The Happy Dream

The happy dream has nothing to do with the world or the body. It might not sound like it, but that's the good news. The bad news is the "happy dream" most of us seek has everything to do with the body, and is impossible to achieve. It reflects the ego's maxim of pure hopelessness: "Seek but do not find." (T-16.V.6:5)

This is the compromise so many of us have tried to make with the content of the Course. We've tried to bring love to fear, light to darkness, Jesus into the world. We've mistakenly tried to set forgiveness "in an earthly frame." (S-2.III.7:3)

In contrast to the ego's doctrine, Jesus counsels us to, "Seek and find His message in the holy instant, where all illusions are forgiven." (T-16.VII.11:1) Seek and find. That's why it's good news. Happiness is not only possible, but inevitable - not a mere hope always just out of reach, but solidly within our grasp, and guaranteed. We just need to learn where to look.

Like the happy dream, the holy instant has nothing to with time. It is that instant, outside of space and time, in which we choose Jesus as our teacher, rather than the ego. This occurs in our mind, not in the world. It is the miracle that returns us to the awareness of our identity as the dreamer of the dream, and real choice.

When our mind sides with the ego it projects the thought of separation into a phenomenal world of specifics and ever greater fragmentation. However, one of the most important concepts in the Course states that "Ideas leave not their source, and their effects but seem to be apart from them." (T-26.VII.4:7) But seem to be apart from them. The internal dream of separation has not left the mind to make an external dream of separation. "There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach." (W-pI.132.6:2-3)

If there is no world, then "forgiveness set in an earthly frame" is meaningless. If there is no world, then "the happy dream" set in an earthly frame must be just as meaningless. Since forgiveness does not occur between bodies, the happy dream has no relevance to the body. Forgiveness occurs in the mind, and since forgiveness is the happy dream, then the happy dream must also be in the mind. It is to the mind, then, that we must return.

The process begins by our recognition that the external dream is a projection of the internal dream, the world's dream is a projection of the secret dream, the second dream is a projection of the first dream. However you choose to describe it, the world of separation is but a shadow of the thought of separation, and if you try and forgive the shadow you only succeed in reinforcing its seeming reality while simultaneously protecting its source.

Its source - the idea that we have separated from love - is the unhappy dream. The problem is not the thought of separation itself, but rather our choosing the thought of separation. Joining with Jesus, the symbol for the love in our mind, and looking with Him at our choice for the unhappy dream - specialness, separation, individuality - and forgiving it, is the correction for this error. This joining with Jesus in our mind, and the experience of His love, is the happy dream.

The happy dreams the Holy Spirit brings are different from the dreaming of the world, where one can merely dream he is awake. The dreams forgiveness lets the mind perceive do not induce another form of sleep, so that the dreamer dreams another dream. His happy dreams are heralds of the dawn of truth upon the mind. They lead from sleep to gentle waking, so that dreams are gone. And thus they cure for all eternity. (W-pI.140.3:1-4)