You can decide only this:

a) I am caused by God.

b) I am caused by the world.

When believing you are at the effect of the world, upset by someone, hurt by something, vulnerable in some way, offended, attacked, damaged, sick, etc.... you are believing that you are CAUSED BY the world, and thus that the world is your creator. It means you have forgotten that you are ONLY the result of God creating.

Anything true of you, anything about your nature, your condition, what you are, who you are, is entirely OUT OF YOUR HANDS. Who and what you are is purely God's decision and you have absolutely no power to change that. You can however deny that you are as God created you and pretend to be something else, but to do that you HAVE to make yourself be caused BY something else, hence needing an entire world and false God to be your new daddy.

Essentially, by rejecting God as your father and source of your inheritance, you are forced to see yourself as a victim of the world. You can't be denying God's fatherhood and expect to "get away with it" by being in a world but not attacked by the world. Either God will cause you, or the world will cause you. The only choice you have is which thought system you want to be caused by or a part of.

To know yourself is to recognize and remember that you are ONLY what God created, you a AS God created you, you have NO desire to make anything else of yourself, you cannot and have not changed, and you are STILL the perfect divine innocent being that HE chose to create. Accepting your real identity and nature, is accepting God as your father, and therefore accepting the truth about you.

You don't get to be the source of yourself, nor do you get to redefine who and what you are. As soon a you try to do so you deny God and your own self and invent an illusory identity. This is a state of denial, and so your false self is rooted in denial of yourself. It can hardly function in any healthy way when it is constantly attacking itself.

Either you can be in self attack, thus see yourself as caused by the world, or you can be healthy by seeing yourself as caused by God. If you are caused by God, you cannot be sick or dead or unhappy or vulnerable. If you are ONLY as God created you, and are under NO laws but God's, you are not under the laws of the world, nor are you caused BY the world or anything in it.

"Nothing in the world can bring oppression"

"I am not at the effect of the world I see."

"I am not a victim of the world."

"I am under no laws but God's."

"I am still as God created me."

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you."

The ego in each of us acts like a gatekeeper, or controller, who decides what will be accepted or rejected. Everything has to go through it and meet its approval. It acts like "the boss" who has authority and who gets to decide whether something is true or false.

We feed everyting through this "opinion maker", and if we decide not to agree with something we’ll push it away. This really is the ego’s arrogance in trying to be that which decides what the truth is. If it decides something is false, it is false, and will not be acceptable.

So with regards to ACIM, Jesus has written various things and all of them are true. It is our job to actually trust Jesus and trust what He has said is true. But our ego is not happy about that. It wants to decide whether it is true or not, or what it means. It will accept some things, and reject others. It will only "approve" certain things that meet its criteria.

But what we’re supposed to be doing is to trust that Jesus is being truthful, which means, instead of asking ourselves whether what he says is true or not, to put aside the function of deciding if Jesus can be believed, to "blindly accept it" through FAITH, and to THEN spend time figuring out how it MUST be true.

Do we trust Jesus? Is he always telling the truth? Does he lie? Does he contradict himself? Do we have faith in his word? Do we put aside "trying to be right" or "being the decider", and let Him be the authority? This is part of surrendering our ego role of defensiveness and reluctance and having a heartfelt trust and willingness to accept the truth. To accept it not because we even necessarily understand it, but because it’s coming from Jesus.

I trust that what Jesus is saying is true, and then try to learn how and why it is true. I accept it first, and explain it later. And where I fail to trust and want to decide what the truth is myself, those are my lessons in trust.

Jesus is the man.

In this world, which is 100% the effect of dreaming, there is an ILLUSION of cause and effect.

To recognize how it is an illusion, consider how children play "make-believe" with toys.

1) There is an empty scene.

2) The child grabs his toy car, imagining that it is a real car.

3) He makes car sounds appear, "broom broom" to try to add life to the car

4) He moves the car along to pretend that it is driving by itself

5) He wants to increase the fun so puts a plastic tree in the scene

6) He drives the car toward the tree and just at the point where it's supposed to hit the tree, he grabs the tree and whisks it away up in the air, to simulate being hit by the car

He moved the car, he "gave life" to the car, animated it, controlled it. He moved the tree, "gave life" to the tree, animated it, controlled it. He made the ILLUSION that the car bumped the tree up into the air.

If viewed from within the fantasy, it SEEMS as if a real car causes a real tree to be damaged.

Viewed from outside the fantasy, we see that ONE CAUSE (the child/son of God), is responsible for everything that happens. He is responsible for the car and the tree and everything that both of them show.

The car could not move on its own. The tree could not move on its own. The care DOES NOT cause the tree to move! HIS MIND caused them to seem to produce effects. HIS MIND *pretended* that the car was "a cause" and that the tree was "at the effect" of the car.

We see this stuff happen from inside the dream, inside the fantasy play of the Son of God, and we think, that car really "caused" that damage to the tree, or, that food I ate caused my upset stomach, or, that person hitting me caused a bruise, or, throwing the ball at the window caused the window to break.

ITS NOT TRUE. This is an illusion. An illusion of simultaneous effects pretending to be causes.

When we are in touch with who the dreamer is, who the CAUSE is, the ILLUSION of cause and effect inside the fantasy can be shown to be an illusion. Miracles DEMONSTRATE this.

Miracles are acts by the ONE CAUSE of the entire dream content, to rearrange or change the effects in the dream, ie the objects or people or whatever else is showing up. Because IT is responsible for everything that moves, all side-effects, all consequences, how everything SEEMS to be affected by everything else, when it decides to BREAK the illusion of cause and effect, demonstrating that IT is the only cause and all cause and effects are actually EFFECTS, that's how the miracle defies the laws of the ego.

If the Son of God decides, hey, when that car hits that tree, nothing is going to happen, and the tree shall not have any damage put into it, then SO BE IT... the car will not damage the tree.

If the Son of God decides, hey, when I put that poison into the body, I will not put an effect of sickness into the body, then SO BE IT, the body will not be sick.

If the Son of God decides, hey, when I make that one body throw that one ball towards that window, I will not allow that window to break, SO BE IT, the window will not break.

Those witnessing these things will be probably astonished to see that the "laws" of cause-effect, the EGO's illusory laws, HAVE NOT WORKED. They did not apply. Something OVERRODE THEM. Some higher power somehow managed to manipulate THE LAWS THEMSELVES, to produce a result which "shouldn't be possible".

Illusions of "causes" in this world are entirely that, illusions. The world has NO causes in it, and it does nothing. That's because it is NOT ALIVE. And that's also because it is only an EFFECT of dreaming. All "life forms" here are NOT ALIVE. They are illusions of separate causes. All bodies are fictional. All objects are make-believe. The way they all interact is PRETEND.

Miracles completely bypass the illusion of horizontal/linear cause and effect. They demonstrate that these laws are NOT TRUE, and this is profoundly educational if you witness such a miracle. It PROVES that what you thought was true of this world, IS NOT TRUE. No longer will you be able to believe that "this causes that", because it was clearly demonstrated that this is NOT THE CASE.

Therefore, anything which you think has been caused by something happening in the world, can easily be reversed, changed, undone, or kept, entirely at the will of the mind. There is nothing that cannot be undone. There is nothing that cannot be reversed or healed. There is no sickness nor death which can prevent this higher-level mind from PROVING that it can be EASILY UNDONE. And Jesus demonstrated this at the resurrection.

Death has NO POWER OVER YOU because you literally cannot and will not MAKE DEATH HAPPEN unless you choose to do so, and if you choose that, you will be doing it to yourself, and NOT BECAUSE of any causes in the world whatsoever. You will be pulling all the strings, manipulating all the circumstances, putting all the sickness into your body, adding all the effects, and faking your own death, all deliberately and intentionally. Nothing happens to you against your will!

This is why death is optional and is always a choice. No-one dies without their own consent. No-one needs to die or suffer or be sick or upset or afraid or damaged or hurt in any way.

USE THE MIRACLES!

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. "

"The world you see has nothing to do with reality. "

"The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. " ... This is NOT a statement about how you perceive what's out there.... it's telling you, YOU PUT THE STUFF OUT THERE with your mind. You put that car there. You put that house there. You put those effects there! It Is WHAT YOU GAVE!

"There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad. "

"On confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. "

"Projection makes perception. The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you." ...... !!!!! This actually means that YOU PUT THE WORLD OUT THERE PHYSICALLY! You projected it from your higher-level mind! This is a statement about the Son of God, projecting the universe, literally, it is NOT to do with "how you look at the world"!! You MADE IT, and it can be CHANGED BY YOUR WILL!

The body is a symbol. Being a symbol, it represents something. It represents something beyond itself. That means it does not have its own inherent meaning. It is really nothing. A canvas on which you paint a picture of resurrection or death.

Because it is a symbol, it represents and reflects something which lies beyond itself. It is not an end unto itself. It is not a sign or a thing or a standalone entity. It is the outward projection from an inner condition. It does not author its own identity. It does not decide what it will be or what it will look like. It does not determine its behaviors. You USE IT. You project it. It is SYMBOLIC of the content of your mind.

This is why when the mind is healed the SYMBOL MUST CHANGE. The body CANNOT RESIST changing. When the mind decides to be well and whole, the body must reflect that. When the mind decides to be separate and afraid, the body must reflect that. It is a picture of the mind's condition. It is not a thing in its own right.

Because it is a symbol, when the body is sick, the body ITSELF is not sick. IT does not have its own separate sickness. It is SYMBOLIZING a problem in the mind. This is why when the body is broken or sick, it PROVES the mind cannot be healed, because it is IMPOSSIBLE for the body to make up its own state. It is a reflection of the mind. It has no will. No continuity of its own. Its being projected. So if the body is showing up as broken, the body has nothing really wrong with it, the MIND DOES.

This is why if there is sickness or death happening to the body, the MIND IS DESTROYING ITSELF. And this is proof. No-one dies without their own consent. Healthy mind, healthy body. Sick mind, sick body. There are no exceptions.

"Remember, then, that neither sign nor symbol should be CONFUSED with source, for they must STAND FOR something OTHER than themselves. Their meaning CANNOT lie in them, but must be sought in what they REPRESENT. And they may thus mean everything or nothing, according to the truth or falsity of the IDEA which they reflect."

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of the separation."

"The body is the idea (in the mind) of sin, made flesh, and PROJECTED (by the mind) outward.

THIS WORLD DOES NOT CAUSE ANYTHING

The world we seem to live in, which includes planet Earth, does not cause anything to happen. It has no causes in it. And since cause=truth, it has no truth in it. And since truth=reality, it has no reality in it. It however has many many illusions of causes, pretending to be causes.

The world causes nothing. It is nothing but an effect. In order for this to make any sense you'll need to realize that *everything* in this world is being caused from SOMEWHERE ELSE.

In a pantomime, puppets are dangled from strings and made to seem to interact with each other. One can be made to seem to do something, and then it is necessary for the other to be made to do something else, in order to create the illusion that it was affected. There is no causality between them. All of the causality comes from ABOVE, causing what is BELOW.

As it is with miracles. Miracles are expressions from a mind which is ABOVE this world which has CAUSED this world. The world is its effect. That higher mind (the Sonship) has projected this entire universe including the Earth.

Everything that seems to "happen" in it, is not happening because of one thing causing something else. Instead, both the things which seem to cause, and the things which seem to be affected, are simultaneously projected in parallel from another place entirely.

The wind does not blow the trees. The wind blowing and the trees moving are BOTH accomplished at the same time by the same ONE CAUSE, the mind of the dreamer.

Gravity does not cause a ball to roll down a hill.

Eating food does not cause you to make poop.

Throwing a rock at a window does not cause the window to break, unless the higher mind says "ok, I will now break the window", and the breaking of the window is implemented BY THE MIND, not by the rock.

Nothing in this world causes anything at all. We are not made sick by things in the environment. We are not hurt by other people. We are not upset because of things we see. Nothing happens to us, not even death.

Nothing can happen to you, a Son of God, without your say so. Nothing can happen, without your consent. "No-one dies without their own consent". Mind, from a higher level, has to PUT IN PLACE both the apparent causes and apparent effects of EVERYTHING that takes place on planet Earth. EVERYTHING!

The world does not spin because of inertia or gravitational forces or attraction to the sun. It spins because the MIND SPINS IT.

Rain does not fall from a cloud on its own as part of an accumulation of water particles. Rain does not fall unless the mind makes it do so.

This is a world of ANIMATION, it is an animation, like a movie, being projected out and played by a mind that is causing everything in the scene to occur. Everything.

You wouldn't imagine for a second that someone could be sat at the movie theater watching the movie on the screen, and that they could CHANGE the content of the movie by doing something with the screen. If you want the movie to change, you have to get in touch with the folk who MADE the movie, and the mechanism of projecting it, so that the movie appears differently.

Similarly the world can easily be changed by someone who has access to the miraculous mind of the Son of God, who is a miracle worker. This mind has the power to ERASE the world. This mind has the power to CHANGE the world. This mind has the power to do ANYTHING. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do."

The world itself does not DO anything at all. Nothing happens to anything anywhere against any will. Nothing can happen AT ALL unless it is part of the one who is DREAMING IT. Only the dreamer can determine what shows up in the dream. Only the dreamer can make objects appear to interact. Only the dreamer has access to the level of freedom and capability to make the dream appear to do stuff that DEFIES the illusion of linear causality.

If the dreamer decides, hey, when this forest fire rages, which I made rage, I will ensure no harm will come to that house. And so the house will not suffer the fire. And if the dreamer decides, when that rock is thrown at that window, there shall be no damage, so be it.... there will not be a broken window. And if the dreamer decides, this body will have no sickness and show no signs of damage and it will be impossible to destroy it... so be it. The body will be invulnerable.

Miracles appear to defy the LINEAR causality of this world. They prove and demonstrate that the ILLUSION of cause and effect here is FALSE, is fictional, and that it can easily be modified and defied. The mind could easily suppress the effects of an explosion. It could easily levitate a mountain. It could easily cause someone to walk on water. It could easily show that gravity has no effect on the body.

There is an analogy to this freedom and flexibility of writing the rules of what's going to happen in a fictional world, in this world. It's in the area of creating digital worlds. Movies, games, visualizations, 3d objects and so on. In this arena, we get to make entire environments out of nowhere. We can populate them with characters and make stuff happen. But guess what, there are no laws.

Nothing is impossible there. If you want to make a huge ball representing the sun suddenly turn into ice-cream, that's easy enough. And objects in a virtual world have no inherent laws of physics. If you want to make them repel each other or bump into each other and rebound off each other, you have to ADD a whole bunch of extra rules and conditions. But the fact is, YOU add them. And without them, objects would pass right through each other.

This world, this universe, is an illusion. It causes nothing at all and it has no causes inside of it. All causes here are illusions of causes. This is why as a miracle worker you can demonstrate this fact by making something occur which, according to the linear laws, is impossible. It should be impossible to reverse death, it should be impossible to levitate a mountain, it should be impossible to walk on water, and it should be impossible to heal all sickness, but it's not true. There is nothing a holy Son of God cannot do.

Open your mind. Question what you're looking at. Planet Earth isn't a "thing" in its own right functioning according to universal laws. It's nothing but a simultaneous parallel projection from a place UNSEEN. And as a projection, it has no will and no life and no mind of its own. It has no identity. That is why it does not really exist. There is no world. It's imagined.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way."

"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you."

"There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less."

"A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect."

"Time lasted but an instant in your mind, with no effect upon eternity."

"The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion, it is what you wish."

In this world, it always seems as though we are at the effect of the world. As if the world is dreaming us, causing us, doing things to us, making us feel certain ways, triggering certain reactions.

When the world does something, the "ego" in us seems to react with various kinds of stress, emotions, fears, retaliations etc. Always it’s like being strapped into a ride where you have no say in what you feel or what your state of mind is. As though the world entirely dictates everything you experience.

What does the world have in store for you today? What problems is it going to slap you in the face with? In what way is it going to decide your fate? How it is going to upset you and shit on you and make you feel afraid? This is what it is set up to to do, all day every day.

False perception is a backwards perception. It literally feels like everything you experience is coming at you from the world. Your moods, your emotions, your reactions, your state of mind, whether you are happy or sad, or calm or upset, seems entirely at the whim of an external alien will.

The ego in us, is this part of mind that seems to just sit there and receive punishment. The world has some shit on store for you today? Fuck you. The world wants to crap all over your nice sense of security? Fuck you today. The world wants to decide everything’s just going to hit the fan all at once? Fuck you especially.

This is how it is set up. This is what happens in false perception. This is how we experience life, every day, when we believe that the world is the cause of us. That outside forces are shaping us. External events determine whether the day sucks to hell or whether it’s a "good one".

And so, in your mind, there’s this receiver of experience, the seeming passive and powerless and weak and victimized self, defenseless and vulnerable and completely at the effect of everything. That is the ego. That is a state of mind of false perception, of blindness, of being a victim 24/7. That the world is doing you.

To not question this, is to remain unaware of reality, light, truth, power and peace. To not question it is to simply be victimized all the time. Stuff just continues to go wrong, over and over and over again. Shit happens. Bad stuff goes down. Unexpected things break. There’s sudden emergencies. The world plots against you and wants you dead.

This is what the inner victim believes. And because it is the belief in this, it also plays the role of this. It is the desire to be victimized. It is the attempt to position oneself as at the effect of the world. To suffer. To have the world capable of doing things to you. To allow us to overpower you, upset you, shake you, disturb your peace, and take your freedom and happiness away.

It’s not easy to break out of this because this ego self, this receiver of punishment by the world, this sufferer and victim of an alien will, is practically wired into the world like a totally passive absorber of punishment. It sees the world as happening from the outside in, happening to it, not from it. Nothing is seen as coming out of it or as being caused by it or it being responsible for how anything is. This is the ego in all its selfishness and all its irresponsibility and the face of innocence.

This is how it’s wired. It’s like it’s made to be plugged into the world. The world is set up to send messages to it, and it is set up to receive the messages. And in particular it is set up to seem not to even interpret the messages, but to take them at face value. To believe it them, and to let the world define for itself what its truth is. It’s even set up so that whatever the world says it is doing to you, it does that to you, and you have the appropriate reaction according to the hierarchy of illusions.

If the world decides today to do something severe to you, the ego in you decides to go along with it blindly and suffer in the extreme. If the world decides to seem to give you a break, the ego in you decides you’re somehow being let off and given a break from the barrage of punishment. Only to expect that the next fuck-you is just around the corner.

But there is something very weird about this, because it is in fact very backwards. It’s completely unnatural for it to be backwards. It’s like living in the world in such a way, that you don’t see yourself as having any power to do anything, and only that you are to just lay down and let the world walk all over you. Like you are a piece of carpeting onto which the world can just shit as it pleases.

The outside seems to comes into you, people do stuff to you, others decide who and what you are, and the world dreams of you any way it wishes. You seem even to be made by other dream figures, and modified by them as life goes on. This is so strange and so backwards to experience "life" as though the external world is the cause of everything you are forever.

This is the fundamental, natural, corresponding and automatic arrangement of the nature of this world, and the nature of your ego. This is the special relationship, locked into form and dedicated to suffering and victimhood. Where your every relationship is founded on what you get and take from the world and what it does to you on your behalf.

This is how you are automatically wired, as a body identity, to experience the world as an automaton. To sense it, to have it tell you what is there, to have the world stimulate you from the outside in, and to define what your experience is. It transmits stuff into you from the outside and seems to tell you what there is to see and feel. And never does it attempt to challenge this arrangement or raise doubts about the world’s ability to dominate you.

To overcome this, to move into true perception, which requires not only the reversal of cause and effect in your entire though system, but also the total questioning of every way in which the world seems to do anything at all, you have to be willing to fly in the face of what seems "physically natural". To even go against the standard setup of the body senses. To be confronted with the attempt by the world to cause you, and to be uncaused by it. To disregard all temptations and not fall for the belief that sin is really happening to you. Because really this is a dream coming from you designed to make it look like it’s coming from itself.

This is the work and the challenge and the spiritual way out of hell. This is the forgiveness of the world. To stare the world in the face and recognize it is not coming AT you, but FROM you. To realize you have a say in it, you contribute, you choose, you consent, you cause, you have power, and you cannot be a victim. It is completely unnatural in terms of this world to attempts to do this, which is why it can seem so difficult to do it consistently. The world has no end of temptations and problems to offer you to distract you onto the slippery slopes of hell.

The truth then flies totally in the face of the world and is nothing like the world. The world is false. Truth offers a perspective which comes from the inside and extends outward through love rather than acting like a black hole of suffering. It ignores any suggestion that the world does anything to you or anyone, and is completely unaffected and unmoved by any and all occurrences and suggestions of attack happening. It is to stand in the onslaught of a river barraging you in your face and be solid like a rock, unmoved and unwavered by its endless attempted attack.

What you are is immovable, unchangeable, permanent, fixed, absolute, eternal, immortal, invulnerable, powerful, harmless, unassailable, perfect and causal. Asserting and expressing this at all times is the goal. You are not relative but absolute. You are not finite but infinite. You have power over this world and over all phenomenon, over the body and over space and time and matter and energy. You are real and the world is not. And only if it is not is there hope that you can overcome it.

"Miracles violate every law of reality as this world judges it."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world."

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all."

"The world is but an effect and not a cause at all."

"The mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

"It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen."

"Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

----- There are two levels -----

1. Higher mind, which is causal and causes everything. It causes the EFFECT of a lower level 3D world, which is entirely governed by what this mind decides to make happen. This is the level of "the dreamer."

2. The world, a 3D projected image which is entirely an EFFECT of the higher level. This level has NO causality and cannot make anything happen on its own. No part of it causes any other part of it to do anything. This is the level of "the dream."

The higher level CAUSES the lower level effects. That means causality is "vertical". It proceeds from above to below.

The lower level of the world itself, has NO CAUSALITY in it. It is 100% pure effect. It is not alive, it has no will, it has no mind, there are no forces or powers, no reactions, no chain of events, nothing. It's like a movie that's been projected onto a screen. The movie cannot DO anything outside of the content that the PROJECTOR has put onto the screen.

However, the higher level mind is capable of creating ILLUSIONS of lower-level causality. For example, it can place an apple in the world, next to an orange. It can then make the orange move (which cannot move by itself). The orange can move towards the apple. However, there are NO lower-level laws that DO anything, not even laws of physics. So the orange moves THROUGH the apple, having no effect on it. It's like it's not even there. It's just an IMAGE. Two images overlapping.

In order to make the orange "collide with" the apple, the higher level mind of causality has to make the apple move, at just the right moment as the orange SEEMS to touch it, so that there is an ILLUSION of a reaction, which makes it look AS IF the orange collided with the apple. There were NO laws on the level of the world causing this reaction. It's entirely fictional, decided upon by the higher level mind.

To an observer who has "bought into the illusion", it SEEMS as if there is some kind of "law" on the lower level, governing what will happen when the orange hits the apple. And the these are described as laws of physics. These laws are based on the idea that stuff on the lower level is capable of CAUSING EFFECTS on the SAME lower level. This is the idea of "horizontal causality". ACIM refers to the illusion of this as "horizontal perception."

The illusion is so convincing that it seems there is a "law" in effect, some kind of universal rule, that ensures the apple and the orange will act AS IF they are colliding. These are then thought to be natural laws or laws of nature. THEY ARE NOT. THEY DO NOT EXIST! The orange NEVER causes anything to happen. The apple NEVER is affected by the orange. BOTH OF THEM are being simultaneously moved and animated BY the higher level mind.

So in the world, it SEEMS as though there are laws of physics which govern how everything interacts, but it's 100% once removed from what ACTUALLY causes everything to occur. The world ITSELF is once removed from reality/causality, which is why it is an EFFECT or illusion and DOES NOT EXIST!

The things in the world that you THINK are "causes" or "causing something", are NOT THE CAUSE. Cause is always in the mind! They are ILLUSIONS of causes, pretending to be causes. Both causes AND effects on the level of the world are BOTH EFFECTS. This is why Jesus says "the world you see DOES NOTHING. It has no effects at all" (it has no causal power at all).

So while there is this horizontal illusion of cause and effect, which is of the ego, since these so-called "laws" are actually fictional and not the REAL cause, when the mind decides to make a change in what it PROJECTS, it is capable of BREAKING THE LAWS. If the mind decides suddenly, that the apple and the orange will combine together to produce a banana, THEN SO BE IT.

Vertical mind will CAUSE a banana to be projected INTO the world as a banana showing up. This will VIOLATE every conceivable "horizontal law" that you can imagine. And THIS IS MIRACULOUS! "Miracles violate every law of reality as the world judges it." The mind has simply decided to CHANGE ITS DREAM, and this breaks all of the FICTIONAL horizontal laws that APPEAR to explain why things are the way they are, or what limits they are restricted by. Mind OVERRIDES the law!

Miracles are also demonstrations. And miracles are also teaching devices. When the higher mind expresses its power OVER the lower level, and shows that it is the AUTHOR of the "fake laws" by breaking those laws, it demonstrates that those laws ARE ILLUSIONS. "Appearances can be changed." And by changing those appearances, it is PROVEN that those appearances MUST have been illusions. This is educational.

Additionally, the "nature" or "natural law" of the horizontal level, which is fake, is BELOW the TRUE NATURE of the higher level mind that causes it all. That means that which CAUSES the lower level effects is ABOVE the NATURE of the lower level. Another word for that is SUPER (above) NATURAL. Supernatural. Miracles are supernatural! They transcend the "nature" of the "ego", which is the illusion that horizontal causality is real. Also the idea that horizontal causality is real, is really the ego idea that there is no God! That there is no HIGHER CAUSE.

This is why it was possible for Jesus to do things like walking on water to defy gravity, multiplying food to defy ideas of limited materials, changing a tree branch into a snake and back again, raising a body from seeming death, etc.

These are all POSSIBLE because the mind that MAKES all this worldly content show up has POWER OVER IT from a higher level. When a person's mind has become VERTICALLY ORIENTED, which relates to "miracles entail a sudden shift from horizontal to vertical perception", the mind aligned with CAUSALITY can make ANY changes you can possibly conceive of, OUTSIDE of the illusion of "laws that can't be broken." And this is what MIRACLE WORKERS demonstrate. The idea of irreversibility is SIN. Miracles prove sin is not real by CHANGING what the world says cannot be changed.

The distinction between what is CAUSE, and what is its EFFECT, perfectly explains the structure of cause and effect and WHY supernatural miracles are possible and HOW they operate. They are acts of MIND and WILL firmly rooted in causal power, simply electing to produce a different EFFECT. Since "the world is but an effect and not a cause at all", there is nothing in the world or OF the world that cannot be changed, healed, undone, reversed or manipulated by the power of the Mind. This includes bodily sickness and death. "The mind (cause) must be stronger than the body (effect), every miracle demonstrates this!"

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

Let's talk a bit about this notion that all you have to do is transcend "what's happening" in order to be at peace.

The major assumption here is that stuff is happening "on its own". The world is ticking over, events are occurring out of nowhere, no-one is necessarily responsible for making anything happen, attack thoughts pop into the mind seemingly out of nowhere, shit just happens, suffering happens, sickness happens, death happens. Seemingly all on its own with no input from you. So then you try to escape it.

This assumption is only possible if you perceive yourself as having NOTHING whatsoever to do with "causing" the world to be this way, causing sickness, causing suffering or death. The viewpoint is one of total powerlessness, in which the world seems to be the CAUSE OF YOU, the dream decides your fate, things happen to you against your will, and you are entirely at the effect of the world. It's a position of victimhood.

But this for everyone is usually the kind of mindset that you start out with, in the ego, identified with a limited body, perceiving the world as a huge objective reality that does stuff on its own. And then you come to the course and start trying to digest its teachings WITHIN that kind of viewpoint without questioning it. Without questioning the assumption that the world is running on autopilot, or that the body gets sick because of outside influences, or that death will "happen to you" when it decides to.

Finding yourself in a world that's attacking you (causing you, making you affected), you seek for SALVATION or ESCAPE, and you think that you will find it by some kind of AVOIDANCE of what's happening. That if you could crawl into a hole and hide and get away from the causes, you would find some kind of peace. This is entirely an ego strategy. It keeps the attacking world real, maintains external causes, and keeps you at the effect of everything, but then persuades you that if you will step back and sit on the fence just enough maybe you'll be beyond the reach of its influence. That it's totally normal for a hideous disease to be ripping the body apart so long as you're smiling, or that somehow it's natural to still get angry but "observe" the anger from a detached viewpoint. Split mind anyone?

This leads many people along the EGO path of seeking for salvation by some kind of "transcending" of what is happening. That is, firmly believing that what happens is entirely permanently outside your control, you have no power over it, it will STILL continue to do what it does, and there is nothing you can really to do STOP IT. And that therefore your only solution is to "change your mind about it" or try to "see it in a different way" so that, perhaps, you can WELCOME IT, or not interpret it as an attack, or position yourself beyond it somehow.

And so then the entire effort to progress spiritually becomes about a kind of withdrawal from the world, an attempt to transcend it, an attempt to bypass it, an attempt to KEEP THE WORLD functioning the way it does, keep the attacks, keep the wars, keep the sickness, keep the suffering, and keep the death, but find some way to "be at peace with it". Or to be happy "in spite of it".

The thing is, there is SOME truth to this, because the world is in fact not real, it's a dream, and taking it seriously makes you unhappier. Believing in its illusions and temptations produces stress. Reacting to it increases suffering. etc. So you reason that you will find more peace if you will sort of calm yourself down, become tranquil, try not to be upset by it and thus reach some kind of peaceful state. While the world keeps being murderous against your will. And then along comes death, and what can you do to stop it? Hold up a peace sign? Throw some vitamin water at it?

What happens here is that people find a kind of escape from suffering through avoidance and "re-framing". It's perfectly legitimate to reframe the world because the world is a dream and not to be taken seriously. But at the same time, while people will take "causality" away from the world as if to say, you are no longer "at the effect of" the world, they still won't go so far as to OWN THE CAUSALITY. They won't admit to having power over the world, nor admit to DREAMING IT. It's like becoming a passive dreamer who is still unconscious of the fact that the world is coming from their own mind.

They see no purpose or power or ability to actually INFLUENCE it in any way. And this is a result of the ASSUMPTION that the state of major limitation you find yourself in is "normal" and natural. In this state there has been no transcendence of the order of difficulty in miracles. The hierarchy of illusions has not been dismantled or flattened. The power of the mind has not been admitted to or owned or mastered. Miracles are not being performed. Healing is missing. In effect, every way in which you would be THE CAUSE OF WHAT HAPPENS, is completely ignored.

So what happens is, we still believe the world is the cause of everything, the world still spins on its own, events still happen outside your control, people still attack, the environment still causes your body to be sick, the death still decides when your time is up. But supposedly you are happy and at peace. And yet you are powerless. Passive. An "observer". A fence-sitter. Sitting there on a cloud doing basically nothing to engage with the world, heal sickness, cast out death or overcome the LAWS that you made up to govern you.

If you are under no laws but God's, why are you pinned down by gravity? Why are you restricted by space and time? Why do you depend on air and food? Why when "sickness happens" do you not realise you PUT IT THERE? Why when death seems to loom are you not seeing that you HAVE POWER OVER SICKNESS AND DEATH BECAUSE YOU MADE THEM UP AND CAN ABOLISH THEM BOTH?

Being "not at the effect of the world" does NOT mean "I don't let the world affect me". It means YOU STOP HURTING YOURSELF. It means YOU take responsibility for CAUSING everything, and you choose to stop attacking yourself. It means you stop believing there even IS an outside cause or power or will or mind that can affect you against your will. It means you stop believing that the body EVER "gets sick" through any process other than YOUR MIND ATTACKING IT. And it also requires the recognition that even death has NO POWER OVER YOU, and therefore you DO NOT MAKE IT HAPPEN, and there is NO cause anywhere to make it happen against your will. Jesus: "SWEAR NOT TO DIE!"

This is the part of ACIM that so many poeple do not want to see or admit to or own up to. That the world is not simply "not causing you" to be upset, but that YOU ARE CAUSING IT. SOMEONE is responsible for EVERYTHING that happens. Nothing happens without a MIND CAUSING IT. The planet does not even EXIST without a mind dreaming it. Sickness does not happen unless a MIND decides to make sickness. Death does not occur unless some MIND CHOOSES to make death appear to happen.

It is not anywhere near enough to simply seek out being "at peace" in a kind of escape from "a real world that does stuff to me on its own". That is not mastery. That is not transcendence, it's avoidance. There is no power in that. It's a state of passivity and really not much different than laying down and allowing death to happen "on its own". Being not "affected by" something does not mean it still HAPPENS and you are "okay with it". You have to look at WHY does it even HAPPEN AT ALL? It happens because YOU are responsible for making it happen. That's a whole different ballgame.

It's not merely about what the world does and how you respond to it, it's about YOU ARE THE DREAMER WHO IS MAKING IT ALL HAPPEN. And therefore you can choose to NOT making it happen, or to undo anything you have made. It is a position of POWER. It is a position of being able to HEAL whatever occurs. It is a position of miracle working and supernatural power. It's not a state of contemplating your navel and becoming mostly peaceful then having the body "become sick and die" in a total display of victimhood.

You are to not be affected by the world. That does not mean the world still does stuff "on its own" to you against your will. It means realizing the world DOES NOT do stuff on its own, YOU DO IT, and then deciding to STOP DOING IT. So that the world CANNOT DO ANYTHING without your consent. Because you do it all to yourself. This is the secret of salvation. This is why there is no power or cause in the world capable of bringing oppression, making you suffer, sick, sad or afraid. The world is the EFFECT OF YOU. Which means you, in your unlimited nature, should be able to CHANGE IT any way you see fit. Because you are the dreamer.

It's also not enough to meditate and "watch thoughts come and go". WHO MAKES THE THOUGHTS? You do. Stopping making the thoughts is correcting the problem at its CAUSE, rather than allowing the thought-generation to continue and to then try to BYPASS it. That is not peace. A healed mind should not be GENERATING attack thoughts. There should be no need to "observe" thought processes, given that those troublesome thought processes should not even be HAPPENING in the first place. It's not your job to let attack thoughts keep occurring by try to sidestep or ignore them (actually a form of disassociation). It's your job to uproot those motherfuckers at their source and stop making them.

The course says not to seek to change the world, but to change your mind about the world. A lot of people SOTP THERE. But it goes on to say, that if you change your mind about the world, THE WHOLE WORLD WILL CHANGE. Because your mind has the power to CHANGE THE DREAM. That is a VASTLY different standpoint than one of "only" changing your mind "about it". You never really change your mind ABOUT the dream anyway.... as you change your mind, the dream changes. There is no "about", unless you believe that the world is a SEPARATE THING FROM YOUR MIND.

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

"You made the world."

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

If your focus is to try to LET STUFF STILL HAPPEN and "just observe it", you are turning yourself into a fence-sitting inert powerless action-less miracle-less passive recipient of death.

Jesus states that "members of my party are ACTIVE WORKERS."

There is miracle mindedness, that is one thing. It's a state of true perception and readiness to perform miracles. But then there is MIRACLE DOING, or working, which is an ACT of CAUSING illusions to change or disappear. Miracle DOING is the part that so many are afraid of and do not want anything to do with. Because that means having power over the world and not just seeking out an escape from it.

"Your function on earth is healing." "You share the Holy Spirit's function on earth."

If you want to be a miracle WORKER, not just "miracle minded" or "transcendent", it has to go WAY beyond passivity or trying to meditate or trying to let stuff keep happening without any ABILITY to do anything about it. Faith without works is dead. You must EXTEND LOVE, CAUSE HEALING, and REVERSE DEATH. This is not a spectator sport UNTIL the entire sonship is awakened.

"Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously. But afterwards, your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent; a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by yourself.

It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your "reality" that makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control."

- ACIM - sickness is a defense against the truth... Here Jesus describes how we create sickness.

We evaluate that the truth is a threat (to our ego truth), we decide we need to defend against it, so we create a sickness by making it real and doing it to ourselves, yet making it look like we didn't choose it. Jesus goes on to say...

"But what you have forgot can be remembered".

He also says:

"Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. They aim at doing this, and it is this they do."

and

"And yet you have forgotten that they stand but for your own decision of what should be real, to take the place of what is real."

i.e. sickness is an attempt to obscure the truth and make it unrecognizable by associating truth with something illusory. Sickness is illusory, so regarding it as truth obscures what the truth really is.

and ie... you use sickness to convert reality to untruth and illusions to reality.

We need to then remember we did this and uncover what the truth really is, to bring about healing.

Here is another way of interpreting this well-known quote:

"Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see."

Instead of this meaning, that the world exists objectively and you must change your perception of it, so that you see it clearly....

What if it means...

What you see reflects your thinking. Change your mind and what you see will change, because YOU are MAKING the world. You are the cause of what's out there. YOU are the dreamer of the dream. Change your mind and the world must follow. Not just a change or a shift in your own perception, or a position of seeing it from a different vantage point. Instead, it's a position of recognizing and admitting that you have power OVER it and by changing your mind the world will change!

This means the exact opposite to what is it is commonly interpreted to mean. It is the sheer difference between merely changing how you perceive and attempting to accept and keep what is out there, verses realizing that you PUT the world there and by changing your mind you can be miraculous in changing it with the Power of God.

You don't think you have this power over the world because you believe heavily that it decides everything for you. That's being a victim of the world.

You are not supposed to just change your perception or INTERPRETATION of the world. You are supposed to realize that you have the power to create physical matter, to change objects, to heal sickness and undo death. That this world LITERALLY is coming from your mind and you have power over it.