Patricia Pearce

Helping You Be the Change

Our Make-Believe World

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We built a whole world on one wildly imaginative idea.

The other day I was out for a walk in our neighborhood, enjoying the extroverted exuberance of the daffodils and pausing now and then to breathe in the mind-altering fragrance of a grape hyacinth. Along the way, I passed by a man and his young daughter who were headed in the opposite direction. As we passed one another, I heard the little girl telling her father about the things that were falling from the sky of Middle Earth.

My immediate response was delight at the imaginative capacity of children. They can create whole worlds in their minds, and their spirits haven’t yet been straightjacketed by the realities we adults have to manage.

But in the next instant I almost burst out laughing as I recognized that we adults dwell in our own fantasy world, one that we take so seriously that we have brought it forth in the dimension of form—and perhaps ours is the greater imagination, because we are utterly convinced that our fantasy is the “real world.”Continue Reading

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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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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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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Meditation, Community, and Our We Awakening

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The time of the lone wolf is over

Recently I began hosting daily online gatherings in which people from many different locations have joined together to meditate. I have been amazed at how quickly we moved into resonance—opening and amplifying a Heart Field and allowing ourselves to be attuned to higher frequencies. I launched the group because I had been feeling a strong intuitive desire to gather community as the next step in our collective awakening.

Many of us for years have attended to our own inner work and meditation practices. Now it is time for us to come together and enact the truth of we-ness, which is the essence of the unitive consciousness that is arising. It is like the imaginal cells in the chrysalis, after the structure of the caterpillar has dissolved, finding each other, connecting with each other, and beginning to form a new organism: the butterfly.

What Meditation Has Meant to Me

One of the members of the WeAwakening meditation community emailed me asking that I share my understanding of meditation and what it has meant to me. As I have considered her question I have realized how much my practice of meditation has evolved over time.

Early on I practiced mindfulness meditation, becoming aware of sensations, sounds, breath, developing the ability to notice thoughts as they arise—not getting drawn into them, but simply letting them appear and subside without judgment or attachment.

That practice has been extremely valuable for me. It has helped me cultivate the ability to be present in the moment, and it has given me the essential ability to observe mental activity without identifying with it.

This capacity to notice the thinking mind without believing it or engaging it is fundamental in coming to know the true Self, because the thinking mind generates and sustains a false reality and a false identity. Unless we can see through its chatter we can never experience the Real Self.

Opening to Union with Spirit Realm

Over time though, my meditation practice has evolved into an opportunity to unite with the spiritual dimensions. This is another way in which this is a we-awakening. As humans, we aren’t doing it on our own. It is happening in partnership with the Spirit Realm—as well as with the entire Earth.

In my meditation time I join the Spirit Realm and invite assistance in dissolving all traces of erroneous thought forms. I allow myself to be attuned to the energies that are now present to help us through this moment of planetary transition.

I suppose it has become a blending of mindfulness meditation, prayer, and spiritual energy work in which I open, invite and allow my own awakening to emerge fully, knowing this is my most important contribution to the world and our collective awakening.

The WeAwakening Experience

Now, gathering with the beautiful community of souls in the WeAwakening meditation group I feel as though the whole process is accelerating. My experience so far has been that I have felt an expansion of the Heart as we have joined together from our Heart centers, creating a palpable Heart Field among us.

I have also experienced moments when that greater Heart Field has been present even when we’re not meditating together. The dissolving of attachments to former ways of perceiving also seems to be accelerating.

Since our group began I have also come to see that joining with others from the Heart is a powerful antidote to fear, which as humans is our greatest obstacle to awakening.

But an experience I had earlier this week helped me understand even more clearly why I had been prompted to gather community.

The Need for a Collective Container

For quite a long time I have experienced spontaneous visitations of Joy. It is a feeling, an energy that wells up in my body, unbidden, and ignites my Heart like a bright, radiant Sun in my chest. The other day, while I was in my kitchen (for some reason, these visitations often happen while I’m in my kitchen) I had one of those Joy moments. But this time it was so intense that its energy was almost overwhelming.

I realized then that one of the key reasons for us to join together in community is that the higher frequencies that want to be anchored on the planet right now, the frequencies that will usher in a new world, are very intense. They are more than most of us can handle on our own. They require a We container—a collective Field that is expansive enough and strong enough to receive them.

I am exceedingly grateful for our meditation community and for everyone on the planet who is offering themselves in service of this monumental shift. Earth truly is in the midst of a We Awakening, the radiant sun of the Heart is rising—and as the famous Hopi prophecy says, the time of the lone wolf is over.

If you would like to join the WeAwakening meditation community, you can sign up here.

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The Mind’s Lone Star State

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The idea of a “lone” anything is coming to an end.

I know many of us may be deeply troubled by what is happening in the state of Texas. I’d like remind us that this world is a form of dream, and if we look at these events from that understanding we can see how they can help us in our awakening if we are willing to allow it.

So let us do some dream work.

As you know, Texas calls itself the Lone Star State. Texas culture places a high value on autonomy and individualism, takes great pride in being big, and sees itself as set apart from the rest of the nation.

In a dream, all characters and all elements represent an aspect of the self. In this sense, “Texas” symbolizes an inner state, a state of mind, in which the self believes itself to be alone in this universe, able to set itself apart from the Reality of Union. This, of course, is an impossibility. Nonetheless, the mind has inhabited this illusion of separateness and created a world based upon it.Continue Reading

Collapsing the Concept of Enemy

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The concept of enemy keeps us tied to separateness consciousness.

I had a dream recently in which I am attempting to explain to people what is happening on the planet right now in terms of moving into a higher state of consciousness. I’m using the analogy of the electron just before it makes its quantum leap to a higher energy state, explaining how before its leap it has to gather up considerable energy.

To demonstrate, I’m holding my hands out in front of me as though they were encircling the electron’s orbit, and I’m vibrating them to show how the energy is intensifying.

I explain that right now the idea of enemy is intensifying so that it can finally collapse. When it does, consciousness will make a quantum leap to a new level.

As I’ve thought about the dream I’ve realized that the idea of enemy is on the same continuum as the idea of separateness. Enemy is the idea of separateness taken to an extreme, and it keeps us tied to dualism, to separateness consciousness.

When we look at what is happening right now in the world we can see how much the idea of enemy is intensifying. Now, even a pandemic, which logically should bring people together and inspire cooperation, is viewed through the lens of enemy. The vaxxers and maskers are seen as the enemy by the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, and vice versa.

Simply a Concept

One of the spontaneous messages I received years ago while walking the labyrinth was, “Release all concept of enemy.” I realized then that “enemy” isn’t a real thing. It is a concept in the mind, a concept that the egoic thought-system needs in order to sustain itself.

And yet, the idea of enemy will collapse because it is illusory, and sometimes an idea has to reach such a level of hyperbole that it becomes obviously ludicrous before the mind will let it go. As the Tao te Ching says: “If you want to shrink something, you must first allow it to expand.”

Enemy. Separateness. Other. These are the thought-forms that are on the verge of collapsing. Why now? Because they are the thought-forms at the root of the global crises we now face. And as Einstein famously said, a problem cannot be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Those of us who are willing to assist and participate in this global leap of consciousness can do so in a couple of ways. First, we can notice how often we indulge the idea of enemy ourselves. When we do, we will begin to see that we don’t just view other people as the enemy. Sometimes we see our circumstances, or even ourselves as the enemy.

And then we can ask ourselves honestly: Am I willing to allow the concept of enemy to collapse in my own mind?

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