Today we'll talk about the happy dream. Interestingly enough, even though the concept is an extremely
important one, the phrase itself does not appear all that frequently in the Course.
There's one important reference, which actually talks about gentle dreams, but the happy dream
is another way of talking about how we live in this world practicing the principles of
the Course, practicing the principles of forgiveness, even though the world itself is an illusion.
In other words, in that one passage I just alluded to near the end of Chapter 27, which
talks about gentle dreams, it says that it is not possible to go from the nightmares
of the ego to awakening; that there's a scream of mortal terror that would emanate from us
to do that, because we're so terrified of the truth, namely that the entire world's
an illusion, the cosmos is an illusion, our individual self is an illusion. In fact, there's
absolutely nothing here at all, but that means that we're not here as well, and so that's
quite a frightening idea. So that we need interim steps; what at the end of Lesson 193
Jesus refers to as the little steps God asks us to take to Him. These little steps are
the happy dreams. It is extremely important--as I've said many, many other times--not to
confuse mind and body. When the Course talks about happy dreams it does not talk about—it
is not talking about living a happier life in the dream-world, a happier life here as
a physical being. The happy dream is simply a shift from the wrong-minded way of thinking
to the right-minded way of thinking. It is a shift from the unholy instant of judgment
and attack to the holy instant of forgiveness and peace. So the happy dreams the Course
talks about are simply the shifts in perception, recognizing that our happiness and peace do
not depend on what goes on externally in the dream. Also Chapter 27, Jesus talks about
the two levels of dreams. There's the world's dream and then there is what he refers to
as the secret dream; the world's dream being the dream of bodies, the dreams which constitute
our experiences in the physical world, and the secret dream is the mind's dream, is the
mind—the ego mind's thought system of separation, sin, guilt, fear, attack, pain, suffering,
punishment, and ultimately death. So the happy dream is not the shift, once again, of our
bodily experience; it's the shift in our mind's experience, from the unholy, unhappy dream
of guilt to the happy dream of forgiveness. Both are, in truth, illusory but we cannot
awaken from the illusory dreams of pain, suffering, and death to recognizing that we are at home
in God and everything else was simply a dream in exile. We cannot do that without first
correcting the unhappy dream where it is, which is in the decision-making mind's having
chosen the wrong teacher. So the happy dream is simply looking at the ego's dreams, both
in terms of their origin, which is the thought system of guilt and then their projections
in the world in terms of the pain, suffering, attack, the victimization, and death--looking
at that and saying, "These are not the truth." So when the Course tells us that the miracle
looks on devastation and reminds the mind that what it sees is false, that's the happy
dream. To be right-minded, which is an operational definition I frequently give--to be right-minded
means to be in one's wrong mind but without judgment; that's the happy dream. We are still
dreaming, we are still within the illusion, and we still think we are here; we still think
the separation from God occurred; we still think that our individual experience is real.
But we now don't use that experience to further or to reinforce the belief in the illusion.
We use these experiences as the stepping stones towards awakening from the illusion. These
stepping-stones, once again, are the happy dreams. So the term literally means nothing
more or less than looking at our egos in action and saying, "There must be another way," just
as Helen and Bill said that fateful afternoon in 1965. There must be another way of relating.
There must be another way of my responding to people's attacks. There must be another
way of responding to the pain and suffering that's all around me. There must be another
way of responding to the pain and suffering in my own body, which is also all around me
in the sense of it being outside of my mind. There must be another way. There must be another
teacher who would instruct me in how to look at this differently. It's that asking for
help that we look at the dream another way--through the eyes of vision and not judgment--that
constitutes our happy dreams, and these become, once again, the means of returning home and
awakening once and for all from this terrible nightmare of being separated from our Source.