Sleepers Awake

                          Resurrected Christ, by William Blake

Why spend 10,000 lifetimes struggling to turn a nightmare into a sweet dream, when it only takes a single moment to awaken?

The only real option for changing the dream is to wake up. Lost in a dream, I cannot change the dream, especially because I am every other character in the dream as well. Just so, one who is lost in the world cannot change the world.

We cannot change the dream of the world, but we can wake up inside and become the Witness, whose clarity is the Self, whose bliss is effortless repose. The is the grace of deep meditation: to awaken the Witness.

Though ever-changing in its appearances, the essentially dreamlike nature of the world remains the same. The old dream story just puts on new garments, but it is the same old melodrama, filled with magical beauty and horrific violence, angels and demons, monarchs and slaves, warriors and peacemaker. And the dreamer is all of it.

Jesus spoke of a heavenly Kingdom; yet clearly, he did prescribe a new economic or political order, for that would simply be reforming the dream. Jesus was talking about waking up.

He said, "My Kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36). "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you" (Luke 17:21).

The Kingdom is Christ-Consciousness, the space of Awakening, the Witness within. The dream of the world is an endless turning circle, the Wheel of Samsara. We cannot change the world's dream, but we can wake up, and we can help others wake up.

The luminosity of the Witness outshines the forms of the turning world. For one who is awake, there is no more birth or death. Waking up is the Resurrection.

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