In every chapter of this book I asked for and received either a dream or an out-of-body experience (OBE) that could be useful in explaining this material. My hope is that each personal experience will be useful to you. I do a lot of lucid and non lucid dream and OBE work. I meditate before going to sleep and invite my spirit guides to offer me a dream that can enhance or clarify the material. This has been and is a very useful growth tool for me. In Chapter 11, I will invite you to try it. You can train yourself to remember the details of your dreams and OBEs. Much knowledge can be extracted from the dream state. Along with the message that is offered through the imagery of the dream, there are also verbal messages that are offered. For me, these messages sometimes sound like a young, yet mature baritone voice within my head, and other times participants in the dream or OBE offer me input. All the messages intertwine and dissolve into one cooking pot that I then serve into my dream and OBE journal.

In the following dream sequence, I participated in a meditation exercise before going to sleep. The meditation question I asked my higher self and guides was: How did I create the current dream/illusion that I am experiencing? The following occurred:

In this dream, a person said a word, and before a single thought entered my mind, there appeared a plain box. I then understood that I had two choices. They were to take this box and see it as a gift that my brother was offering, or see it as a brick that I must defend against. I was also led to understand that every word or action, regardless of tone or manifestation, is the same, and that there are always and only two choices to deal with as a reaction and response. I understood that one choice united me with my brother, and the other separated us. The box itself was physically small, but I understood that the gift that lay within it was as boundless as it was beautiful. Yet, because of fear and judgment, I misperceived my brother's word as an attack, and felt that if I put myself behind this small box, my brother would disappear and I would again be safe. Over and over again, I heard noises I thought were coming from behind this box. My reaction again became fear, and I immediately perceived these noises as an attack against me. Every time I heard a noise, another box appeared, but because of my past experience I chose not to sit for a moment and open the box. Instead, I chose to protect myself by stacking one box on top of another, until I could no longer truly see my brother. Slowly, I surrounded myself with these boxes until no light could seep through. For a while I felt protected, but in the darkness I began to feel isolated, alone and afraid. I believed that isolation and fear were my only two choices. Yet, as I sat quietly in the dark, deep within me a voice for unity whispered. And as it did, I decided to move the boxes apart slightly to see if I could hear or see my brother better. Through the cracks, a little light seeped through, warming my face, and it felt loving and kind. I grabbed at every ray of light, and as I focused on the light I again heard a voice. I heard the voice, but because of past interactions with it, and without paying attention to what it was saying, I immediately closed the cracks until all I could hear were murmurs. These quiet murmurs kept getting louder, for my brother kept trying to reach me. But again I reacted with fear and felt that I needed to reinforce these boxes to keep the voices out. So with judgment and fear, I began cementing these boxes until they took the form of bricks that together took the form of walls. I felt that these walls would protect me from the noises I was hearing and the actions I was seeing. In darkness, I was isolated and alone, but I felt protected by my walls. But once again, I got tired of the darkness and isolation, and once again I began to hear and focus on the voice.

I then began to hear the familiar baritone voice. The best way I can describe it is for you to imagine yourself watching and listening to an instruction video that covers the complete inner vision of your mind. The following message, although very close to the original, is paraphrased. The voice said:

You have chosen to remember. My friend, you now have the opportunity to let light shine through the cracks in your walls. You carry within you the eternal memory of your Godself. As much as you think that you have completely closed yourself, there are cracks in your armor, and cracks in your masks and walls. They may be too small for you to believe that they can change your perceptions, yet within the cracks lie all you truly are. Within, there exists rays of light where you become boundless, and within this boundlessness is all you could ever truly desire. Protection is not needed here, for here there is nothing you need protection from. And if you focus on the light, all your walls will disappear into the nothingness from which they came.

There are places in your life where you have built walls around the truth of who you are. You've built these walls with judgment and cemented them with fear. You strained all your life to build and keep these walls together. These walls that you have built to protect you hold all perceptions, judgments and beliefs about yourself, your brothers and sisters, God and the world. You hide behind and defend these walls with your life; for you believe that if someone were to ever penetrate them, they would recoil in disgust once they saw who was really there. Methodically, on a daily basis, you reinforce these walls, creating emotional, psychological and spiritual barriers. You take secret pride in their structure and strength. Yet with every breeze, you curse the pebbles that bounce off these walls. And you even blame the wind for blowing. You keep telling yourself that you are safe, and yet you fear any breeze that dares caress your walls.
 

You have been taught to believe that in your walls' changelessness, your strength and safety lies. You are taught to fear change, for it means that your walls would weaken. So you defend these so-called impenetrable walls against anything that challenges their structure. To you, anything and everything that differs from your belief system challenges its structure. You spend your day in defense of pebbles, and curse the wind whenever any of these pebbles are tossed toward your walls. So you end up living your days in defense of these impenetrable walls. The walls that you built to defend you, you end up defending against the outside world, and you judge and curse any attempt to change or weaken them.

You tire of these illusions and try to escape them at night by attempting to sleep. But continuous thoughts of pebbles fill your mind and do not let you. In the darkness, a thousand thoughts flood your mind and so you even fight to fall asleep. Finally once asleep, these pebbles turn into monsters of all shapes and sizes, and you run away from them as they attack your walls. You wake up, afraid of the monsters you have made out of pebbles. You become relieved when you realize it was a dream. Still, you are hesitant to close your eyes and fall back into the dream. You blame the unconscious mind for playing tricks on you. You choose to see the unconscious mind as separate from you and you make yourself believe you have no control over it. You do not realize that it is your conscious belief in illusions that transfers into your unconscious mind - meaning you are the ultimate creator of both your conscious and unconscious thoughts. Finally, you close your eyes and go to bed afraid. In the morning, you awaken as tired as you were when you went to sleep. You receive no rest from your illusions, and wonder why you feel stressed, weak and tired.

My friend, when you awaken, you will understand that the illusions you make out of pebbles in your conscious mind are as unreal as the illusions you allow to become monsters in your unconscious mind. For both the pebbles and the monsters will be seen for what they truly are: illusions and nothing else. Illusions are unreal, thus it is only your recognition of their nothingness that will set you free. You will no longer experience fear once you recognize that all fear, regardless of its manifestation, is based on illusion. Soon you will not need to close your eyes to find rest; soon you will find that true rest comes not from sleeping, but from awakening.

As you live your life in defense of these walls, what you hoped would not happen, happens. Everyone learns who you are by what you defend. You show who you are by what you treasure, and you will defend what you treasure. For you live your life outside yourself, in defense of what you built to conceal and defend you. And by defending what you built, all those outside see what you believe yourself to be. You who have made these walls what they are, you who have made these walls out of nothing, have spent your life in defense of that nothingness and wonder why you feel incomplete and unfulfilled.

You thought these so-called impenetrable walls would keep you safe. But these walls have been built on and of sand, and thus by their very nature are unstable and ever changing. Regardless of how slight the wind, it will blow your walls into different forms, upsetting you every time. You live surrounded by an illusion of safety and peace, and then wonder why you feel unsafe and stressed. You live surrounded by walls of your own creation, and wonder why you feel isolated, alone and incomplete. You live day and night in defense of this illusion, and wonder why you feel weakened, stressed and tired.

You have been taught that to defend these walls, that to defend yourself is right and honorable. Yet it is actually not the defending that you fear, but the idea that there is nothing to defend. For if there is nothing worth defending, then you are, by the ego's definition, worthless. My friend, you are not worthless, and within you, you know this to be true. You need not defend, not because there is nothing worth defending, but because there is truly nothing to defend against. Ask yourself, "Would a right-minded person spend his existence defending his walls against pebbles? Would a right-minded person see a pebble and make it into a monster?" There will always be pebbles on this beach. It is up to you to decide if you will make them into monsters, or realize that they are but pebbles. Whenever you feel stressed, tired, alone, incomplete or afraid, it is because you have made pebbles into different-shaped monsters that you believe can attack, and that you must defend against.

My friend, it is not the idea that others will look within you and recoil that frightens you, but that others will look within you and see God's perfect creation. Again, the idea of worth appears. You do not feel that someone who can experience stress, tiredness, loneliness, fear, unhappiness or incompleteness could be God's perfect creation. All of these feelings are thoughts you have made real by your belief in them. These illusions have been shaped by a sense of judgment, fear and separation. The only decision you need to make to feel their opposite is to choose their opposite. A sense of connection and love is their opposite. Every moment you have this choice. One decision will offer you peace, the other decision will not. In the end, this is the choice that is yours to make. The life you create comes from the choices you make, the choices you make come from who you believe yourself to be. Who you believe yourself to be comes from either the perception you have made real, or the knowledge you have accepted.

Acceptance of knowledge is the recognition that your highest will and God's will are one. The manifestation of this recognition is the state of peace. A little willingness to be open to this possibility is all that you need. If you choose to knock on the door, it will be opened, but you can also choose to recognize that there is no door. There is no door because there are no barriers between you and your creator. The only barriers you will ever encounter are those you believe still exist. Note that you are not judged for any barriers you create. A little willingness and a knock on the door is all it takes to remove any barrier, regardless of its physical, mental or spiritual manifestation.

My friend, I feel deep love for you. You need not take one more step. You need not cry one more tear. You need simply recognize and remember the truth of who you are. That is all you need do. It is much easier than your ego will now let you believe, but as you begin to remove the walls, you will recognize that this is so. As you remove the walls, you will look back and smile at what you had made real, and you too will begin to feel a deeper love for your brothers and sisters. Walls such as color, race, age, belief system, religion, actions, reactions and judgments will begin to crumble, and as they do, you will encounter all your brothers and sisters with open arms. You hold deep love for all your brothers and sisters. You might not yet recognize this, but it is so. For what is true is true, whether you choose to believe in it or not.

The walls that you have built with judgment and cemented with fear will be dismantled by forgiveness. The same individuals you blamed for the walls' existence will themselves assist you in dismantling them. The ones you judged and have forgiven will hold their hands out to you. You will see this for the first time - not because their hands had not been there before, but because you had never chosen to truly open your eyes. Forgiveness is the only requirement for you to truly see. Once you forgive, you will experience gratitude toward your brothers and sisters for their assistance, and you will gladly take their hands and experience the gift. Once you take their hands, you will be elevated into a beautiful world, a world that has, in truth, always been there, simply waiting for you to open your eyes, to awaken and enjoy. All the judgments you ever made, all the brothers and sisters you refused to forgive, and all the anger you chose to hold within, through forgiveness and understanding, will be replaced with love. And you will cry once more, but not from fear, isolation or loneliness, but from your absolute love and respect for God's gift, for your absolute love and respect for your trueself.

 

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of the great spiritual / self development book You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy by James Blanchard Cisneros.