The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and its contents are untrue.
So the miracle establishes that we dreamed the dream.
The dream is not dreaming me. I, which is not this person I think myself to be, Ken,
with a body and a personality, I am the dreamer of the dream.
I was not cause. I did not come into existence because of my parents.
I am not who I am today because of a genetic structure or my upbringing.
I am not the product of what other dream figures have seemingly done,
because it is my dream.
Shifting metaphors, it's my play. It's my script. I'm the author.
I wrote the play. I gave myself the starring role. I'm the hero of the play.
I described very, very carefully in great detail what that hero
is going to look like down to the color of his hair and his eyes
and his height and his weight, if he has a freckle, if he has a dimple.
What kinds of clothes he wears. I designed everything. It's my show.
I'm the producer, the director, the writer and I'm the star.
And the whole play revolves around me.
And I wrote into my script all kinds of characters beginning
with my parents and everybody else. It's a monumental extravaganza.
And I did it. And there's a figure in that play, the hero, called Ken.
And in his arrogant insanity Ken thinks he's real. He thinks he does things.
That's because he forgets he's all made up.
Unlike the actor in Woody Allen's movie, isn't there a movie where a
character walks off the screen or something? Isn't there something like that?
Well this doesn't happen here. That's all made up. The character has no power.
He's just a character. He reads the lines that have been given him.
When he thinks he wakes up in the morning goes into his closet
and chooses clothes to wear, he thinks he's doing that.
It's all been scripted for him.
We are the dreamer of the dream not the dream figure.
It's the miracle that shows us that.
It's the miracle that brings our awareness back from the dream figure
who thinks he or she is real and not only real but very special and very important,
and brings it back above the dream, above the battleground
to the dreamer which is in the mind. And then has the dreamer
now with Jesus as his partner look at the dream and say this is not real.
So that's what that line means, the miracle shows you that you are
the dreamer of the dream and the contents of the dream are not true.
That's all the miracle does. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't choose anything.
It just shows you this is what it is.
In the workbook there's a parallel line. "The miracle looks on devastation,
and reminds the mind that what it sees is false."
So, the miracle takes the Son of God, helps him realize
that what he is seeing outside is not real. Yes it's devastation,
it's suffering, it's hate, it's pain, it's death
and shows the mind which is the Son of God now identified with the decision maker
having regained the power of his mind and says, you see what is outside?
Do you see what's going on on the stage that you call your life?
Sure it's devastation, but that devastation is a projection of a devastation
that was in the thought system in your mind when you wrote the play.
So there are two levels of devastation. There is the world's devastation,
the world's dream and then there is the inner devastation
the sin, the guilt, the fear, the hate and the death that's in the mind.
And then the miracle says but look on both devastations.
Don't pretend it is not there. Don't cover it over. Don't put white light around it.
Look at it. Call it by its right name. It's devastation. It's ugly.
It's painful. It's wretched. It's awful. It has nothing to do with reality;
nothing to do with God; nothing to do with love. In fact, it was just the opposite.
It was made to conceal God and conceal love even when the dream
seems to be the most loving and the most tender and gentle and kind.
It has never left its source which is the decision to replace God with yourself,
to usurp His place and place yourself on His throne and say I am God.
I'm the Lord thy God; Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.
And we all bow down to worship that God which of course is the ego.
That's what the miracle does. It shows us all that and then says,
you know none of this is true. That's what the miracle does.
It gives us back the power of our mind to be the dreamer
to dream the nightmare dream of the ego thought system and then choose
the happy dream of forgiveness and undoing that is the Holy Spirit's thought system.
And when we finally have brought all of our nightmare dreams,
all of our nightmare wishes, all of our murderous thoughts,
to that loving presence of the Atonement in our mind,
all the nightmares are gone and all that's left is a blessing.
And the ultimate blessing is that none of this happened.
Nothing happened. Nothing changed. You remain as God created you
because reality is changeless. And by definition the illusion is
changeable because it changed from reality. Reality is not only changeless
it's perfect oneness, wholeness, and totality, not to mention eternal.
Everything the ego made was a change from that is just the opposite.
And yet all that Jesus does, because that's all the miracle does, that's why his book
is called A Course in Miracles, is to show us exactly what went on.
He helps us rise above the level of the world. He helps us transcend time
and space and go back to the mind that dreamt the original dream of change
that conceived of time and space, that gave birth to time and space.
So we can go back there and realize everything here is a mistake.
Everything here is a lie. It's not evil. It's not sinful. It's not wicked.
It's just a lie. It's not true. And all the pain and suffering here,
however dramatic it is, however painful it is,
however graphically violent and cruel it is, has no effect on the reality of anyone.
It has not had any effect on anyone to change their reality as a Son of God.
This whole world acts and was made to prove exactly the opposite
that change has power. The only power that change has
is to undo the original change. In a sense, so that right-minded power negates
the wrong-minded power and then the whole power of the dreamer disappears.
And the whole power of the split mind disappears and all that's left is
the true power of non-dualistic love that simply loves and is totally changeless.
All these nice words mean nothing if you don't put them into practice
in your everyday life. That's what you have to do. You have to watch your mind
for all the thoughts that in some way or another express change.
And any time you give power over anyone or anything to have an effect on you
then you are making the error real. And then you're giving your power
to these other objects and these other people and saying, you win, I lose.
But of course in the ego system when you win and I lose, I'm the one who really wins
because my victimization proves that you're the guilty one that God will punish.
So what you want to strive to do is to live in this world as a reflection
of the changeless dwelling place that's in our minds.
You make this world and your relationships here the reflection
of that changeless dwelling place. You don't let anyone or anything change
the love and the peace and the experience of joining that truly is the reality here.
We are all joined in insanity just as in Heaven we're all joined in sanity.