An important technique that can speed up (safe) recognition of the dreamlike nature is unconditional love. The more you try to distance yourself from elements of the dream, the harder it will be for you to recognize them as part of “your” own mind.

Also, recall that in the moment of transcending your metaphysics, we said there would be an outpouring of wholesome emotions like gratitude, awe, wonder, joy, and love. In a sense, it is possible to “fake it ‘til you make it” by emulating those emotions. This can greatly speed the awakening process.

Find someone who you think is undeserving of your love. It’s easy to love “victims,” so find a “perpetrator.” Against your better judgement, find a way to love them unconditionally. Part of you recognizes that they would be happier, and much less harmful, if they were free of deep wounds that are often invisible to us (and often, even to them, resulting in defiance that makes them all the harder to love). Nonetheless, such reasoning often strikes us as naive and unrealistic, so you may have to come up with your own.

Extend profound forgiveness to someone in your life. This will be hard as hell, but if it were easy, you would already be awake. It’s best to start small. Find something tiny to forgive, and forgive it more thoroughly than you otherwise might. Forgive it to the point where you no longer see it as a flaw in the other person. See it as them being exactly as they need(ed) to be in the moment.

Other things to try:

• Feel profound gratitude in a situation where you’re tempted to feel resentment or obligation.

• Feel deep self-compassion where you would normally beat yourself up.

• Feel total camaraderie with a political opponent.

• Etc.

Do these things when you least feel like it; when they seem most radical and unwarranted. Ideally, you should do them continuously. By doing so, you may begin to detect how apparently external problems are closely mirrored by “internal” processes. Allow for the strange possibility that healing one might heal the other and see where that takes you. You don’t have to adopt any strange beliefs, but you may have to let go of existing ones.

And remember that loving people doesn’t preclude your taking appropriate action against them – whether in the form of protesting, or imprisoning, or potentially even harming, if necessary. In fact, you are much more likely to be confident in your actions when you trust they come from the right place.