Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Facing the Indescribable

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I’d like you to meet Geez.

Geez is a Teddy bear I’ve had for over twenty years. He was given to me by a Red Cross volunteer when I was about to accompany a friend of mine to Ground Zero. We were waiting for the ferry that would take us down the Hudson River to a landing near the site where the World Trade Towers had stood.

We were there on a pilgrimage of sorts. My friend had recently learned that her father had been killed in the attack on 9/11. She knew she needed to go to Ground Zero to see it for herself, and she knew she didn’t want to go alone.

While we waited in the ferry terminal, some Red Cross Volunteers moved through the crowd distributing breathing masks and Teddy bears. The masks I could understand. There were a lot of toxins in the air from the inferno that had taken place there. But the Teddy bears made no sense to me. They seemed trite. Superficial. Offensive even, given the gravity of what we were about to witness.

After we disembarked from the ferry, we walked the short distance to Ground Zero, which was still closed off to the public. When I stepped onto the viewing platform and saw the magnitude of the devastation—that enormous, gaping, smoldering wound, the twisted steel, the charred remains—I clutched my Teddy bear as though my very life depended on it. As it turns out, it had been the perfect gift.

Why am I writing about all of this now? Because this morning as I was having my breakfast, I was looking at the piano in our dining room where Geez sits. He is joined there with a small family of other bears that have found their way into our lives over the years, plus one monkey. It is a blended family.

They have become such a fixture in our space that I hardly notice them anymore. But today, for some reason, Geez caught my eye. (Just so you know, I named him that because he accompanied me to Ground Zero. G-Z. It’s the perfect name too, because “Geez” is one of those words we use when we don’t have the words to describe the indescribable.)

Anyway, this morning I noticed him. I thought about how he had landed in my life. I thought about how there are times when we just need something to hold onto, to comfort us when we have to face what seems beyond our capacity to face.

And it isn’t always the horrific, either. It can be the beatific.

Yesterday I interviewed Peter Panagore for the Center for Contemporary Mysticism. Peter had a near death experience when he was 21. He was ice climbing, and died of hypothermia. When he was dead he encountered the overwhelming magnitude of Divine Love, and the experience changed him forever. Since that moment he has not felt like he belongs in this world. He has felt like an outsider, someone who experienced something others could never understand.

Although I’ve never had a NDE, I can relate to the feeling. Ever since the kundalini awakening I experienced twenty years ago, ten months after Geez came into my life, I have also felt like I don’t really belong here. I see differently. I know differently.

That is one of the paradoxes of profound mystical experiences: they bestow the absolute knowing of Oneness, yet often leave us feeling very alone in the human world. Maybe you know the feeling.

Now that I think about it, the mystical experience is the inverse of what I experienced back in 2001 as I beheld the horror that the human imagination is capable of. In the mystical encounter one is in the presence of such intense Love that it overwhelms the mind. It collapses every belief, leaving all of our towering concepts and answers—even words themselves—in ruins.

Perhaps the most astonishing realization of all is that this Love cannot be destroyed. It is all that is Real, and regardless of the violence and cruelty that we humans enact on this planet, regardless of the absurdity of the illusions we entertain, this Love remains forever unscathed and undeterred. Forever one with us.

I can’t describe it. So I think I’ll just leave it at this: Geez.

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The Global Hurricane

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One of the family stories I grew up with was the tale my father told of living through a massive hurricane that hit his native land of British Honduras, now known as Belize, when he was 10 years old. He, his parents and siblings were staying at his grandparents’ house on St. George’s Caye to celebrate a national holiday.

They were just about to sit down to his favorite dinner—chicken and green peas—when outside the wind began to pick up, whipping and slashing at the palm trees. The sky turned angry, the sea churned.

My father’s grandfather was certain that their house, sturdily built and having weathered many storms, could withstand anything. But my dad’s father was adamant that they needed to get out of the house quickly and take refuge behind the water vat, the storage tank where they collected rain water.

His father-in-law finally agreed, and they hurried out of the house as the storm raged around them.

As the water began to rise, they huddled in the small edy behind the vat. The wind roared like a locomotive. My dad stuck his head out once to look into the storm, but quickly withdrew it when the driving rain pelted his face like bullets. His father grasped him fiercely. In his later years he would remember the experience. “The first time I knew how much my father loved me was when he nearly strangled me during the hurricane.”

They sang hymns.

O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast
and our eternal home.

The roof of the house flew past them.

Then, suddenly, everything grew absolutely quiet. Still. The sky overhead turned blue. They were in the eye of the hurricane.

They’d made it halfway through and were thankful that the house was still standing. Hopefully they would have a place to shelter overnight.

But when the backside of the hurricane hit, they saw the entire house swept into the sea. That was the moment when, young though he was, my father realized with a shock how fleeting life actually is.

Eventually the storm subsided. They and their neighbors were able to salvage a few boats that had gotten snared in the mangrove behind the island and they set sail for the mainland, one of the boats carrying the body of a young neighbor girl who was killed when her family’s vat fell over and crushed her.

Pummeled by the Storm

I read a channeled message this week, the Cosmic Times, that said if we could see Earth’s energy field from afar it would look like the entire planet is enveloped in a hurricane.

Don’t we know it. Although we may not be able to see the storm that is pummeling us, we can see its effects. We are watching in disbelief as the institutions that we thought were so sturdy, structures that had weathered every storm in the past, are beginning to fly apart before our very eyes.

People are terrified. Some are running toward the bunker of authoritarianism, believing that a strongman can keep them safe. It is completely understandable. And completely naive.

Because Kali is on the loose, and no human institution built on a false foundation—the foundation of separateness, the foundation of domination, the foundation of illusion—can withstand the tempest of Truth that has been unleashed on this planet.

Quickly now, abandon your allegiance to the small self you thought you were, its flimsy certainties and the shabby world it had built.

Give your allegiance only to your Divine Luminous Self and the new Earth it knows.

Above all, take refuge in your Heart. It is the eye of the storm that sees clearly and shows you how fiercely Love has you in its grasp.

It is there, in your Heart, that you can hear the angels singing their hymns of praise for this blessed cataclysm that has come to set you free.

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The Queen’s Funeral: A Waking Dream

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I had the most extraordinary dream yesterday that I’d like to share with you. Dreams, of course, can symbolize many things, and their meaning depends on the associations and experiences unique to the dreamer. My version of this dream is titled “Pomp and Servitude.”

Pomp and Servitude

I am watching the processional taking Queen Elizabeth’s coffin from Westminster Abbey to Windsor Castle. It is a majestically choreographed event, cinematic and mythic, and I am spellbound. The carriage. The horses. The pipers. The rows upon rows of guards and royals, all stepping together in unison.Continue Reading

Event Horizon: A Poem

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Event Horizon

You have crossed the event horizon
And there is no going back.
The self you thought you were is being pulled apart
and there is nothing you can do to save it.

You chose this
And the power of your will
Activated the inescapable attraction of your Self
And there is no going back.

At first the mind resists,
Tries to hold on
To what it has known,
But it is futile
Because you chose this.

You chose to leave this world of forgetfulness,
Of ignorance and illusion.
You chose to remember.

Drawn toward the singularity of your own will
The rules of a former world cease to exist
And the once implausible becomes the inevitable.

Even Light cannot escape this destiny.
So you surrender
You let yourself plummet toward the Dark Unknown,
Falling toward the truth of what You Are.

Until time itself falls away
And this Light,
Your Light,
Flings itself out into a parallel universe
Where the only thing you Know
And the only thing you Are
Is Love.

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If This World Is a Dream, What Does It Matter?

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This article was originally published in the January-February 2022 edition of Miracles Magazine. You can hear me reading the article on my podcast.

The gap between reality and dreams lies not between the dreaming of the world and what you dream in secret. They are one. The dreaming of the world is but a part of your own dream you gave away, and saw as if it were its start and ending, both.

~A Course in Miracles T-27.VII.11.4-5


“WE ARE IN A DREAM!”

That was the breathtaking realization I had at the culmination of a very intense awakening experience years ago. In that instant the curtain was yanked back, allowing me to see the hidden mechanisms behind what we experience on this physical plane. I could see how this world is generated by the stories playing out in our minds, and that those stories are based on a singular fallacy: the concept of separateness.

From this illusory concept has arisen a world plagued by warfare, racism, misogyny, poverty, environmental exploitation—a world that reflects and reinforces our belief that we are on our own, cut off from Source, from Earth, from one another, from our true Self—all of it a fantasy that bears little resemblance to the Reality of Love.

So if this world is simply a dream playing out an illusion in the mind, what does any of it matter? Why should we even care about what is happening here on planet Earth?

Dreams’ Relevance

My own experience doesn’t allow me to dismiss dreams so easily. In fact, dreams have played a key role in my own spiritual evolution.

I began having “big dreams” when I was in my twenties in seminary. I knew I needed to understand what they were telling me, so I began to study and practice dreamwork.

Dreams are consciousness expressing itself. They are the canvas of the mind, and they have many functions. They bring to light erroneous beliefs held in the deepest parts of the psyche. They serve as portals for divine wisdom to break into our awareness. They are our teachers and guides, and when we begin to pay attention to what they are telling us, our spiritual growth leaps into warp speed.

Over the years I have had dreams that revealed how deeply the misogyny of the religion I was raised in had bound my spirit as a woman. I have had dreams that revealed the rising of a new consciousness on the planet. I have had dreams in which I have encountered the resurrected presence of Jesus who, it was explained to me, was the guru assigned to me by the circumstances of my birth.

In other words, for me dreams matter a great deal. Not because they are Real, but because they are revelatory.

The Dream of the World

So what of this dream we call the world? What is it attempting to reveal to us? How might it be a portal for divine wisdom to help us awaken to the Christ consciousness within us?

A Course of Love defines Christ consciousness as “the consciousness of unity for unity is what is” (T4:12:23). Yet when we look at our collective dream, especially as portrayed in the media, what we see playing out on the public stage is the amplification of its opposite: separateness. Political polarization, wealth inequality, disregard for Earth’s intricate ecosystems, disenfranchisement of people on the margins of society, all of this is a vivid depiction of the illusion of separateness.

With the rise of disinformation and breakdown of consensual reality we are also witnessing the mind’s growing confusion about what is real. While this may seem troubling, this confusion in the collective dream indicates that the mind is beginning to question itself, a necessary precursor to letting go of its original conspiracy theory: the ego.

In this collective dream we also see, in movements such as Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement, the mind beginning to reckon with the trauma it has inflicted on itself because of this fundamental error called separateness.


All Dreams Serve Us

The person I studied dream work with, Jeremy Taylor, always said that all dreams come in the interest of health and wholeness—including nightmares, which come with such important information that they will jolt us awake to get our attention.

That is what I see happening in this current world dream that has become a nightmare for so many. It is placing before us the full implications of our illusion of separateness in order to startle us awake to the irrefutable truth of interdependence and the absolute nature of Love.

All of the tumult taking place in the collective dream is actually a sign that our awakening is underway. The idea of separateness is intensifying not because it is getting stronger, but because, like a star that goes supernova when it has spent its fuel, dying in a sudden flash of energy, the story of the ego is in the throes of its dramatic death.


We Are the Dreamers

You are the dreamer of the world of dreams.
~A Course in Miracles T-27.VII.13.1

Now, a caveat.

Those of us who understand the dreamlike nature of the world may be tempted to dismiss all that is happening on the world stage as other people’s fallacy, other people’s erroneous dream.

But that is just another instance of the mind perpetuating its illusion of separateness. The fact is there is no “other.” Consciousness is a whole, and one of the first principles of dreamwork is to understand that every character and every element in a dream represents an aspect of the self. As master explorer of dreams, Carl Jung, once said, “Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”

 

It is not difficult to change a dream when once the dreamer has been recognized. 

~A Course in Miracles T-27.VII.14.2


So if we truly want to support the awakening of Christ consciousness in ourselves and the collective, this dream is here to help us if we’re willing to work with it.

For instance, when we see a video of a Black man being murdered by a white man on the street of a major city, the dream is imploring us to examine our own mind. Where does the fallacy of racism still dwell in me? Where in my own mind do I still sanction coercion or violence? Where in my own mind do I believe another’s wellbeing has nothing to do with me?

When we see a nation divided and turned against itself, the dream is asking us to look within and notice. How do I harbor partisanship within myself? How am I still choosing to see others as adversaries, enemies, opponents to be vanquished? What are all the ways I continue to I deny my union with the whole?

When we see fires raging in the West and hurricanes pummeling the East—planetary imbalances driven by human “progress”—the dream beckons us to take a clear look at ourselves. How do I perceive myself to be separate from the rest of life on the planet? How do I, as a human, see myself as special, more significant than the other species that are my kindreds here on Earth?

This clear honesty, engaged in without judgment, enables us to see how we ourselves have been dreaming the dream of separateness. And as we envelop this awareness in Love, we begin to awaken. We become lucid: in the dream but not of the dream.

As we embody Christ consciousness in the midst of this present nightmare of fear and division, the dream is able to transform, becoming what ACIM calls a happy dream. Then this material world is freed to fulfill its divine purpose as a place in which Love matters.

 

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Duped by the Big Lie

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The actual Big Lie is the one we tell ourselves over and over and over again in our own minds

I’ve been following the latest happenings in the American Dream, in particular the January 6th hearings, and they’re pretty eye-opening. They are revealing so much more than what was taking place behind the scenes of Trump’s attempted coup.

Since the moment Donald Trump walked onto the political stage I have seen him as someone playing a key role in our collective awakening. Not because he is a light worker doing battle with the forces of evil, as some believe, but rather I see him as a supreme depiction of the ego-mind. I see him showing us quite clearly how the ego-mind operates so that we can see it in ourselves and begin to dis-identify with it.

How egoic “reality” is sustained

Yesterday’s hearing focused on how Trump continued to promote the narrative that there was widespread election fraud even though all of the key players in his inner circle were telling him that was nonsense. But because he so desperately wanted to stay in power, he relentlessly asserted that falsehood over and over and over again until people came to believe it.

The revelation here, at least for me, is how egoic “reality” is sustained through the mechanism of repetition. It isn’t the veracity of a story, but its sheer repetition that leads the mind to embrace it as real.

Thanks to this congressional hearing, we can see how naive the human mind really is. Furthermore, we can see that once the mind has embraced a story, no matter how absurd, it begins to give that story shape in the world of form. If we ever doubt that, all we need to do now is remember how an aggrieved mob attacked the Capitol because of a lie.

The Real Big Lie

Trump’s assertion that the election was stolen has been labeled the Big Lie, but for me that is an exageration. The actual Big Lie is the one we tell ourselves over and over and over again in our own minds: that we are unworthy, that we are not enough, that we are separate and alone.

This is the Big Lie that has caused us so much suffering. This is the Big Lie that has directed the dream we are dreaming and shaped the world we are creating. This is the Big Lie that has left us feeling alienated from Earth, from the Source of our Being, from our very Self.

Hearing an angelic perspective

I’m deeply grateful for the congressional committee that is conducting these hearings and giving us a look under the hood at how the ego-mind actually works and how readily we play along. And as I watch these hearings I am also imagining another parallel proceeding happening on the non-visible plane: a select angelic committee conducting their own hearings.

I can imagine this angelic committee, without any judgment whatsoever, lovingly pulling back the curtain to help us see how we have been duped by our own minds. I can imagine them compassionately breaking the news to us that we have been living inside a fabricated “reality” based on a colossal lie.

I can imagine them tenderly and tenaciously repeating to us—over and over and over again so that we might finally come to believe it—the Big Truth: that we are, each of us, luminous beings embodying the Divine and inseparable from Love.

I can also imagine them trying very hard to hold it together while they lay out before us all the nonsense we have fallen for. And I can easily imagine them finally losing it and busting out into the most glorious laughter at this whole tale we have spun for ourselves about how we are unworthy, not enough, on our own. Because, really. With a story this far-fetched what can one possibly do but laugh?

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A Prayer for the Trees

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This morning the heavy machinery is out in front of the house again, digging up the street and sidewalk to put in new valves for the gas line. It is so assaulting. The whole house shakes when that huge jackhammer starts pounding. What I’m most concerned about is the sycamore out in front of our house, a towering street tree that has been there for a hundred years.

It is such a violent thing, pounding the earth like that and ripping up whatever is in the way, roots included. And yes, I appreciate the hot water. I appreciate the warmth in the winter. But there has got to be a better way.

I long for the day when we are in tune with nature, when we take a lesson from the trees. They open themselves up to receive the energy nature freely offers. They don’t go blowing up mountains for coal, or drilling into the ocean bed for oil, or fracking the land and poisoning the water to extract every last pocket of gas.

I want humans to become more like trees. I want us to sit at the base of their trunks and listen. I want us to let them teach us how to live on this planet. How to root ourselves in this fertile, abundant Earth. How to reach out and open ourselves to the Light and turn it into a living thing. How to stand there, just stand there, being what we are, becoming what we are, expressing what we are.

We are such a young species, and so naive. So ignorant about how life works. I long for us to become wise and compassionate, and if we absolutely must dig around a century-old sycamore, I want someone on the crew who knows how to communicate with trees. Someone who can put their hands on the trunk and let the tree know what they need to do. Someone who can convey to the tree that they will be as gentle as possible.

And after they are done I want them to put their hands on the trunk again and comfort the tree, then sprinkle some holy water at her roots, bless her, and let her know we want her to thrive.

This is what I want us to become: a mature species that honors and reveres the web of life, cooperates with it, supports it, nurtures it.

We’ll get there. I know we will. And until that day comes I will continue praying for all the trees and all the living beings on this planet. I will continue asking them to forgive us for our ignorance.

And this afternoon, after the crew is gone, I’ll go out to our tree with my own holy water to bless her and let her know how much we love her, how much we want her to thrive.

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Sacrificing to the Gun God

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Our version of human sacrifice

This is a message I emailed out to my subscribers on May 25, 2022

Dear Friends,

In the wake of the recent mass shootings, yesterday’s at an elementary school in Texas and last week’s at a grocery store in Buffalo, I wanted to briefly share what is mulling around in my mind today. It is this: our society practices human sacrifice.

We don’t call it that. We think we are so much more advanced than the civilizations that practiced ritual sacrifice. But it is human sacrifice, and it’s time we get clear about that and call it what it is rather than pretending it’s something else.Continue Reading