ACIM VII. Cause and Effect P 1, 2. You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful.
ACIM VII. Cause and Effect P 1, 2.
1 VII. Cause and Effect, P 1
1 You may still complain about fear, but you nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful. I have already indicated that you cannot ask me to release you from fear. I know it does not exist, but you do not. If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental law there is. I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own thinking. This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts carefully enough. You may feel that at this point it would take a miracle to enable you to do this, which is perfectly true. You are not used to miracle-minded thinking, but you can be trained to think that way. All miracle workers need that kind of training.
I am glad we are starting this section talking about fear again. It really does feel very hard to let go of fear. Jesus recognizes that we will find this hard and maybe even think it is impossible. He says that we think it would take a miracle and that we would be right. But that is what we are doing here. We are learning to become miracle minded.
Watching the Mind
He also reiterates that our minds are very powerful and that our thoughts make the world we see. Another way to say this is that our world is the effect of our thoughts and beliefs. Jesus knows that we want him to just wipe our minds clear of fear, but he can’t do that. He cannot interfere with cause and effect. And certainly, he does not want us to believe that our mind is powerless because this is not true.
However, Jesus does not leave us on our own to figure this out. He tells us what to do about the fear. We learn to watch our minds carefully for thoughts that are not true. These untrue thoughts cause every fearful situation we experience in this life. When we notice a thought that is not true, we then allow that thought to be corrected.
It Is Simple
Could it really be that simple? Yes, it is. It requires vigilance and willingness, but it is simple. When it is not easy, it is only because we do not truly want it. I have noticed that sometimes I want to be free of fearful feelings, but I do not want to let go of the belief that has caused those feelings to rise in me.
Often, I don’t even understand my convoluted thinking about it. I don’t know exactly what thought it is that I am holding onto so tightly or why. That does not matter. Why bother trying to understand the meaningless? When I am in fear, it is because I am thinking and believing something that is not of God. The bottom line is that I am believing in separation.
I ask the Holy Spirit to correct my thinking, heal my mind, and undo what I have done. I ask for the miracle, and because I ask, and to the degree I really want it, this is what I receive. Here is something else I am certain of. If I am not ready to give up a belief, the thoughts will return, and I will have to begin again. But that’s OK. I simply continue the process until I am fully convinced that I want to believe only the thoughts I think with God.
Projecting Thoughts of a Future
Now I will share with you the reason I am glad Jesus is talking about fear with us this morning. When I woke up, I was happy and in gratitude. I feel thankful for all the ways I am learning to be a miracle worker and for the healing that is taking place in my mind. I am letting go of fear and guilt, and I am learning that I want to make my life available to the Holy Spirit for His use. And I am learning that I truly want all these things. I am highly motivated to do this work.
As I was making my coffee, I had a thought about my younger son. It was not a thought with words but just a thought that was more of a feeling. If I put it into words, it would be something like this. What if something really bad happened to him? What if he died? I felt fear grip me. My stomach clenched, and my jaw tightened. The only thing happening was a thought about a possible future.
Where do these thoughts come from? It didn’t feel like I asked for it, yet there it was. What am I supposed to do with it? Trying not to think about it just makes it appear bigger in my mind. Deliberately entertaining the thought allows the ego to come up with reasons this could happen and to imagine how it would feel. I don’t want to try to suppress the thought because I can’t. I don’t want to indulge the thought because it makes it worse.
Questioning the Thought
So, I question the thought. I evaluate it for the truth. This feeling of dread and fear, is it from God? Is God fear? Did God create me like Himself, and if He did, did He create me fearful? If God created me fearful, then He would have to be fearful, which makes no sense. Projecting into the future scary thoughts increases fear. It is fear based on nothing, just senseless thoughts.
I know this is not truth, and I know that I don’t want to make any more untrue effects. I want to undo the illusion, not go deeper into it. The world I see is the effect of my thoughts. If I want to see a different world, I must think different thoughts. I already know that from within the dream, I cannot control my thoughts, but I also know that I have access to help outside the dream.
The Holy Spirit Corrects the Errors
I have the Holy Spirit and can ask Him to correct my thinking for me. He can heal my mind and will do so at the slightest invitation. So, I invite Him into my mind and ask that He undo what I have done this morning. I ask for the miracle of a healed mind. All that is required of me now is that I accept the healing.
I notice the ego thoughts being thrown at me, and they are fear thoughts to pull me back into the story. The ego reasons that being released from fear does not protect my son from death. It accuses me of leaving him to suffer just so I feel better for the moment and warns me that if I do this, I will suffer even more later. As if worrying about him would prevent something, anything, from happening. But I am no longer interested in the ego’s rants. The miracle has healed my mind. I am free.
I am, again, happy and grateful. Thank You, God. I love You, God.
2 VII. Cause and Effect, P 2
I cannot let you leave your mind unguarded, or you will not be able to help me. Miracle working entails a full realization of the power of thought in order to avoid miscreation. Otherwise, a miracle will be necessary to set the mind itself straight, a circular process that would not foster the time collapse for which the miracle was intended. The miracle worker must have genuine respect for true cause and effect as a necessary condition for the miracle to occur.
Again, Jesus emphasizes that our thoughts cause the effect (the world), and our thoughts initiate the miracle (the undoing of the world). As I watch my thoughts and ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind, I see how true this is. I notice something happening in my mind that is obviously ego thinking, and I realize that these thoughts cause the resultant fear and guilt.
When I decide I want to have the belief behind those thoughts healed, it all goes away as if it had never happened, and I return to peace. Sometimes when the thoughts have been especially virulent and have caused a lot of fear in my mind, I am absolutely amazed at the process. It feels like magic, and yet, it is the opposite of magic.
Though I no longer doubt that the problem is in my mind, at one time, I still had trouble seeing how this could be true at certain times. I looked at the effects as proof that the problem was real instead of seeing that the thought produced the effect. I just couldn’t make the jump from believing the story to understanding that I was the maker of the story.
The Work
During this period, I found The Work by Byron Katie to be very helpful. Through this work, I learned to question my thoughts and not to believe them simply because they were in my mind. Through turning them around, I learned that these thoughts did not have a fixed meaning and that I could see them differently, and when I did, I would have a different experience of them. It is still helpful to me when my mind becomes confused. That one question, “Is it true?” is often enough to snap me back to reality.
When I was ready, I realized that what I was reading in the Course was telling me the same thing, but it was telling me more. Learning to see the situation differently was a step in the right direction, but it was only a step. Jesus wants us to understand how very powerful the mind is. It not only determines how we experience things but also what we experience. We make this world up with our thoughts. That’s a little scary, isn’t it? That’s why we hide this power from ourselves. It scares us because of what we have done with our thoughts.
Making a Different Choice
We can make a different choice from the ones that make up the world of pain, suffering, and death. The mind that made this can make other things as well, and eventually will remember Itself and stop making up stories and return to true creation. Each of us reading, studying, and practicing the Course right now is in the process of doing this. We are in the process of waking up to our truth. We will practice on the dream world we made, and when we have aligned that world with truth, we will enjoy it a bit and then let it go. Then we will return to our true vocation, which is creating alongside God.
All of this happens through the simple process of watching our minds for errors in our thinking and accepting correction. Because we are confused about reality, we need help with this. We cannot undo the ego from within the ego, so we have been given the Holy Spirit, Who works from outside the ego. His function is to undo what we have made. He will respond to our slightest invitation to do so. As we watch the seeming magic of pain and suffering dissolve into peace and joy, we become more and more motivated to ask for His help. And our world begins to transform.
Holy Spirit, I would not forget my function today. I would remember my single purpose as I guard my thoughts and ask that you heal my mind.
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