Patricia Pearce

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

June 20, 2022 by Patricia Pearce

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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Thinking Minds of the World, Unite!

December 22, 2021 by Patricia Pearce

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

The Promise of an Awakened World

July 2, 2021 by Patricia Pearce

This is a talk and guided meditation I presented for Unity Church of Albany on June 27, 2021.

Transcript

I’ve been looking forward to this talk and this opportunity to bring you a message ever since Roger reached out to me several weeks ago, and invited me to speak to you all and he shared with me the vision statement that you adopted last summer, “a world transformed through spiritual awakening of all.”

And when I saw that, that vision statement, I knew that. something’s afoot here. Like this is meant to happen. So it’s really my delight and my honor to be with you all today to talk about the promise of an awakened world.Continue Reading

Yielding: The Way of the Christ-Bearer

December 23, 2020 by Patricia Pearce

By yielding to the Reality of Love, Mary births Its expression in form.

Ever since Donald Trump appeared on the political scene I have seen him as symbolizing the ego patterns that we must now leave behind if we are to survive as a species on this planet. By depicting in such an overt manner how the ego mind operates, what it believes, and how it plays out in the world, Trump has precipitated a jump into warp speed of our awakening process.

Recently, there have been reports that his mental health is deteriorating due to the loss of the election and his waning ability to bend circumstances to conform to his will—something that in the past he has always seemed to manage.

Symbolically, this is showing us the ultimate impotence of ego. Other than within the confines of its own fabricated alternative world, it has never been able to alter Reality, which is Love. The attempt to do so—to fracture Reality, to overturn Love—has been the great egoic escapade humanity undertook, and we have failed. Not for lack of effort, but simply because it can’t be done. Continue Reading

The Great Conjunction

December 20, 2020 by Patricia Pearce

It is the conjunction within that opens the way for a new world.

When I was a child, one summer evening I was out in our front yard with my mother watching a sky ablaze with spectacular pinks and oranges. It was one of those sunsets where you feel like you are witnessing the otherworldly.

My mother was a woman of deep faith, although she rarely spoke about it. But that evening, gazing at the sunset, she confided in me, “This is how I imagine the Second Coming will be. Jesus will descend on clouds like these.”

As far fetched as it may sound, her understanding of the Second Coming was quite conventional. In the Second Coming, Jesus—who was understood to be the one and only embodiment of Christ—would descend to earth again and establish a long-awaited reign of peace.

The Second Coming has been anticipated for centuries, since the time of the first followers of Jesus who expected his return to occur at any moment, and certainly during their lifetimes. That no such dramatic re-appearance happened caused some consternation among the emerging community. There was no intervention from the heavens. No overthrow of the worldly powers-that-be—and all these centuries later we are still waiting.Continue Reading

Ode to Darkness

December 11, 2020 by Patricia Pearce

As a culture we are starved for Mystery.

I love this time of year. I love the long quiet nights, the candles, the turning inward. For me, the winter solstice, when the days begin to grow longer, always comes too soon. I want more time to immerse myself in the darkness.

I know this is a difficult season for many people, when the lengthening nights seem to evoke feelings of despair and dread. Yet I find the darkness beautiful. I experience it as the Mystery, the Unknown, the Numinous that is so much vaster than my conscious awareness can fathom.

This morning I got up early, before the first daylight. The crescent moon cradled itself toward the eastern horizon and the morning star gleamed in the pre-dawn sky—and it was the darkness that bestowed upon them their beauty.

I am awed by the fact that the universe is comprised mostly of dark matter. It is overwhelmingly made up of something that is hidden to us, undetectable to us, and yet unmistakably present.

That’s the way I experience the darkness. There is a Presence in it that transcends the reach of my ordinary senses. In the darkness I perceive the limitations of my knowing. I bow before the Mystery.

I suppose it is our fear of the unknown that makes us fear the darkness and want to drive it away, dispel it with whatever feeble torches we can fashion. We are so afraid of not knowing.

And yet turning toward the Mystery is so essential. To apprehend that there is so much we do not know is the beginning of wisdom, the portal to awe.

I had a dream once, years ago, in which I am out in the wilderness, in the mountains, staying at a lodge. It is night, and I step out onto a balcony and look up. When I see the canopy of the Milky Way overhead, a deep relief washes over me, and I realize that, having lived for so long in the city, I have been suffering from star-vation.

As a culture we are starved for Mystery, starved for the awe that comes when we accept our inability to comprehend the vastness of our existence, starved for the parts of ourselves that linger beyond the light of our awareness.

In the winter months, we sometimes don’t get enough sunlight to meet our body’s need for vitamin D. But in our contemporary society, in which we go to such great lengths to banish the night, there is another sort of deficiency that inflicts our spirits: darkness deprivation.

This alienation from the Unknown, this estrangement from Mystery, is making this planetary time so much more difficult than it needs to be.

We find ourselves collectively in a time of darkness, of unknowing. Having watched in shock the sunset of our certainties, we no longer know what to expect, and we cannot see what is before us.

And yet Love encompasses All. It is as present in the darkness as it is in the light.

In this season, many of us celebrate the incarnation of Christ-consciousness. And while traditionally that consciousness has been ascribed to a single individual, it is a consciousness that lies within us all. Dormant perhaps, as the seed lies dormant in the dark soil, but present nonetheless.

Christ-consciousness has been described as the awareness of existing in relationship with All That Is, which means being aware of existing in relationship with the darkness as well as the light, the unknown as well as the known. This is the awareness that flowers into trust, into faith.

May this season of the long nights bestow upon you the blessing of the darkness. May you experience awe in the face of the unknown, and bow before the Mystery of your existence with All That Is.


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