Can I experience dislike and still be awake?

Asking for a friend. 😄

Many spiritual seekers unconsciously answer:

"No."

If I dislike something, I must not be awake.

If I feel angry, I must not be awake.

If I feel hurt, I must not be awake.

If I don't accept every single thing in my perception, I must not be awake.

So begins the struggle.

Not with the experience itself...

But with having the experience.

Part of the confusion comes from mistaking dislike for judgment.

These are not necessarily the same thing.

I can experience dislike without making it a problem.

Yet many seekers take a simple experience:

"I don't like this."

...and turn it into:

"I shouldn't feel this way."

Now something else has been added.

Not only am I experiencing the perception...

I am judging myself for having the experience.

There is an important distinction between acceptance of experience and acceptance of form.

Acceptance of experience says:

"I perceive this, and this is how I seem to feel about it."

Acceptance of form says:

"I must find a way to be okay with this."

These are not the same.

The focus has subtly shifted from questioning the perception to changing myself.

The illusion remains unquestioned.

Miracles become possible when we acknowledge our experience while remaining willing to question the reality of the form.

Otherwise, something very strange happens.

We stop questioning the illusion and start questioning ourselves.

We stop bringing the perception to the light and start trying to heal ourselves for not being okay with it.

We stop questioning the illusion and start trying to become the kind of person who would be okay with it.

That is a very different path.

And one that, in my experience, keeps illusions firmly in place.

🌺 LIVE WEEKLY FROM KEHENA 🌺

Join me each week from beautiful Kehena on the Big Island of Hawai‘i for conversations, teachings, and deep spiritual exploration. Whether you attend in person, on Facebook Live, or through Zoom, you are warmly welcome.

✨ Mondays • 3–5 PM
Wisdom Dialogues
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A Course in Miracles: Lesson of the Day
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A Course in Miracles Deep Dive
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📅 Through August 31, 2026

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🌐 More resources: hopejohnson.org

All events are free. Donations are appreciated but never required.

I look forward to exploring, questioning, learning, and remembering together. 💜✨

🦁🐑 ACIM DEEP DIVE

The Lion and the Lamb
*Strength and Innocence Living in Peace*

*"The lion and the lamb lying down together refers to the fact that strength and innocence are not in conflict, but naturally live in peace."*

Many spiritual seekers have been taught that innocence is weakness.

Jesus teaches the opposite.

The Lamb of God is not a symbol of sacrifice, suffering, or bloodshed.

It is a symbol of innocence.

And innocence is not fragile.

It is joined with strength.

This week we'll explore one of the most beautiful reinterpretations in *A Course in Miracles* as Jesus reclaims the meaning of the Lamb of God and teaches why only the innocent can truly see.

📖 Chapter 3, Section 3
Paragraph 14 and Beyond
*Complete & Annotated Edition*

📅 Wednesday, June 10, 2026
🕒 3:00–5:00 PM HST

📍 In Person
12-446 Ole Ole Street
Kehena Beach Estates, Hawaiʻi

📺 Facebook Live
https://www.facebook.com/HopeAchaiaJohnson/live

💻 Zoom
bit.ly/loveisone

✍️ Substack
hopejohnsonwisdom.substack.com

Many of us were taught that love means carrying the emotional weight of the people we care about.

If they are hurt, we try to make them feel better.

If they misunderstand us, we try to explain ourselves.

If they are uncomfortable, we try to make them comfortable.

Over time, we can begin carrying responsibilities that were never ours.

But there is another way.

You can be kind without fixing.

You can be loving without rescuing.

You can remain open without abandoning yourself.

And when you stop carrying what does not belong to you, something interesting happens.

The relationship becomes more honest.

Sometimes both people move forward together.

Sometimes they don't.

Not because love disappeared.

Not because anyone was rejected.

But because sacrifice ended.

Love remains.

But the relationship no longer accommodates hidden agendas.

💜💛

Why People Can Become Uncomfortable When You Stop Accepting Responsibility for Their Perception of You…

I didn’t accept the role he offered me, and that made the dynamic feel unsafe for him.

He wanted me to be hurt.

He wanted me to be the one judging him.

He wanted me to be the one evaluating him.

Not consciously, perhaps.

But if I accepted those roles, his discomfort would have an explanation.

He could point to me and say:

“That’s why I feel this way.”

But I wasn’t hurt.

I wasn’t judging him.

And I wasn’t interested in relating through fear and self-protection.

So something interesting happened.

The story stopped working.

And when the story stopped working, the discomfort remained.

Many of us have experienced this.

The nervous system becomes activated, and the mind immediately looks for a cause.

A person.

A conversation.

A relationship.

Something to explain why we feel uncomfortable.

But the activation actually comes first…

Before a story is attached to it.

The story is what gives the activation somewhere to land.

This is why people can become uncomfortable when you stop accepting responsibility for their perception of you.

If you refuse to be the villain…

If you refuse to be the rescuer…

If you refuse to be the one who caused their discomfort…

They are left facing something much closer to home.

Their own experience.

And that can feel far more threatening than blaming someone else.

The fearful mind reads nervous system activation as proof that distance is safer than exposure.

Distance allows us to keep the story.

Exposure requires us to question it.

What if the discomfort isn’t actually coming from them?

What if the fear isn’t being caused by the relationship?

What if the story is simply protecting you from feeling something you don’t yet know how to face?

These are not easy questions.

But they are the beginning of genuine peace and freedom from fear.

Because the moment we stop looking for someone to blame, we become available for healing.

❤️‍🩹 💫

Nothing in this world can satisfy.

And healing is like the happy games children play.

These can seem like contradictory ideas.

If nothing here can satisfy, why dance?

Why make love?

Why laugh with friends?

Why enjoy a beautiful meal, a sunset, or a walk on the beach?

Yet children do not play because they expect the game to satisfy them forever.

They play because playing is joyful.

They are not seeking completion.

They are expressing it.

That’s the distinction.

The problem is not the dance.

The problem is asking the dance to give us something we believe we lack.

The problem is not romance.

The problem is asking romance to establish our worth.

The problem is not sex.

The problem is asking sex to make us whole.

A happy game is enjoyed while it lasts.

A bargain begins when we start paying for it with our peace.

The friendship is the happy game.

Staying after respect has disappeared is the bargain.

The relationship is the happy game.

Pretending our needs don’t matter is the bargain.

The dance is the happy game.

Continuing to dance after it no longer feels mutually loving is the bargain.

Work we love is the happy game.

Sacrificing our peace to keep the job is the bargain.

When we begin tolerating what does not feel loving because we are afraid of losing what feels good, the happy game has become a bargain.

When we start sacrificing ourselves to keep an experience alive, the happy game has become a bargain.

Children stop enjoying a game when it stops being fun.

Adults often keep playing long after the joy has gone because they have become attached to the reward.

Healing is not the absence of joy in form.

Healing is the end of bargaining.

The happy game remains.

Because sacrificing our peace no longer seems like a reasonable price to pay for anything.

What would change if you truly believed that God has no doubt about you?

Not that He hopes you'll make it.

Not that He's waiting to see what happens.

Not that you'll eventually become worthy.

But that He is already completely certain of what you are.

The ego's voice is full of questions, conditions, and doubts.

God's Voice is certainty.

Perhaps the greatest act of faith is not believing in God.

Perhaps it is being willing to believe that God knows what He created.

💜🙏

From our recent Deep Dive into Lesson 160... I am at Home. Fear is the Stranger Here.

https://hopejohnsonwisdom.substack.com/p/i-am-at-home-june-9-2026-lesson-160?r=5i3r8l

WHEN I STOPPED WAITING TO REST

There was a subtle role I didn't even realize I was playing.

It didn't always look like chasing.

Sometimes it looked incredibly patient. Kind. Understanding.

Spiritually mature.

It whispered:

"Maybe one day I can finally rest in being just as I am."

I know that role well.

For a long time, I believed I had already released the need for approval. Yet I discovered there was still a quiet hope living underneath the surface.

Not a demand.

Not manipulation.

But a secret expectation that perhaps, one day, love would recognize itself and choose me.

Then the change occurred.

I stopped playing the role.

I didn't push love away.

I didn't ask it to come closer.

I didn't make a dramatic declaration.

I simply stopped participating in the dynamic that required me to patiently wait for anyone's decision.

It took very little effort.

My relationships ~ with friends, lovers, and my community ~ immediately began revealing themselves.

I realized that I had asked them to give me the rest that only Love could give.

When the role disappeared, whatever was true remained.

If friendship was there, friendship remained.

If mutual attraction was there, it remained.

If nothing remained…

Then nothing had been lost.

Only the role had disappeared.

Years earlier, I noticed the same pattern with my body.

Growing up in Southern California, I absorbed the belief that I was almost enough.

Almost beautiful enough.

Almost desirable enough.

Almost perfect.

"If only you lost five pounds..."

The boys would say it.

The culture reinforced it.

And I believed it.

I was disciplined. I would have done almost anything to achieve the physique they admired.

I wanted it too.

I could lose weight, but my body remained softer than was seemingly expected.

I could do cardio, diet, and train hard with weights, but I still had that soft layer of fat right beneath the skin.

I spent years believing I needed to improve this body before I could fully relax into being loved.

Ironically, I later discovered that my body had simply inherited a softer than usual connective tissue pattern from my family.

It had never been a failure.

The body wasn't asking to become worthy.

It was just being a body.

Only my mind was asking it to prove my worth.

In my relationships... even when I connected with a partner who enjoyed and appreciated my body... it seemed like I wasn't measuring up in other areas... it was still there...

"If only he approved of me..."

Some people would lovingly say that I only needed self approval.

But approving of myself was never the point either.

The point was to stop believing that my value waited on anyone's approval... including my own.

There is tremendous freedom in no longer asking anyone to confirm what God has already established.

If they come close, beautiful.

If they walk away, beautiful.

If friendship remains, beautiful.

If it ends, beautiful.

Not because forms don't matter. But because none of them determine what I am.

I am not a body.

I am free.

I am still as God created me.

(A mantra I adopted from A Course in Miracles.)

From there, I no longer need to convince anyone to grant me their approval. Nor do I need to reject anyone for not doing so.

I simply stopped participating in the illusion that my completion lies in anyone's decision.

Then my relationships could become whatever they truly are.

And now...

I no longer seek love as a place to rest. I rest in Love.

And from that rest… Love is free to simply be Love.

"The only addiction is to guilty thoughts."

That single sentence has triggered many people.

Most of us have been taught that our suffering comes from the habit itself. But what if the habit is only a symptom? What if guilt is what keeps every cycle alive?

When guilt is released, our relationship with everything begins to change naturally.

Healing doesn't begin with self-condemnation.

It begins with joy.

🎥 A clip from Wisdom Dialogues of June 22, 2026.

See full video here: https://hopejohnsonwisdom.substack.com/p/body-is-not-your-report-card-june?r=5i3r8l

I'd love to hear what comes up for you.

WE ARE NOT LIVING IN A UNIVERSE

We are perceiving a universe we have made up.

Fear of what we made keeps us believing we are trapped inside it.

As truth is accepted, perception changes.

Fear dissolves.

What once seemed solid begins to collapse.

In the end, truth reveals there never was a universe capable of containing us.

Do not be afraid of anything you seem to see here.

Instead, be willing to see it all as maximally beneficial in helping you see beyond it.

Gratitude for everything and everyone, together with radical acceptance of how you feel in any given moment—without projecting ideas of right or wrong—are the keys to escaping false reality and remembering Creation.

You are not something that can be threatened.

Nothing your senses report can satisfy you.

You are complete exactly as you are, forever.

Let everything your senses report become a means of remembering your true Identity.

💛

The ego thrives on battle.

Its most convincing strategy is to persuade us to sacrifice present peace to battle against the ego.

It says, “Fight your ego. Defeat it. Sacrifice it. Conquer it.”

But have you noticed what happens next?

Once the ego seems to be “slain” in your own mind, it immediately begins looking for the ego in everyone else. Now the battle is against their arrogance, their ignorance, their unconsciousness, their attachment, their politics, their religion, or their spirituality.

The battlefield changes.

The battle does not.

This is how the ego perpetuates itself. Conflict is not an unfortunate side effect of the ego’s thought system. Conflict is its lifeblood.

The ego does not fear losing any battles ~ it fears the gentleness with which innocence is met.

It is quite content for you to identify as someone who has “overcome the ego,” provided there is still another ego somewhere that needs correcting.

The war simply continues under a more spiritual name.

To the ego, innocence is weakness and gentleness is passivity.

Yet these are your greatest strengths.

This is why sacrifice and struggle seem so holy within the ego’s framework. They preserve the belief that peace must be earned through conflict.

But peace cannot be the outcome of conflict because conflict is the denial of peace.

Yet the ego is nothing more than a mistaken thought ~ a belief without reality.

A mistaken thought does not need to be attacked.

It only needs to be recognized as mistaken.

When a child insists that there are monsters hiding under her bed, we do not declare war on the child. We gently offer the correction because truth requires no battle.

The same is true of the ego.

When it is seen as valueless, there is nothing left to sacrifice.

Battle loses its appeal.

There is nothing left to conquer.

Nothing to defend.

Nothing to prove.

Only a quiet willingness to let go of what was never true.

This is repentance in its deepest sense ~ not self-condemnation, not spiritual warfare, but a gentle change of mind.

The attraction to conflict fades.

The need to correct others fades.

The fascination with enemies fades.

And what remains is something the ego can never understand:

The Peace of God.

Not because a battle has finally been won.

But because truth has been remembered.

Love has never needed to win because it has never been threatened. 🌴💛

We are not here.

To ask what we are here for is already to accept the premise that we came from somewhere, arrived in a place, and must now discover our purpose within it.

That question only has meaning if separation truly happened.

It did not.

We did not descend into a world.

We did not leave Love and enter something else.

We remain exactly as we were created.

What seemed to happen was only the acceptance of a mistaken idea: the belief that we could become something other than Love, something other than what God created.

→ The mistaken thought gave rise to fear.
→ Fear gave rise to the world we seem to see.

The ego is not what we are. It is the thought system built upon the impossible idea that separation could be real.

There is nothing boring about being Love.

Only the ego imagines that peace is empty and seeks drama to convince itself that aliveness depends upon change, conflict, and becoming.

Love has no need to become anything.

It simply is.

Our purpose is not to discover why we are here, but to awaken from the belief that we ever came here at all.

We are not here because we never left Home.

What remains has always been true:

Love never left.
God never changed.
And neither did we.

There is a difference between awakening in the dream and awakening from the dream.

The bridge between the two is the undoing of the belief in separation.

That undoing requires a willingness to let every person, circumstance, relationship, and perception serve the Holy Spirit’s purpose rather than the ego’s.

As purpose changes, perception changes.

As perception is healed, the belief in separation is gradually undone.

Sometimes the ego wants to claim that it has already awakened from the dream while the mind is still perceiving separate images and identifying with the limitations of the dream.

For instance, if I still experience myself as needing sleep, food, shelter, or anything else in this world…

 If I still perceive conflict, fear, lack, vulnerability, or limitation…

 If I’m still able to post here on social media…

Then I am still accepting the dream as real to some degree.

There is nothing shameful about acknowledging that.

Honesty about where I believe I am allows correction to occur.

The Holy Spirit does not ask me to deny my present experience by merely declaring that I am already released from dreaming that I have a body.

It asks me to recognize the purpose I am giving everything I perceive and to allow that purpose to be changed.

The answer is not to proclaim that the journey is complete while I am still experiencing myself within the conditions of the dream.

The answer is to let every experience become a classroom for forgiveness until the belief in separation has been completely undone.

Reality has never changed.

We have never truly left God.

Yet we do believe we have as long as we seem to see separate bodies, and that belief is an active use of mind that must be corrected.

One teaching reminds us of what is eternally true.

The other gives us the means by which the mind can fully accept it.

Confusing the truth with our present acceptance of the truth can become spiritual bypassing.

Holding both together allows the dream to be given a new purpose until being awake in the dream culminates in full awakening from the dream.

Holiness does not depend upon body image or location.

Wherever Christ is recognized becomes holy ground.

The same world that once appeared alien can reflect Heaven when seen through innocence.

Earth and Heaven are not literally joined.

The world of perception does not become eternal reality, and form does not merge with the formless. Heaven remains what it has always been ~ changeless, unified, and untouched by the dream of separation.

What changes is perception.

If Christ is recognized through this body, then for this moment, this body serves as holy ground ~ not because flesh is divine, but because Love is being remembered here.

When judgment is released, the world is no longer used to prove separation, guilt, and fear.

The same images are given a different purpose. They begin to reflect innocence, joining, and peace.

The world has not become Heaven. The body has not become spirit.

Rather, both have been given a holy purpose and become transparent to what lies beyond them.

This is the forgiven world ~ not reality itself, but a pure reflection of reality.

It is the happy dream that gently leads the mind beyond all dreams.

What drives people to vote?

Some say it's hope.

Some say it's fear.

Some say it's anger or disgust.

But fear, anger and disgust don’t come from the world. They come from a mind that’s confused about its identity.

And hope that the world can be fixed by changing outer circumstances is part of the same confusion.

When the mind believes the cause of its distress is outside itself, it naturally looks outside itself for the solution. It becomes invested in a false system that has no real authority or power.

It says, “If we can just put the right humans in charge of other humans, we’ll finally be free.”

The ego calls that freedom.

A sovereign mind recognizes it as another form of dependence.

This does not mean the outer choice must look a certain way. It means the mind can become honest about what is driving the choice.

Am I voting from the desire to make someone else responsible for my peace?

Or am I remembering that no government, institution, candidate, or personality can give me what God has already given?

True authority is not established through elections.

It is remembered in God.

The Happy Dream Is Not a Perfected World

An important distinction can easily become blurred when we speak about “saving the world.”

Saving the world does not mean making the world sufficiently peaceful, fair, healthy, prosperous, or loving that it finally becomes worthy of keeping.

Salvation is in the mind.

The world is saved for us through the healing of perception.

Forgiveness changes the purpose the world serves in the mind. Instead of using what seems to prove separation, guilt, fear, and conflict, we allow everything we encounter to serve the undoing of those beliefs.

This does not mean becoming indifferent to what appears to happen here.

We may be guided to feed someone, comfort someone, build something, change something, protect something, give something away, or take action that seems genuinely helpful in the relative sense.

But the form of the action is not salvation.
Its purpose is what matters.

There is a profound difference between being guided to act lovingly within the dream and believing our function is to repair the dream until it becomes Heaven.

Heaven is not the world finally working properly. Heaven is what has always been and always is ~ untouched by the seeming appearance of a world of separation.

The happy dream is not a world in which nothing unpleasant appears, everyone behaves lovingly, no one experiences sickness, governments stop being corrupt, conflict disappears from form, and every worldly problem has finally been solved.

The happy dream is healed perception of the world.

What changes fundamentally is the mind that is looking.

As perception is healed, the world no longer serves as evidence that separation is real. It becomes a classroom for forgiveness, a means of communication, and ultimately a reflection of innocence rather than guilt.

And from that healed purpose, loving forms may naturally follow.

Yet even this is not the end.

A forgiven world is valuable not because it becomes a better place to remain, but because it no longer hides what is beyond it.

When perception of the world has been healed, it becomes a gentle witness rather than a prison. It no longer binds the mind to fear. It begins to lead beyond itself.

The happy dream is a healed perception of the world ~ not a perfected version of the world.

In that sense, saving the world is not about preserving it. It is about letting it serve its final purpose ~ to point beyond itself to what has always been true.

We can participate fully in what seems to be happening here without confusing the dream with Reality. We can care without making suffering ultimately real. We can respond without believing salvation depends upon outcomes. We can be helpful without taking on the impossible assignment of perfecting an illusion.

Saving the world is not about making the world worthy of keeping.

It is about allowing the mind that dreams the world to be healed.

And as that healing is accepted, the world becomes something gently outgrown ~ not because it has been destroyed, but because it has fulfilled its purpose. 💫

Rejecting a Person Is Not the Same as Declining the Relationship They Are Offering

There is a huge difference between rejecting a person and declining a particular form of relationship that they are offering.

We can confuse these very easily.

We may experience feeling deeply seen, loved, and respected by someone.

And then they may offer us a form of relationship that feels inconsistent, painful, competitive, confusing, or simply no longer desirable. Because we feel deeply connected to them, we may think that saying no to the form means saying no to them.

It doesn't.

I can recognize your innocence and also recognize that I do not want to participate in this particular dynamic.

I can love you and not want the form of relationship you are currently offering.

I can be free of resentment without remaining available.

I can stop hoping that you will finally recognize how to love without fear and also stop asking myself to wait for you.

Sometimes continuing to participate in a particular form of relating is actually a way of waiting for love to be reflected through that form.

And for a while, the moments when that love seemed to be reflected felt wonderful.

There was the high of being deeply met.

The high of feeling seen completely.

The high of sharing desire.

But when the form changed again, the low followed.

And eventually there can be a very simple recognition:

✨The high is not worth the low that follows it.

Not because the other person is wrong.

Not because they need to behave differently.

Not because love has disappeared.

But because I have seen enough repetitions of this pattern to know that I am not interested in another round.

That is where something begins to soften.

I do not need to turn you into the villain in order to refuse the arrangement you offer.

I do not need to prove that I deserve better.

I do not need to believe that you caused me pain.

And I do not need to give you access to me in order to prove that my love is unconditional.

Love is not measured by how much discomfort I am willing to endure.

Love does not require continued participation in every form.

Sometimes love allows the form to change.

Sometimes love allows it to end.

And just because a particular form has ended, the relationship is not destroyed.

It can still serve forgiveness by refusing to make anyone guilty, refusing to make their behavior the cause of my losing sight of peace, and recognizing their innocence.

🩵 The form can end while love remains.

I don't need this form to change in order to love you, and I don't need to continue this form in order to love you either.

Sometimes the most loving thing I can say is:

💛 I love you, and this form of relationship is not for me.

That is not rejection.

Rejection says, You are the problem.

Clarity sometimes says, No thank you. Not now. Or not anymore.

Rejection makes the person wrong.

Clarity allows me to decline a form without withdrawing love.

I am free to meet the form exactly as it is rather than remain attached to what it could potentially become.

And that clarity came when I recognized that the form of our relationship had already become something I no longer wanted to nurture.

Then your attention could come or go.

Your apparent choices no longer determined my peace.

I no longer needed us to share the same path.

And we are still held in love.

Sometimes, from that place of love, the answer is simply:

✨No, not this.

Not no to you.

Not no to love.

Just no to this particular form.

And that can be a very loving answer. 🩵

WHEN THE WORLD STOPS BEING A PROBLEM

Yesterday I found myself saying something that sounded rather extreme:

I don’t see the world as a miracle. I see it as an abomination.

And there was no heaviness in it.

Abomination is a strong word. It refers to something profoundly contrary to what is true. And that is exactly what I mean.

Look at what this world depicts.

What is whole appears fragmented.
What is eternal appears to be born and die.
What is innocent appears guilty.
What is limitless appears confined to a body.
Love appears conditional, scarce, temporary, and losable.

The world is an image of an impossible idea: separation made shadows and gave meaning to them.

And yet…I don’t see any of this as a problem that needs to be solved.

That changes everything.

I DON’T NEED TO FIX THE MIRROR

If the world is showing me the effects of a thought system, trying to fix the effects while leaving their cause untouched makes no sense.

I don’t need to fix the mirror.

The mirror is useful precisely because it shows me what I have chosen to believe.

When something in the world disturbs me, frightens me, angers me, makes me jealous, or makes me feel lacking, I don’t have to rearrange the image until I feel safe again.

I can look at what the image is showing me.

What would I have to believe for this to mean what I think it means?

And there is the opportunity.

Not to get something from the world.

To recognize the fearful strategies I have been using so they can be released.

The world was made to hide its cause. Forgiveness lets me use the world for undoing its cause.

THIS MAKES THE WORLD INCREDIBLY FUN

This is the part I find hilarious.

One might think that seeing the world this way would make a person detached from it, serious about spirituality, or uninterested in playing with form.

I experience almost the opposite.

There is so much fun to be had while playing with the world of form.

I can enjoy beauty. I can travel. Dance. Make things. Hang out in gorgeous spaces. Eat delicious food. Swim in the ocean. Play with money and business and bodies and relationships and all the strange little arrangements we make here.

None of it has to be rejected.

It also doesn’t have to be salvation.

A beautiful experience cannot complete me.

An unpleasant experience doesn’t have the power to diminish me.

A relationship will never establish my worth.

Money doesn’t establish my safety.

A body doesn’t establish my identity.

The world is not capable of becoming Heaven. (Although, it can reflect Heaven.)

And when I stop demanding that it do something it could never do, it becomes much lighter to play with.

EVERYTHING BECOMES USEFUL

The beautiful things are useful.

The ugly things are useful.

Desire is useful.

Jealousy is useful.

Conflict is useful.

Pleasure is useful.

Fear is useful.

The person I adore is a mirror.

The person who annoys the shit out of me is also a mirror.

The experience I desperately want is a mirror.

The experience I’m trying to avoid is a mirror.

Nothing has to be wasted.

Everything can reveal what I am presently believing and the strategies I have constructed around those beliefs.

And once they are exposed, I no longer have to defend them.

I can allow another purpose to be given to what I see.

THE WORLD CANNOT BE MADE REAL

There was a time when spirituality seemed to involve trying to make the world itself miraculous or sacred.

But that can become just another way of making the world seem real.

Love is real. Truth is real. What I am is real.

The world doesn’t have to be real... and in truth, it isn’t.

The world can be recognized for what it is: a picture that seems to witness to separation, which I can use for an entirely different purpose.

I don’t need to make the world real in order to enjoy playing with it.

And this is why I feel increasingly free to enjoy it.

I’m not asking the mirror to become beautiful enough to save me.

I’m not trying to perfect the dream.

I’m not waiting for circumstances to arrange themselves correctly before I can be at peace.

(continued on part 2)

(Continued from Part 1)

I’m willing to look.

I’m willing to laugh.

I’m willing to play.

And whenever the world seems to become serious again, it is showing me exactly where I have once again mistaken an image for a cause.

The world doesn’t need to be fixed.

It can be used.

What was made to hide the cause can now be used to undo it.

And whenever I’m willing to stop making it responsible for my happiness, safety, identity, or salvation, something rather wonderful happens:

I get to play with it. 🎈💃