Row, row, row your boat

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.
    (Nursery rhyme)

My alarm clock sounds and I wake with a jolt. I reach for the clock. I've slept for, what, seven hours, but I feel I need another three. No time though for dozing. If I don't get up now I'll miss the train. I hear the rain beat against the window as I haul back the duvet and sit on the edge of my bed. Why am I doing this? It's on mornings like this that I think about quitting my job. But if I did that, how would I pay the bills? My body tenses as I think of the full day of meetings ahead. And that report I have to write that's already a week late. How on earth will I fit it all in?

So plays the familiar tape in my mind. It may not be until I'm sitting down to breakfast, or washing my teeth, or on the train on the way to London that I remember "there is another way of looking at the world" (A Course in Miracles Workbook, Lesson 33).

One of the best decisions I have ever made was to switch to working a four-day week. Having an extra day a week free from work commitments gives me more time to choose to study A Course in Miracles, to reflect, and to re-connect with Source.

Sometimes I wish I could spend even more of my time in that way. If my train home in the evening is delayed, I become impatient. I resent the minutes that are being 'stolen from me', minutes I might otherwise use to sit in my armchair with a cup of green tea and meditate on that day's Workbook lesson! By making my peace of mind dependent on external conditions, I'm missing a fundamental point.

A Course in Miracles is not intended simply to be studied behind closed doors. It is highly practical, to be applied in daily life. The next step is to take my theoretical understanding and apply it to the world. This means looking on all things with forgiveness, with the eyes of Christ.

At this time in my life, what better opportunity to do this than in the workplace?

"There is a way to look on everything that lets it be to you another step to Him, and to salvation of the world" (A Course in Miracles, Workbook, Lesson 193 13:1.)

Those days when I have to work I can view as 'practice days', a chance to take what I have learned and to carry it with me into the world, remembering my Self amid the hustle and bustle; making every encounter a holy one. I go into work as before (to begin with, at least, there is no change in outward circumstances), only now I hold in my awareness that this is a dream that I've made up.

With the lightness that comes with that awareness, I experience the day as like a game. The objective is to keep my peace, to respond with kindness and to recognise all that I see as either an expression of love or a call for love.

"Salvation ... asks you ... to overlook what is not there, and not to look upon the unreal as reality." (A Course in Miracles, Text, Chapter 30.IV.7:1,3.) When I allow myself to remember, in the words of the nursery rhyme, that 'life is but a dream', I no longer need to fight illusions. I can let go of the need to judge. More and more, I begin to live merrily and to flow with rather than against the current. Following my Inner Guide, I can row my boat gently down the stream.

What is more, within the dream I even get paid for these practice times. How can I resent work if I see it as a game, as a dream I'm having, and as an opportunity to practice forgiveness and express the Love that I Am?

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