By Gonny When I joined my first retreat 25 years ago, I was still fresh and new to A Course in Miracles. I found myself surrounded by what seemed like ‘advanced’ students, people who spoke with great certainty. And what did I hear again and again?
“It’s just a dream.”
“This isn’t real.”
They said it with such ease that it almost made everything sound unimportant….diseases, poverty, even wars. As if the struggles of life were something not serious, a trivial play on a stage.
I’ll be honest: it drove me crazy. My first reaction was…This can’t be right! How can you say that suffering and pain don’t matter?
Maybe that frustration was exactly why I wanted to dig deeper. Something in me sensed that this phrase carried a hidden depth I did not yet see.
After some years, I truly realized that the word dream in the Course does not mean “a silly fantasy” or “something to be dismissed.” It means something radical: that this entire cosmos, this whole universe, is part of a thought. A thought of separation in the Mind of the Son of God.
And if it is a thought, then the key must also lie in the Mind. Not in the body, not in the endless attempts to fix the surface of the dream, but in that still inner space where the choice is made: ego or Holy Spirit. Fear or Love.
Slowly, I began to see that “it’s just a dream” was not an invitation to belittle life, but to transform the way I looked at it. To bring every situation…sickness, conflict, even war…into the light of forgiveness. To learn to say: This is not the Will of God. And if it is not His Will, it cannot be truly real.
And then something opened. Freedom did not come from dismissing the world with a casual shrug, but from applying the teaching in real situations. From realizing: I don’t have to take this dream at face value. I can choose peace instead.
When someone cuts you off in traffic, you may feel a rush of anger, ready to shout. And then your friend, a Course student, smiles and says:
“Well… it’s just a dream.”
It’s okay to roll your eyes… but then laugh and answer:
“Yes, true. But because this is a dream, I must be the dreamer! And as the dreamer, I can choose a different dream, by forgiving.”
That’s the turning point. It’s not about dismissing your feelings or pretending that anger or pain don’t exist. It’s about remembering that they are part of the dream and that the dream itself can shift the moment you choose a different Teacher in your mind. With the Holy Spirit as your Teacher, what seemed like an attack can become a lesson in forgiveness, a chance to remember Love instead of fear.
If this is a dream, there must be Something that does not dream.
And that Something… is who you/ I…..really AM.
With love and light,
G.