Reversing Effect and Cause

Chapter 28 – 2. Reversing Effect and Cause

Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without effects there is no
cause. The cause a cause is made by its effects; the Father is a Father by
His Son. Effects do not create their cause, but they establish its causation.
Thus, the Son gives Fatherhood to his Creator, and receives the gift that he
has given Him. It is because he is God’s Son that he must also be a father,
who creates as God created him. The circle of creation has no end. Its
starting and its ending are the same. But in itself it holds the universe of all
creation, without beginning and without an end.
 
Fatherhood is creation. Love must be extended. Purity is not confined. It is
the nature of the innocent to be forever uncontained, without a barrier or
limitation. Thus is purity not of the body. Nor can it be found where
limitation is. The body can be healed by its effects, which are as limitless as
is itself. Yet must all healing come about because the mind is recognized as
not within the body, and its innocence is quite apart from it, and where all
healing is. Where, then, is healing? Only where its cause is given its effects.
For sickness is a meaningless attempt to give effects to causelessness, and
make it be a cause.
 
Always in sickness does the Son of God attempt to make himself his cause,
and not allow himself to be his Father’s Son. For this impossible desire, he
does not believe that he is Love’s Effect, and must be cause because of what
he is. The cause of healing is the only Cause of everything. It has but one
Effect. And in that recognition, causelessness is given no effects and none is
seen. A mind within a body and a world of other bodies, each with separate
minds, are your “creations,” you the “other” mind, creating with effects
unlike yourself. And as their “father,” you must be like them.
 
Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and
dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of
someone else’s dream. The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows
you who the dreamer is. It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you
are still asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming. Do you wish
for dreams of healing, or for dreams of death? A dream is like a memory in
that it pictures what you wanted shown to you.
 
An empty storehouse, with an open door, holds all your shreds of memories
and dreams. Yet if you are the dreamer, you perceive this much at least: that
you have caused the dream, and can accept another dream as well. But for
this change in content of the dream, it must be realized that it is you who
dreamed the dreaming that you do not like. It is but an effect that you have
caused, and you would not be cause of this effect. In dreams of murder and
attack are you the victim in a dying body slain. But in forgiving dreams is
no one asked to be the victim and the sufferer. These are the happy dreams
the miracle exchanges for your own. It does not ask you make another; only
that you see you made the one you would exchange for this.
 
This world is causeless, as is every dream that anyone has dreamed within
the world. No plans are possible, and no design exists that could be found
and understood. What else could be expected from a thing that has no
cause? Yet if it has no cause, it has no purpose. You may cause a dream, but
never will you give it real effects. For that would change its cause, and it is
this you cannot do. The dreamer of a dream is not awake, but does not know
he sleeps. He sees illusions of himself as sick or well, depressed or happy,
but without a stable cause with guaranteed effects.
 
The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true.
This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No one is afraid of them
when he perceives he made them up. The fear was held in place because he
did not see that he was author of the dream, and not a figure in the dream.
He gives himself the consequences that he dreams he gave his brother. And
it is but this the dream has put together and has offered him, to show him
that his wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his own attack, but sees it
at another’s hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but not their
cause. He authored not his own attack, and he is innocent of what he
caused. The miracle does nothing but to show him that he has done nothing.
What he fears is cause without the consequences that would make it cause.
And so it never was.
 
The separation started with the dream the Father was deprived of His
Effects, and powerless to keep them since He was no longer their Creator.
In the dream, the dreamer made himself. But what he made has turned
against him, taking on the role of its creator, as the dreamer had. And as he
hated his Creator, so the figures in the dream have hated him. His body is
their slave, which they abuse because the motives he has given it have they
adopted as their own. And hate it for the vengeance it would offer them. It
is their vengeance on the body which appears to prove the dreamer could
not be the maker of the dream. Effect and cause are first split off, and then
reversed, so that effect becomes a cause; the cause, effect.
 
This is the separation’s final step, with which salvation, which proceeds to
go the other way, begins. This final step is an effect of what has gone
before, appearing as a cause. The miracle is the first step in giving back to
cause the function of causation, not effect. For this confusion has produced
the dream, and while it lasts will wakening be feared. Nor will the call to
wakening be heard, because it seems to be the call to fear.
 
Like every lesson that the Holy Spirit requests you learn, the miracle is
clear. It demonstrates what He would have you learn, and shows you its
effects are what you want. In His forgiving dreams are the effects of yours
undone, and hated enemies perceived as friends with merciful intent. Their
enmity is seen as causeless now, because they did not make it. And you can
accept the role of maker of their hate, because you see that it has no effects.
Now are you freed from this much of the dream; the world is neutral, and
the bodies that still seem to move about as separate things need not be
feared. And so they are not sick.
 
The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it. But it also shows
that, having no effects, it is not cause, because the function of causation is
to have effects. And where effects are gone, there is no cause. Thus is the
body healed by miracles because they show the mind made sickness, and
employed the body to be victim, or effect, of what it made. Yet half the
lesson will not teach the whole. The miracle is useless if you learn but that
the body can be healed, for this is not the lesson it was sent to teach. The
lesson is the mind was sick that thought the body could be sick; projecting
out its guilt caused nothing, and had no effects.
 
This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to every
dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the dream’s
alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the active role in
making up the dream. They are the glad effects of taking back the
consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released because the mind
acknowledges “this is not done to me, but I am doing this. “And thus the
mind is free to make another choice instead. Beginning here, salvation will
proceed to change the course of every step in the descent to separation, until
all the steps have been retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the
world undone.