Is it not more intelligent to thank the One Who gives salvation, and accept His gift with gratitude? And is it not a kindness to yourself to hear His Voice and learn the simple lessons He would teach, instead of trying to dismiss His words and substitute your own in place of His?
6 His words will work. His words will save. His words contain all hope, all blessing and all joy that ever can be found upon this earth. His words are born in God, and come to you with Heaven's love upon them. Those who hear His words have heard the song of Heaven, for these are the words which all will merge as one at last. And as this one will fade away, the Word of God will come to take its place, for it will be remembered then and loved.
7 This world has many seeming separate haunts where mercy has no meaning and attack appears as justified. Yet all are one-a place where death is offered to God's Son and to his Father. You may think They have accepted, but if you will look again upon the place where you beheld Their blood, you will perceive a miracle instead.
8 How foolish to believe that They could die! How foolish to believe you can attack! How mad to think that you could be condemned and that the holy Son of God can die! The stillness of your Self remains unmoved, untouched by thoughts like these, and unaware of any condemnation which could need forgiveness. Dreams of any kind are strange and alien to the truth. Yet what but Truth could have a Thought which builds a bridge to truth which brings illusions to the other side?
9 Today we practice letting freedom come to make its home with you. The truth bestows these words upon your mind that you may find the key to light and let the darkness end:
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Only my condemnation injures me. Only my own forgiveness sets me free.
11 Do not forget today that there can be no form of suffering that fails to hide an unforgiving thought. Nor can there be a form of pain forgiveness cannot heal.
12 Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father. Let today be celebrated both on earth and in your holy home as well. Be kind to both, as you forgive the trespasses you thought them guilty of, and see your innocence shining upon you from the face of Christ.
13 Now is there silence all around the world. Now is there stillness where before there was a frantic rush of thoughts that made no sense. Now is there tranquil light across the face of earth, made quiet in a dreamless sleep. And now the Word of God alone remains upon it. Only that can be perceived an instant longer. Then are symbols done and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind which God forever knows to be His only Son.
14 There is no condemnation in him. He is perfect in his holiness. He needs no thoughts of mercy. Who could give him gifts when everything is his? And who could dream of offering forgiveness to the Son of Sinlessness Itself, so like to Him Whose Son he is, that to behold the Son is to perceive no more and only know the Father? In this vision of the Son, so brief that not an instant stands between this single sight and timelessness itself, you see the vision of yourself and then you disappear forever into God.
15 Today we come still nearer to the end of everything that yet would stand between this vision and our sight. And we are glad that we have come this far and recognize that He Who brought us here will not forsake us now. For He would give to us the gift that God has given us through Him today. Now is the time of your deliverance. The time has come. The time has come today.
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Course in Miracles
Original Edition
TEXT
Chapter 18
The Dream and the Reality
III. The Basis of the Dream
Par 14-23
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14 Does not a world that seems quite real arise in dreams? Yet think what this world is. It is clearly not the world you saw before you slept. Rather, it is a distortion of the world, planned solely around what you would have preferred. Here, you are "free" to make over whatever seemed to attack you and change it into a tribute to your ego, which was outraged by the "attack." This would not
be your wish unless you saw yourself as one with the ego, which always looks upon itself and therefore on you as under attack and highly vulnerable to it.
15 Dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting wishes, and therefore they have no concern with what is true. They are the best example you could have of how perception can be utilized to substitute illusions for truth. You do not take them seriously on awaking because the fact that reality is so outrageously violated in them becomes apparent. Yet they are a way of looking at the world and changing it to suit the ego better. They provide striking examples both of the ego's inability to tolerate reality and your willingness to change reality on its behalf.
16 You do not find the differences between what you see in sleep and on awaking disturbing. You recognize that what you see on waking is blotted out in dreams. Yet on awakening, you do not expect it to be gone. In dreams
you arrange everything. People become what you would have them be, and what they do you order. No limit on substitution is laid upon you. For a time, it seems as if the world were given you, to make it what you will. You do not realize that you are attacking it, trying to triumph over it and make it serve you.
17 Dreams are perceptual temper tantrums in which you literally scream, "I want it
thus!" And thus it seems to be. And yet the dream cannot escape its origin. Anger and fear pervade it, and in an instant, the illusion of satisfaction is invaded by the illusion of terror. For the dream of your ability to control reality by substituting a world which you prefer
is terrifying. Your attempts to blot out reality are very fearful, but this you are not willing to accept. And so you substitute the fantasy that
reality is fearful, not what you would
do to it. And thus is guilt made real.
18 Dreams show you that you have the power to make a world as you would have it be, and that because you want it, you see it. And while you see it, you do not doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world, clearly within your mind, that seems to be
outside. You do not respond to it as though you made it, nor do you realize that the emotions which the dream produces must come from you. It is the figures in the dream and what they do that seem to make the dream. You do not realize that you are making them act out for you, for if you did, the guilt would not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would be gone. In dreams these features are not obscure. You seem to waken, and the dream is gone. Yet what you fail to recognize is that what caused the dream has not gone with it.
19 Your wish to make another world that is not real
remains with you. And what you seem to wake to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their
content is the same. They are your protest against reality and your fixed and insane idea that you can change it. In your waking dreams, the special relationship [has a special place. It is the means by which you try to make your
sleeping dreams
come true. From this you do not awaken. The special relationship] is your determination to keep your hold on unreality and to prevent yourself from waking. And while you see more value in sleeping than in waking, you will not let go of it.
20 The Holy Spirit, ever practical in His wisdom, accepts your dreams and uses them as means for waking. You would have used them to remain asleep. We once said that the first change, before dreams disappear, is that your dreams of fear are changed to happy dreams. That is what the Holy Spirit does in your special relationship. He does not destroy it nor snatch it away from you. [But He does use it differently, as a help to make
His purpose
real to you.] Your special relationship will remain, not as a source of pain and guilt, but as a source of joy and freedom. It will not be for you alone, for therein lay its misery. As its unholiness kept it a thing apart, its holiness will become an offering to everyone.
21 Your special relationship will be a means for undoing guilt in everyone blessed through your holy relationship. It will be a happy dream, and one which you will share with all who come within your sight. Through it, the blessing which the Holy Spirit has laid upon it will be extended. Think not that He has forgotten anyone in the purpose He has given you. And think not that He has forgotten you to whom He gave the gift. He uses everyone who calls on Him as means for the salvation of everyone. And He will waken everyone through you who offered your relationship to Him. If you but recognized His gratitude! Or mine through His! For we are joined as in one purpose, being of One Mind with Him.
22 Let not the dream take hold to close your eyes. It is not strange that dreams can make a world that is unreal. The
wish to make it is incredible. Your relationship has become one in which the wish has been removed because its purpose has been changed from one of dreams to one of truth. You are not sure of this because you think it may be
this that is the dream. You are so used to choosing between dreams you do not see that you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and
all illusions.
23 Yet Heaven is sure. This is no dream. Its coming means that you have chosen truth, and it has come because you have been willing to let your special relationship meet its conditions. In your relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world—the world of happy dreams from which awaking is so easy and so natural. For as your sleeping and your waking dreams represent the same wishes in your mind, so do the real world and the truth of Heaven join in the Will of God. The dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this dream comes from your will joined with the Will of God. And what this Will would have accomplished has never
not been done.
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Sarah's Reflections
Lesson 198
Only my condemnation
injures me.
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Sarah's Commentary:
Once again we see a Lesson that emphasizes our responsibility for what we feel, whether it is gratitude or injury. This Lesson affirms that we are not the victim of this world. In fact, the world can have no power over us, except that which we give it. No one can take our peace away. If we blame anyone for taking our peace, we need to recognize that we have actually chosen to throw it away. We justify our decision to do so by insisting that someone else is responsible for taking it from us. Isn’t it hopeful to know the decision for peace rests with us? The power is in our own minds to choose Heaven or hell. Today, the Lesson is again about forgiveness, but we must remember that we only forgive what has not really happened, meaning we forgive our belief that there is a world outside of our own minds.
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Love and blessings, Sarah
Please send gifts of gratitude for these Reflections via PayPal to
huemmert@shaw.ca
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Allen Watson's
Workbook Commentaries
Allen Watson
joined Robert Perry in forming the Circle of Atonement in 1993 in Sedona, Arizona where Allen led retreats and workshops and authored many books based on “A Course in Miracles.” One of his most popular books is:
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