I believe, that if you can see Love, just the same as you see the world, as part of your Dream, then can you truly wake up.
Love exists when you still have a self-identity to associate with in your Dream. But then, in this Dream what self-identity is real?
Every self-identity, be it Jesus or Buddha or Krishna, comes from God. We cannot say, "Oh, Jesus came from God. But NO! The Buddha and Krishna came not from God." Otherwise this is obviously religious bias and may even give rise to conflicts and misunderstandings, such as "My religion is true, while your religion is false."
"The bad news: There is no hope in this world!
The good news: There is no world!"
Love these news very much.
Thank you @dorky for bringing up these important points!
I want to answer, how I see them at this moment.
First, no self-identity is real, which should not prevent us to have one. The difference then is, that whenever we take on some identity, we don't take it that serious anymore.
Second, all the teachers you mentioned are only symbols of the right mind.
It's not important which symbol you use, as long it represents the mind of God for you, which is peace and love.
None of them are real, but so are you. 😀
In other words: Don't make Jesus, Buddha or Krishna more real as you are. Again: There is no hierarchy of illusion. This is also the case for symbols of truth like Jesus, Buddha or Krishna. It's only important what they represent in your mind. What religions did, is to make the form (= the symbol) more important than the content.
If you remember only this in your life, you have taken a huge step on your journey: Form is irrelevant. Content is everything.
This is not only the case with symbols of truth, but for everything and everyone you encounter.
Much Love and Blessings! ❤️🙏
Yes!
Love it!
WE are the guru. Everything else is just a concept. The "illusion", as we call it, is what we do for fun and experience! The Creator first dreams the creation before then making it real.
Peace!
Thank you! 🙏
I would only add, that God is not the creator, because he didn't create anything. The world is nothing - so it's also no creation.
In ACIM there are many passages, were Jesus says very clearly, that we shouldn't ask him or God for fixing things inside the dream, because how can he fix something, that is not there? He then elaborates, that God doesn't even know about "us", because the thought of separation is impossible to him. It is only our dream and the dream's basic premise is, that we could create something outside of God. This is what made us feel guilty and then the Ego projected this guilt onto other bodies inside the dream, to prove its innocence. From here on, this whole "creation" starts to get really messy and things escalated quickly 😀
Well, this is a whole other "creation story" as presented in religions. So please don't tell anyone. It shouldn't be posted on some blockchain to be conserved for all eternity.
This is dangerous stuff - so please move on - there is nothing to see here... lol
The way I understand creation, can be explained by Hinduism's version of depicting Vishnu in active dreaming, resulting in multiverses being created.
I am not an Hindu, by the way, but used it as example because its symbolic description is very compatible with what I know.
God does create this world (and countless other worlds) through what we term as "dreams".
And we are the avatars of God.
Through multiple levels and realms of dreams, God experiences Himself.
One danger from having higher spiritual knowledge is that we tend to go from one extreme end, such as "There is a creator", or "There is a world", to another extreme end, such as "There is no creator", or "There is no world."
Such understanding is itself an illusion in this world-dream, and may even have "fatalistic" result.
For if there is no form, how can the content be presented and be made known?
Buddhism famously taught "Form is Emptiness. Emptiness is Form."
Yes, the message is important, but how can the message be transmitted without any medium whatsoever?
Try not to hold stiff to any particular dogma, whether it be "is" or "is-not" regarding a particular subject.
Again, very valid points you are making. Most of my life Advaita Vedanta has been "my" spiritual path and therefore also much of the Hindu philosophy.
Until one point, when all the (very masculine) wisdom teachings had to be balanced out by the (more feminine) quality of Love. Which cleared the path for a much broader integration of both.
Regarding the teachings of ACIM: Yes, it would be fatalistic if it would only say, that the world dream is just a place of suffering and despair. It also offers the hope of "the right mind", which is the content in form as a remembrance of the Truth. This is our decision - the only decision we can take. So there may be form, but all form is, is a symbol. Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form describes this very good. It's not about denying form, but just to see, that form is nothing.
...And in the words of Nisargadattta; "Nothing is Everything".
Beautiful. Both of you. These are the conversations I love.
I have found this "idea" of Reality our minds love to play with can be best described as; "Reality- when every point in the Universe agrees to what happens next in the experience."
Another way to comprehend "Reality" is to ask; "Did a part of the Universe experience it?" and then to ask, "Is there a memory of it?"
Since the dream is a creation, it is real. It has been experienced. It does not, however, exist or sustain in continuum. It will eventually disappear as if it never existed.
A common teaching I have found in literally all spiritual philosophies including Buddhism and Hindu is the observation; "All that exists is in constant transformation." The Illusion concept should not to be confused with the idea of 'was it real or was it not real'. It appears to regard the context that nothing in the Universe sustains eternally. In time, whatever it is, will eventually not exist. It will transform. Therefore all is an illusion. Only the Observer sustains.
A troubling association I commonly hear is the notion that, "If it is an illusion, then it must have no meaning or importance." Why does this make my buttocks clench. (?)
If it is imagined into the dream,.. then it is important. But only for the moment it exists, and only within the context it was dreamed.
Well, according to ACIM the dream movie is projected through one of 2 filters. These filters (which are also part of the illusion) give the dream a totally different meaning (=importance).
One is the Ego-filter and it gives the dream the meaning of specialness, time, cause and effect (guilt), attack and defense etc. This filter is very meaning-full.
The other filter is the filter of the Holy Spirit ("the right mind" or Jesus or whatever symbol of Truth).
This filter is the remembrance of Oneness and reverses all meaning and importance of the Ego-filter. Through this filter - in comparison to the other - everything has indeed to become meaningless for a while, before it gets the new meaning of Oneness.
This is just a very quick overview on how ACIM sees this and after studying nearly all the big philosophies and spiritual teachings from around the world, this was really a game changer for me.
About the topic of what is "real" and what is not, I can only tell you, that I have stopped asking me this question, because in my experience it doesn't lead anywhere but to philosophical mind-fucking.
For me, if you can see it, hear it, taste it, feel it or sense it, it's an illusion and has no reality on it's own. It's a symbol of the egos thought system and here to be forgiven (which is the courses version of "seeing the REALity behind it") .
Thank you for your comment! I really appreciate to take this topic deeper with you guys! 🙏