Wake-up call

Have you ever reached for something in a dream and been unable to grasp it? Have you ever tried to get somewhere in a dream, and no matter how hard you tried, it eluded you? You may have woken up feeling sad, lost, frustrated, or you may even have wanted to go back to sleep to get back into that dream and to try again. Though you may linger a while, you do get up, brush off the memory of the dream, and get on with your day. You don’t give that dream substance and reality that it doesn’t have. It’s an illusion, and you have no doubt about it.

Then you go about your day, and things don’t go along as you hoped they would. The car won’t start, or you’re caught in traffic with no way out. Maybe a huge financial crisis is on your horizon. Or you hear of a family member in distress. You just don’t feel well, or have stubbed your toe and it really hurts. Certainly there are many worse things that surface daily on the world scene to thoroughly dampen even the most glorious sunshiny day. Think 9/11.

No doubt about it, the waking dream of mortal existence feels much more real than the sleeping dream that we all recognize as pure illusion. And we really don’t believe it’s as easy to wake up from this waking dream as it is to wake up from a dreamy night’s sleep. So we don’t. We drift and dream; we struggle to make our way through the traffic, take on a second job to pay the bills or borrow ourselves into greater debt, pull up the covers and decide we’re too ill to go to work, worry fretfully about our family member, or limp around for several days on that sore toe. 

Christian Science teaches that it’s as possible to wake up from these waking dreams—to banish them and their memories—as it is from those sleepy ones. Not by putting our proverbial head in the sand, but by lifting our hearts and our thoughts and our actions to the reality of God’s day, where there is no night, no distress, no lack, no loss, no pain, no illness, no traffic jams, no tragedies, no dreams.  

Yes, it may take more effort than we’d like to wake up from the dream of mortal existence.
Instead of drifting and dreaming, we’ll need to do some serious praying and studying and practicing—delving deeply into the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, books designed to open everyone’s eyes to the wonderful reality of each one’s perfect, wholesome, timeless, eternal, satisfied being.  

As we do, we’ll find plenty of guidance on how to wake up to experience something of that kingdom of heaven that Jesus told all humanity is already within each one of us—forever waiting for each of us to awake to it. 

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been stuck in the waking dream. As you reach out for reality, you’ll grasp it. As you earnestly search for the path of heavenly understanding, you’ll find it. And though you may not wake up all at once, you’ll be well on your way to banishing all the dreams of mortal existence, and joyfully experiencing your spiritual being.

Here’s a tiny list of waker-uppers to get started:

“Come, follow me.” “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” “Go, and sin no more.” (Luke 18:22; Matthew 5:48; John 8:11)

“[Cast] down imaginations … [bring] into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” (II Corinthians 10:5)

“Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good.” (Science and Health, p. 393)

“Leave thy dreams for joyful waking.” (Rosa M. Turner, Christian Science Hymnal, No. 412)

Dorothy Estes is the Editor of The Christian Science Journal, Sentinel, Herald.