Transforming Hearts and Minds
THE NIGHTMARE:
The Ego's picture of you - "The picture you see of yourselves is deprived, unloving and very vulnerable. You CANNOT love this. Yet you can very easily escape from it, or better, leave it behind. You are not THERE, and that is not YOU." T-7.VII.3.2
- "The ego’s goal is quite explicitly EGO AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power EXCEPT ITS OWN. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation." T-11.V.4.4
THE HAPPY DREAM:
The way God sees you - "YOU are the work of God, and His Work is wholly lovable and wholly loving." T-1.III.2.3
"You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. ...You CANNOT replace the Kingdom, and you cannot replace YOURSELF. God, Who KNOWS your value, would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. Your value is in GOD’S Mind, and therefore not in yours alone. To accept yourself as God created you cannot be arrogance because it is the DENIAL of arrogance. To accept your littleness IS arrogant because it means that you believe YOUR evaluation of yourself is TRUER than God’s." T-9.VIII.10.1
CAN YOU IMAGINE...?
"Can you imagine what it means to have no cares, no worries, no anxieties, but merely to be perfectly calm and quiet all the time? Yet that is what time is for; to learn just that and nothing more." T-15.I.1.1
"You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where ALL perception is. Knowledge needs NO correction. Yet the dreams of love lead UNTO knowledge. In them you see nothing fearful, and BECAUSE of this they are the welcome that you OFFER knowledge." T-13.VII.9.1
"In your [holy] relationship, the Holy Spirit has gently laid the real world; the world of happy dreams, from which awaking is so easy and so natural. For, as your sleeping and your waking dreams represent the same wishes in YOUR mind, so do the real world and the truth of Heaven join in the Will of God. The dream of waking is easily transferred to its reality. For this dream comes from your will, JOINED with the Will of God." T-18.II.9.4
"The holy instant, your holy relationship, the Holy Spirit’s teaching, and all the means by which salvation is accomplished... are all but aspects of the plan to change your dreams of fear to happy dreams, from which you waken easily to knowledge. Put yourself not in charge of this, for you cannot distinguish between advance and retreat. Some of your greatest advances you have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats you have evaluated as success." T-18.V.1.3
"Happy dreams come true, NOT because they are dreams, but only because they are HAPPY. And so they must be loving. ...
It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. Nor your holy relationship a dream. All that remains of dreams within it is that it is still a SPECIAL relationship. Yet it is very useful to the Holy Spirit, Who HAS a special function here. It will become the happy dream through which He can spread joy to thousands on thousands who believe that love is fear, not happiness." T-18.V.4.1
"Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations that show you all fearful outcomes of imagined sin into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. They are HIS substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego’s purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step AWAY from sin, reminding you that it is NOT reality that frightens you, and that the errors which you made can be corrected." T-20.VIII.10.4
