Notes on Reversing Cause and Effect

Or: becoming responsible for perceiving beauty everywhere always

Sometimes at night I visit the horses. In winter I might bring a flake of hay, a treat. They walk slowly over the snow to visit. The sound of their hooves is enormous in a world so still and quiet.

This weekend a light snow fell on us. The moon was out and yet snow was falling. It was as if moonlight were taking form, pale flakes silently sailing through the cold night. The more I gazed, the lovelier it became. Peace enveloped me; grace and holiness enveloped me. Thought subsided, boundaries melted. I was one with the horses, the snow and the moon.

I was one with beauty, and one with love.

This is projection! This is a personal projection of beauty, holiness and oneness. Do you see? I separated beauty and holiness by casting them outside, out there, in the world. The moon is just the moon, snow is just snow. Horses are horses. It is my projection that makes it all appear beautiful and holy, tripping me into that cherished feeling of oneness.

Beauty and holiness are qualities of me which I displace. The displacement is painful and confusing because it reverses cause and effect. I think the cause of the experience of beauty and holiness is the moon and the snow, which are outside of me. But it's the other way around. The moon and the snow are an effect of beauty and holiness, which is me.

And you too, by the way. We are always the cause; the world - in its beauty and its awfulness, it's our decision - is the effect.

The next time you are tempted to adore an image of beauty - be it moonlight, a blind horse or a slice of apple pie - remember that it is not beautiful but that you are. You can only see the cause of beauty outside of you by accepting ego's argument that you are a body, that the world is real and you are separate from it, et cetera.

You accept ego's argument and start projecting like crazy, effectively making a world in which some things are lovely and some not, some things are fair and some not . . .

Do you see? Even at its most beautiful, it's still separation.

There is - there is always - a better way.

The better way is to become responsible for projection. Not just the bad stuff but the good, too. All of it. Notice when you are projecting and stop. For a minute, if you can, just stop projecting and ask: What am I so scared of looking at that I literally construct an external world in which to hide it?

The idea you have constructed an external world might make no sense. But "construction" here means something closer to "interpretation." What is the world when you no longer interpret it as the cause of your psychological state?

More importantly, what is your mind when you no longer deny the fullness and perfection of its creativity and lovingkindness?

You might notice that differences don't mean as much as they once did. Judgment begins to feel unnecessary - not good or bad, just not needed. The external world shrinks in importance as the peace and love inherent in us flows across it, extending without end, like cool water soothing a fevered brow.

You might also notice that while you can project evil et cetera you can also project good. This is the proof that deep inside you is a Love so just and merciful, so far-reaching and powerful, that it literally terrifies you.

It is this to which the Holy Spirit directs our attention. Under its teaching, the beauty of the moon and falling snow - or the orchids or whatever - become the faintest of faint hints reminding us of this Love, ever nudging us to greater acceptance and responsibility for it.

Imagine a grace and peace - a creativity and helpfulness - that is not personal to Sean or to you or to anyone else - but reaches all of us, heals all of us . . .

That is the Holy Spirit's teaching goal. That is the end game of our study and practice of A Course in Miracles.

In time, we will lose our fear of this Love and become less interested in defending ourselves against it. We stop using the world to reflect it back to us in fragments, and instead offer it to the world without qualification or condition. Everyone we meet, everything we encounter - all of it is held by Love. We remember something from the Gospel of Philip, translated by LeLoup: "It is impossible for anyone to see the everlasting reality and not become like it."

In fact, there is no becoming at all, for we are it. Shall we, today - if only for a moment - stop denying this?

Love,
Sean