We're going to speak today about cause and effect. This is one of the key themes in A
Course in Miracles, and specifically I want to talk about the idea of shrinking the gap
between cause and effect. In A Course in Miracles, speaking within the illusion, the cause is
the mind and the effect is the world of bodies. Even more specifically, the cause is our decision-making
mind and the effect is the world of bodies that we perceive, experience, and make real.
The whole purpose of the ego thought system is to keep us in a perpetual...an ongoing...state
of mindlessness, because the ego's fear is that the mind that originally chose the ego
and gave it existence (because without the belief in the ego there is no ego), that that
mind would one day recognize that it made a mistake, choose differently, choose the
Holy Spirit's Atonement principle instead of the ego's separation, and the ego would
disappear back into nothingness from which it came. So to have this not happen the ego
convinces us that the mind is a dangerous place to be, that the wrathful God is hell-bent
on our destruction by virtue of our sin against Him, and then we project all this out, make
up a physical universe, make up an individual body therein believing we could hide. All
this, of course, is absolute nonsense because projection doesn't work. Ideas leave not their
source, and effect leaves not its cause, so that the phenomenal universe and our individual
experience of that world has never left its source in the mind, meaning cause and effect
are one. But it behooves the ego, in order to preserve its existence, to split off cause
and effect and have this huge chasm keep them seemingly separated. So that we all experience
pain, we all experience sadness, we all experience suffering on one level or another, but we
don't know the cause. So as Chapter 27 says, "Of all the many causes of your suffering
you never considered guilt to be among them," which really means our decision for guilt,
which is the cause of all our suffering. But since the cause has been split off from the
effect and repressed we don't know about the cause. So again, there's this huge gap, which
really is the gap of denial or this gap of forgetfulness, that doesn't have us be aware
of the cause. If I'm not aware of the cause of my suffering and I seek for all the causes
of my suffering elsewhere I will never be able to undo the suffering, which of course
is why everyone suffers in this world from the beginning of time. Everybody changes,
everybody grows old, everybody suffers as they grow older, and eventually everybody
dies, which is the cause of great fear for almost everyone. And all of this is sought...the
causes of all of this...are sought in the one place where they could never be found,
which is in the world. And the problem, being the mind, is blocked off by this veil...what
we sometimes refer to as the veil of forgetfulness or the veil of denial or this amnesia that
the ego fosters. So that, again, we will never return to the mind so we can choose again.
The purpose of the Course, or one of the ways of seeing the purpose of the Course is to
shrink this gap so what had seemed to be such a huge chasm separating mind and body, guilt
and suffering gets...becomes...they draw closer and closer together. So that it would end
up, that as soon as I experience some kind of discomfort, some kind of upset I think
of Lesson 5: I'm never upset for the reason I think, and I realize the reason I'm upset
is because my mind chose the wrong teacher. That is the cause. And if I can get closer
and closer to that, each and every time I feel upset regardless of the form of upset...physical
and/or psychological...I can get closer and closer to that, I could then say, as Lesson
34 says, "I could see peace instead of this." In other words, peace is a decision just as
conflict, upset, distress, and pain are decisions. But if I am not aware that this is a decision
there is no way I could change my mind. And without changing my mind the cause of my pain
and suffering, whether it's on an individual level or the collective level of the world,
that goes unnoticed and therefore uncorrected. So therefore, the purpose of this course,
the purpose of the miracle, the purpose of forgiveness, the purpose of having Jesus as
our teacher is to bring us back to the mind. I frequently say that in this course Jesus
leads us on a journey from mindlessness to mindfulness, which really means the awareness...not
that we are a body but that we are a mind...that can choose differently. And so the whole purpose
of this course is to bring the effect to the cause, bring the darkness to the light, bring
the illusion to the truth...all different names for the same process of recognizing
very simply that the cause of all of our distress is simply choosing the ego instead of the
Holy Spirit, which means the cause of all peace that we will feel, the cause of remembering
God's Love lies in that same decision-making mind that can now choose the Teacher of Love
rather than the teacher of guilt and of hate.