This essay originally appeared on Susan Dugan’s blog on Mar. 15, 2016.
“Jesus,” I whispered, as I stood at the threshold of my imaginary inner professor’s office door, still anxious from yet another dream involving another life-threatening road trip, mirroring the seemingly perilous highway my waking dream appeared to have become.
He glanced up from the papers he’d been reading and smiled. “Long time, no see with,” he said, stealing my usual joke, as I settled myself into the worn seat across from him. And I had to smile, too, in spite of myself. He has that effect on me. Sometimes, I hate him for it, but mostly, I love him.
Still, he was the one who had gone missing again, just when I needed him most. I had rushed up the back stairs of this ivy-covered building numerous times over the past few weeks following one bad (sleeping and waking) dream after another only to find his office door closed. Even though he claims never to leave, I’m pretty sure he secretly sneaks back to Heaven now and then for a little r & r and a good laugh with God, and who the hell can blame him? (Well, as it turns out, that would be me!)
He started to laugh now, eavesdropping on my thoughts again, no doubt, but I gave him the look for which I am justly famous in certain circles and he stifled it, although his holy lips continued to twitch with persistent mirth.
He cleared his throat. “What can I do for you today?” he asked, all scholarly, removing his reading glasses, leaning back in his chair, and folding his hands.
But I just shook my head. I mean, where to freaking begin, right?
Outside the beveled windows behind him, the wind whipped the oak tree’s budding branches about with a vengeance, hissed and catcalled through the eaves. “Have you been watching the presidential primary coverage?” I asked.
Now he really did lose it, throwing back his head and chortling, tears streaming down his holy cheeks.
I folded my arms across my chest and waited him out, the look, clearly powerless. “It might be funny from where you’re sitting,” I said, when he’d finally recovered, “but here in the condition I find myself in, it’s a bloodbath.”
His brows shot up the way they do.
One candidate in particular (although his runner up, at times, understandably haunted my waking dreams, too) appeared to have hijacked my psyche to the point that my inner ego’s “raucous shrieks,” bullying name calling, profane raging and ranting–occasionally directed at my costars but more often at myself–now had a face, a colossal pie-hole, a head with a mass of something vaguely resembling hair, and, well, tiny, little hands. I know!
“What can I do for you today?” my teacher repeated, gently smiling, eavesdropping on my thoughts again. Clearly aware these senseless musings concerning the ego’s current impersonation were not the real reason I had come.
So I told him about the series of scary sleeping dreams I’d had over the past few weeks. The first one in which I found myself in a car driven by my husband on an extended road trip we had taken to some balmy, dangerous-feeling area of the United States I had never visited before. In which my husband kept falling asleep at the wheel–as in curled-up-in-fetal position, asleep!–although the rental car mysteriously clung to the road.
Nonetheless, terrified (although, oddly not angry with him), I kept waking him and begging him to pull over and stop for coffee. But he just kept driving a couple more minutes before nodding off again, and I just kept waking him; trying to convince him to pull over. Explaining I’d be happy to drive, even though I felt increasingly sleepy myself and doubted my ability to do so.
Finally, he stopped at a little road-side convenience store. We bought coffee and got back on the road. But over and over again he fell sound asleep at the wheel. Unable to rouse him, barely able to stay awake myself, I sat frantically trying to figure out how to drive the car from the passenger seat until I awoke in my bed, breathless. The magnetic pull of my husband’s sleep in that driver’s seat still heavy upon me. My little dog nestled against my ribs, snoring, as if in solidarity with any move toward deeper sleep for all on every level. And I couldn’t help but reflect on recent incidents in my waking dream in which I found myself seemingly once more thrown into chaos by unforeseen dream developments, many involving my husband’s work and his elderly father’s precarious state and escalating needs.
“But the car never went off the road?” Jesus asked.
I’d almost forgotten he was there. I shook my head no. “I came here to see you but the door was closed,” I said.
He nodded.
So I told him about the next dream I had the following week, wherein my husband and I were driving at night in the mountains. He made a wrong turn and somehow we ended up in Glenwood Canyon, even though in real life (well … ) the road remained closed to traffic to clear yet another hazardous rock slide, the likes of which had taken out cars and claimed lives over the years. The only vehicle on the dark road, we meandered through gigantic debris in the barricaded canyon and continued driving on I-70.
“But the car never went off the road?” Jesus asked.
I’d almost forgotten he was there. I shook my head no.
“I came here to see you but the door was closed,” I said. And I told him about the dream I’d had just last night. This time I was driving alone in the dark on a deserted, hilly highway, recklessly rounding switchbacks at perilously high speed. Aware of the danger but apparently unwilling to slow down, barely able to maintain control of the car.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I said, before he could get the words out, beginning to process what he’d been trying to tell me all along. “The car stayed on the road. And then I came here to find you but the door …”
So I resorted to magic, I told him. Firing up my ipad to listen to the relaxation audio I sometimes use to calm this seeming body down. Closing my eyes and following the instructions to visualize a place in the farthest reaches of my imagination that felt perfectly peaceful and safe. Finding myself once again at that idyllic, imaginary cottage by the mirrored lake I’d been seeing in my mind’s eye as long as I could remember. Finding, to my surprise, Jesus himself, standing in the bright sunlight in the rowboat tied to the dock. Wearing those hot pink sunglasses I’d given him a couple summers ago, waving as I approached. Holding out an orange life jacket, the old-fashioned kind I’d worn as a child. I put it on, took his hand, and got in the boat.
He untied us and started rowing. I felt immediately guilty, and offered to take over—I was good at it, actually, had won a prize once in Girl Scout camp!–but he told me to just sit back and enjoy the ride. That my only job had been to come here and get in the boat.
“I think I see what you’re saying,” I said.
“You always do. Eventually.”
“Even though I was scared in those dreams. Even though I felt helpless, the car stayed on the road. I didn’t abandon the journey and you didn’t abandon me. I’d just forgotten you were there. Still, each time I woke up, I immediately tried to find you. Which must mean, on some level; that even though the door seemed closed, you never went anywhere, not even in the sleeping dreams. Because if I’d been relying on Susan’s specious strength alone, well; I couldn’t have stayed on the road. We would have wrecked, and that would be that. Adios journey.”
“Go on,” he said.
“And even though I felt completely alone and out-of-control in last night’s dream, even though I resorted to magic to calm the body down, a part of me still tried to find you, right?”
“And did,” he said.
“Right where you were always waiting in that safe, peaceful place in my mind. All I had to do was show up and let you take it from there. But the showing up part is no small feat, actually, given my resistance, and yet I did it again and again. So maybe my decision-making mind is a lot stronger than it seems. Because you’re saying there’s no turning back, right? No matter how scary it seems, how hopeless, we’ll still make it home?”
He continued to smile, so kindly. “I’m saying we have,” he said.
I cannot say how long we sat together then, cradled in that stillness beyond words where all questions cease, all mistaken beliefs dissolve into the nothingness from which they sprang.
“Does this mean I’m going to start having nightmares involving boats?” I asked, at last, because I was still too scared to stay there too long.
“Imagine that,” he said, laughing.
I started to laugh, too, in spite of myself. He has that effect on me. Eventually, I mean. Sometimes, I hate him for it. But mostly, I love him.
“The recognition of your own frailty is a necessary step in the correction of errors, but it is hardly a sufficient one in giving you the confidence which you need, and to which you are entitled. You must also gain an awareness that confidence in your real strength is fully justified in every respect and in all circumstances.”
“In the latter phase of the practice period, try to reach down into your mind to a place of real safety. You will recognize that you have reached it if you feel a sense of deep peace, however briefly. Let go all the trivial things that churn and bubble on the surface of your mind and reach down and below them to the Kingdom of Heaven. There is a place in you where there is perfect peace. There is a place in you where nothing is impossible. There is a place in you where the strength of God abides.” (A Course in Miracles Workbook lesson 47, paragraphs 6 and 7)
“Christ is at God’s altar, waiting to welcome His Son. But come wholly without condemnation, for otherwise you will believe that the door is barred and you cannot enter. The door is not barred, and it is impossible that you cannot enter the place where God would have you be. But love yourself with the Love of Christ, for so does your Father love you. You can refuse to enter, but you cannot bar the door that Christ holds open. Come onto me who hold it open for you, for while I live it cannot be shut, and I live forever. God is my life and yours, and nothing is denied by God to his Son.” (A Course in Miracles Text, Chapter 11, IV. paragraph 6)
Susan Dugan’s books – Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want, and Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness – are available at RMMC and on Amazon. She writes about ACIM based on Ken Wapnick’s teachings at ForaysInForgiveness.com and teaches online via Zoom on Tuesday nights.