The Basis of the Dream

Chapter 18 – 2. The Basis of the Dream

Does not a world that seems quite real arise in dreams? Yet think what this
world is. It is clearly not the world you saw before you slept. Rather it is a
distortion of the world, planned solely around what you would have
preferred. Here, you are “free” to make over whatever seemed to attack you,
and change it into a tribute to your ego, which was outraged by the “attack.
 
“This would not be your wish unless you saw yourself as one with the ego,
which always looks upon itself, and therefore on you, as under attack and
highly vulnerable to it.
 
Dreams are chaotic because they are governed by your conflicting wishes,
and therefore they have no concern with what is true. They are the best
example you could have of how perception can be utilized to substitute
illusions for truth. You do not take them seriously on awaking because the
fact that reality is so outrageously violated in them becomes apparent. Yet
they are a way of looking at the world, and changing it to suit the ego better.
 
They provide striking examples, both of the ego’s inability to tolerate
reality, and of your willingness to change reality on its behalf.
 
You do not find the differences between what you see in sleep and on
awaking disturbing. You recognize that what you see on waking is blotted
out in dreams. Yet on awakening, you do not expect it to be gone. In dreams
you arrange everything. People become what you would have them be, and
what they do you order. No limits on substitution are laid upon you. For a
time it seems as if the world were given you, to make it what you wish. You
do not realize you are attacking it, trying to triumph over it and make it
serve you.
 
Dreams are perceptual temper tantrums, in which you literally scream, “I
want it thus! “And thus it seems to be. And yet the dream cannot escape its
origin. Anger and fear pervade it, and in an instant the illusions of
satisfaction is invaded by the illusion of terror. For the dream of your ability
to control reality by substituting a world that you prefer is terrifying. Your
attempts to blot out reality are very fearful, but this you are not willing to
accept. And so you substitute the fantasy that reality is fearful, not what you
would do to it. And thus is guilt made real.
 
Dreams show you that you have the power to make a world as you would
have it be, and that because you want it you see it. And while you see it you
do not doubt that it is real. Yet here is a world, clearly within your mind,
that seems to be outside. You do not respond to it as though you made it,
nor do you realize that the emotions the dream produces must come from
you. It is the figures in the dream and what they do that seem to make the
dream. You do not realize that you are making them act out for you, for if
you did the guilt would not be theirs, and the illusion of satisfaction would
be gone. In dreams these features are not obscure. You seem to waken, and
the dream is gone. Yet what you fail to recognize is that what caused the
dream has not gone with it. Your wish to make another world that is not real
remains with you. And what you seem to waken to is but another form of
this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your
sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their
content is the same. They are your protest against reality, and your fixed
and insane idea that you can change it. In your waking dreams, the special
relationship is your determination to keep your hold on unreality, and to
prevent yourself from waking. And while you see more value in sleeping
than in waking, you will not let go of it.
 
The Holy Spirit, ever practical in his wisdom, accepts your dreams and uses
them as means for waking. You would have used them to remain asleep. I
said before that the first change, before dreams disappear, is that your
dreams of fear are changed to happy dreams. That is what the Holy Spirit
does in the special relationship. He does not destroy it, nor snatch it away
from you. The special relationship will remain, not as a source of pain and
guilt, but as a source of joy and freedom. It will not be for you alone, for
therein lay its misery. As its unholiness kept it a thing apart, its holiness will
become an offering to everyone.
 
Your special relationship will be a means for undoing guilt in everyone
blessed through your holy relationship. It will be a happy dream, and one
which you will share with all who come within your sight. Through it, the
blessing the Holy Spirit has laid upon it will be extended. Think not that he
has forgotten anyone in the purpose he has given you. And think not that he
has forgotten you to whom he gave the gift. He uses everyone who calls on
him as means for the salvation of everyone. And he will waken everyone
through you who offered your relationship to him. If you but recognized his
gratitude! Or mine through his! For we are joined as in one purpose, being
of one mind with him.
 
Let not the dream take hold to close your eyes. It is not strange that dreams
can make a world that is unreal. It is the wish to make it that is incredible.
 
Your relationship with your brother has now become one in which the wish
has been removed, because its purpose has been changed from one of
dreams to one of truth. You are not sure of this because you think it may be
this that is the dream. You are so used to choosing among dreams you do
not see that you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and all
illusions.
 
Yet Heaven is sure. This is no dream. Its coming means that you have
chosen truth, and it has come because you have been willing to let your
special relationship meet its conditions. In your relationship the Holy Spirit
has gently laid the real world; the world of happy dreams, from which
awaking is so easy and so natural. For as your sleeping and your waking
dreams represent the same wishes in your mind, so do the real world and the
truth of Heaven join in the Will of God. The dream of waking is easily
transferred to its reality. For this dream reflects your will joined with the
Will of God. And what this Will would have accomplished has never not
been done.