‘Waking up’ includes the shift from the fiction the ego (self) is real, to the realization it is what ‘we’ get to defend as real in this fantasy called “reality.” If the ego can’t prove we are who we imPERSONate, then the question is, who exists to find that out? In the absence of people, being defended with the imaginary ego, it would have to be our old friend ‘the dreamer’ in this dream. Waking up includes the realization only ‘the dreamer’ in the dream exists to wake up, and only when the dream features that happening in the dream.
If mind is all there is, then right now is the dream mind is dreaming, featuring as “The Main Event” the imaginary ego defending the fiction it is a ‘real person’ in this dream. If mind is all there is, then ‘reality’ provides the setting for the imaginary ego to prolong the fiction it not only exists as a ‘real person,’ but suffering will prove it. If all of this can only be content in this dream mind is dreaming, then mind is dreaming ‘the dreamers’ creating duality as the prerequisite to suffering, since separation from that which is dreaming this dream isn’t possible. The dream features all the ways the imaginary ego creates duality, or the fiction of separation, to use suffering to do PERSONhood believably. » Read more: The Care and Handling of the Ego
