Fantasies change Reality. That is their purpose.

The betrayal of the Son of God* lies only in illusions, and all his “sins” are but his own imagining. His reality is forever sinless. He need not be forgiven but awakened. In his dreams he has betrayed himself, his brothers and his God. Yet what is done in dreams has not been really done. It is impossible to convince the dreamer that this is so, for dreams are what they are because of their illusion of reality. Only in waking is the full release from them, for only then does it become perfectly apparent that they had no effect upon reality at all, and did not change it. Fantasies change reality. That is their purpose. They cannot do so in reality, but they can do so in the mind that would have reality be different.

– Bringing Fantasy to Truth, A Course in Miracles. 1, pp351

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*Note: For those of different faith who may find the word Son of God uneasy, my self-inquiry leads me to the following understanding:  The world is a dream and we are not really here.  As in any dream who we think we are, is but an illusion. The mind could not comprehend what is beyond it, as it is beyond the mind’s comprehension. Hence the word “God” is created to point to that. Son of God is merely a word coined to mean our true reality, beyond mindbody.

I am not upset for the reason I think it is

Wisdom don’t see anger as anger. Wisdom learn to understand anger. When there is understanding there is no reason for anger to exist. When anger is understood, anger ceases. This is the path to undoing the ego.

I cannot get rid of ego except to see the nature of its veil. Each time when I try to get rid of ego, I am strengthening the grip of ego. When I learn to understand the nature of ego, ego releases me. The journey of Truth is not a journey of making things right, but to see things right in its own nature. When nature is acknowledge in its own birthplace, Truth reveals itself. Ego is not bad or wrong. Ego has its own nature and thus is part of Nature itself.

Like a dog chasing after its own tail, Ego cannot be separated from me, no matter how hard I try to push it away or try fixing it. By doing I am increasing the ego. By being I am understanding the Ego.  I can’t tell someone about the Truth except to share what I know about the Truth. For when I am not ready for the Truth, no one can force that Truth unto me. Neither can someone convert me except myself converting myself. I am the creator and also the uncreator. What I create unconsciously I have to uncreate consciously. That is my responsibility.

My jealousy has nothing to do with the person I target, though the ego thinks it is so. My upset is also not the reason I think it is. Every experience, whatever extend it may be, is pointing back to me.  Life is not what is out there for me to experience, but what is in here that arises. All the feelings and thoughts about life is Life itself. There is no separation. There is no world except experiences. The ball is always back on my court – there is no other court other than here. I can never be anywhere else except where I am. Without “I” where is Life? Where is the meaning of “you”?

I am you. Even that is untrue, except an idea, a thought. When idea appear, opposite follows. Where there is “I” there is surely “you”. If we are one, we are also two or many as one implies everything coming together. There is no oneness without “twoness”. Inside and outside are all ideas. Ideas set up conditions and in that condition stories appear. Undoing brings condition to an end, and thus the unconditioned. Ideas, views or believes are all the same.

I can’t removed ideas as there is nothing to remove. Can I remove dream or the dream is removed from me when I come into wakefulness? “A tiny mad idea” is an appropriate word used in A Course in Miracle to depict the beginning of illusion.

You are free to believe what you choose, and what you do attests to what you believe.
– A Course in Miracles

The Dead are not Alive, and the Living will not Die

You may observed that I have been, of late, quoting the Buddha and Yeshua in my blog, and if you find it offensive, I invite you to recognize that all resistances arise from non-understanding. Where there is understanding, resistance fades away. My teacher frequently reminds me to observe experiences through the perspective of understanding the causal relationships of phenomenon and doing so, allows me to move from being personal to nature – seeing experiences as a natural unfolding of nature rather than “I”.

The title is riddled with deep meaning, taken from the Gospel of Thomas. Coincidentally the Gospel starts with the statement made by Yeshua: Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not touch death.

We both knew that the dead are not alive and isn’t it something so obvious that needs no interpretation? That’s the beauty of riddle – behind the form lies the essence. Form and essence are always in contradiction, like for instance, words. Words are merely words if we do not understand the meaning behind those words. So the statement in the title is merely another statement if we do not probe deeper what Yeshua is trying to convey.

Remember the analogy of Darkness and Light in my previous blog? The former is, the latter exist. Anything that exist has to die, for if there is no birth where is death? So all existences are transient by nature, and if they are transient, it is with certainty that there is no absoluteness in it accept its conditioning.

That reminds me of a statement found in the beginning of A Course in Miracle:

Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of GOD.

Anything that can be threatened cannot be real brings me to understand that anything that changes has no substantiality, no realness in it. How can I say I exist when existence itself is beyond my control? How can “I” – what I thought is permanent existing on a body that is entirely breaking apart each moment and to be arise again the next moment? And what about the mind? How can I say the mind is me when I would not even know when and what it is going to happen in the next moment? I can only know how it works by observing the causal relationship of the conditionings but I can’t change or fix it. I can only pop in a new cause or a few causes and allow the effect(s) to take its natural course.

So if the body and mind is devoid of “I” how can it be called “alive”?
When I identified with my body and mind I am never, never alive, though I may seems to live and die in the end.
When I finally go beyond the body and mind, beyond the conditioning of all things, in that “space” there is no death. That is when the “living” will not die.

To quote a sentence from the Dhammapada:

Heedfulness is the path to the deathless. Heedlessness is the path to death.
The heedful do not die. The heedless are as if dead already.

Beyond the illusion of Ego lies deathlessness….