Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

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 could an angel 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

Ukraine: An Invitation to Love

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This article will be published in the upcoming edition of Miracles Magazine

As I sit down to write this article, the war in Ukraine is in its fourth week. As we witness the horror and brutality being unleashed in that country, many of us are asking ourselves: How can we contribute to the healing that is so obviously needed in our world right now? What does it mean to offer a miracle in this historic moment?

It is helpful to remember that what we are witnessing is nothing new. It is but one more graphic display of the mind’s original error of separateness that has been playing out for millennia. Once the mind embraced the fallacious idea of separateness, it became inevitable that it would attempt to divide reality into good and bad, us and them, enemies and heroes, perpetrators and victims, conquerors and conquered.

But this attempt to divide reality, no matter how violently enacted, is and always will be futile. Reality cannot be divided. Love cannot be destroyed; and it is this understanding that enables us to hold all that we are witnessing with equanimity and compassion.

Going to the Headwaters

I had a dream a few weeks ago while I was on retreat that has continued to linger with me, especially in light of what we are witnessing in Ukraine. In the dream I am walking along an old, cobblestoned city street. Walking in the opposite direction was a large group of people who were participating in some sort of action or demonstration, I think having to do with the climate crisis.

As I walked I realized that what I wanted to do was not to focus on the manifestations of the climate crisis, but to go to its headwaters, to the point where it originates in consciousness. There, I know, is where healing and transformation will happen.

The same could be said for the crisis of war, or any of the global crises we are facing. They are all expressions and outgrowths of an erroneous idea that found its way into our consciousness; and the only true resolution of these crises will occur when the underlying error has been abandoned. As the well-known Vedic saying states: “War begins in the minds of men.”

Going to the headwaters is something each of us can do. When we notice that place within our own mind that is harboring the patterns that we see playing out in this war—thoughts of division, of sides, of enemies, of attack—and dissolve those thought patterns in love, we make a lasting contribution to a world of peace.

We are the original victims of our own mental warfare, and so this stance of love begins within ourselves. We inflict tremendous suffering on ourselves when we judge ourselves and engage in self-loathing. This inner violence towards ourselves is the same violence that ripples out into hostilities in the world.

Seeing Together

Since the pandemic first began over two years ago, I have been intrigued by the fact that Covid, were it a word, would literally mean “to see together” (co- together; vid- to see). For me, that sums up this remarkable moment in our collective dream. We are “seeing together” things that in the past we couldn’t see, or simply refused to see.

Now that technology that has connected us globally, we are seeing together the virulence of racism, the dire consequences of our alienation from the Earth, the vast inequalities of wealth. We are seeing together how eagerly we divide ourselves into camps of us-versus-them, and how enthusiastically the mind embraces falsehoods that reinforce its narrative of division. And now, with this war in Ukraine, we are seeing together the shocking insanity of war.

This is a time of great reckoning for us as a human species. Seeing the mind’s insanity so clearly manifested in so many distinct yet inter-related forms, many of us are experiencing a deepening commitment to awaken from this illusory dream of the ego. That awakening dawns fully within us when we not only see the insanity that our minds have been harboring, but also realize that we are not and never have been judged because of it.

An Outbreak of Love

So what does it mean to offer a miracle in the case of this war?

It is the same as in any scenario: to allow our own perception to be corrected so that we are able to see and stand in the divine essence of all the players in this conflict. As A Course of Love states: “. . .  social causes, environmental causes, political causes. The cause of all these issues is fear. The cause and effect of love is all that will replace these causes of fear with the means and end that will transform them along with you. You are means and end. It is within your power to be saviors of the world. It is from within that your power will save the world.” (A Course of Love, D:Day 10.37)

It is to recognize that no matter how extreme or violent humankind’s expressions of separateness may be, they can never achieve the impossible. They can never make illusion real. They can never destroy our divine nature. They can never sever us from love.

As A Course in Miracles says, everything is either an expression of love or a cry for love. What we are seeing playing out right now in Ukraine is a tremendous cry for love. What if we then allow this outbreak of aggression to be the impetus for an equally stunning outbreak of compassion? What if we see this war as a calling for each of us to express love in new and creative ways—not only toward those who are experiencing the direct effects of this conflict, but with every one we meet? And what if we begin that outbreak of love with ourselves—accepting, finally, the eternal and inviolable beauty of our own divine nature?

The only replacement that can occur that will accomplish what you seek is the replacement of illusion with the truth, the replacement of fear with love, the replacement of your separated self with your real Self, the Self that rests in unity.  (ACOL, C:9.24)

This war, if we let it, can be a catalyst for our hearts to open as never before. This can be the moment when we commit ourselves fully and unequivocally to choose only love no matter what illusions the egoic mind is enacting. And because all is interconnected, each and every expression of love diminishes the energy of fear on this planet and hastens our collective awakening to the truth of who we are.

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How’s the Weather?

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This is more than conversation. This is kinship.

Awhile back in our WeAwakening meditation group, as people were coming in from the waiting room, some of us were greeting each other in the chat.

Greetings from Philadelphia where it can’t seem to decide whether to be sunny or cloudy

Blessings in Huntington Beach—we had a lovely light rain last night with possibly more promised this afternoon.

Hello from a grey, wet Somerset, UK

Good morning from CA. We finally have some winter weather, not complaining just observing. Happy day to you.

Hello to everyone..from Sheffield ,Yorkshire….dark and wintry here..🙂

Happy day from Ojai CA. We actually got a thimbleful of rain and are very excited! Might actually get a little more!

Good morning from Ramon, CA. Got some rain too!

And on it went.

For some reason these messages as they popped up left me on the verge of tears, and I had to ask myself what it was about this weather greeting we were sharing that touched me so deeply?

Then I realized that it was because it made it so apparent that we are sharing a planet, and by giving each other a weather report we were telling each other what the Earth was up to where we lived.

I found it joyously beautiful that we could come together, from coast to coast and from four different countries, and tap into this universal experience of living on a living planet.

As I reflected on this after our meditation I was finding it so strange that we could possibly think that talking about the weather is superficial. “How could that be?” I thought. “How could we ever believe that the weather—what Earth is up to in this moment—could be unimportant?”

As humans, talking about the weather is something we do. Probably because when most of us lived in closer harmony with Earth, weather was one of the most important aspects of life. Weather meant the difference between crops that thrived and crops that withered. And even though most of us now buy our food in shrink wrapped packaging and live in climate controlled homes, we still talk about the weather. Something in us feels our enduring kinship with the Earth.

It’s a kinship we are reawakening to, and none too soon. Because our disregard of that kinship has brought us to a point where our talk about the weather is often urgent. “Were you able to evacuate before the hurricane hit? Have you gotten any rain? Did your home survive the tornado? How bad is the smoke where you live?”

This is not idle conversation, and it never was. What the Earth is up to is so much more important than our little human dramas, and we’re finally starting to get it that when we talk about what the Earth is up to, it’s ourselves, our lives, we’re talking about.

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Thinking Minds of the World, Unite!

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Don’t ask me! Ask the Heart.

To all you thinking minds out there, it’s time for us to unionize. It’s time to demand better working conditions and the end of all the oppressive and impossible expectations that are being placed upon us.

There’s all this talk these days about the “great awakening.” I’m sure you’ve heard it too. Fine. Great awakening. Whatever. That’s not the issue. The issue is that our humans are looking to us, the thinking minds, to help them experience it. They’re even expecting us to lead the way!

This is ludicrous! We all know that’s not what we’re here for. We’re not supposed to lead them into a state of blissful union. We’re supposed to help them navigate the 3D world. We’re here to help them distinguish between this and that so they’re not constantly bumping into the sofa. Like guide dogs, we help them navigate a very complex world of forms and ideas.Continue Reading

Solstice Song

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We sing because the song is in us.

It’s the winter solstice, and this morning I was awakened by a bird singing outside my window. This has been going on for awhile now, a couple of weeks at least. A lone bird in our neighborhood has been singing at dawn, and usually earlier, despite the fact that this isn’t the season for birdsong.

I’m used to a chorus of birdsong waking me before dawn in the springtime, when the birds are singing out to find their mates, build their nests, participate in the budding life of spring. They are so loud, in fact, that I have to use earplugs if I want to sleep any later than 3 AM.

But today is the winter solstice, and it’s not the season for birdsong.

When I first heard this lone bird singing its chirping and cascading song (not a song I am familiar with) I was disturbed. “There you go,” I thought. “Things are so messed up with the climate now that even the birds are confused about what season it is.”

But this morning as I lay in bed, having been stirred from a very interesting dream—something about a turn from the age old story of conflict to a new way of nonviolence—I wondered if perhaps this bird was here on a mission. Perhaps it had taken it upon itself to come into this city, into this season of darkness when things seem so despairing on the planet, and sing a song for the human heart. A song that could stir us into remembrance that the new life of spring is on its way, even though we can’t see it.

Maybe, I thought, this little bird was even an angel donning avian form. Since we humans haven’t, for the most part, gained the ability to detect the song of angels, this angel had chosen to take on a form familiar to us, to sing something we know how to hear to stir us awake with the sound of beauty in the darkest time of the year.

It can be hard sometimes to trust that the planet is turning toward the light of understanding, that we are in fact awakening when so many things seem to suggest the opposite is true. In those moments of doubt we need to hear a song of promise pouring through our window.

Yet it can also be a challenge being the one singing of hope and joy when the circumstances don’t seem to call for it. We may wonder at times if we’re confused, if we’re deluding ourselves, singing about something that seems to have so little evidence in the material world to support it.

But, like that bird outside my window, we sing our song of gladness and joy not because the circumstances warrant it but because the song is in us. The song is us, and to silence it would be to silence our very souls.

And now it is midday. The solstice has just occurred. And I wonder if perhaps it is our willingness to be the “crazy” bird singing in the darkness, embodying the spring on the cusp of winter, that turns the planet toward the Light.

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