I Am an Effect of God

ACIM Workbook Lesson 326 – for Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Affirmation:  “I am forever an Effect of God.”

“. . .[A]ll Your attributes abide in me, because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable.  Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You.  (WB464)”

Reflections:

1 – Cause and Effect in ACIM

The cause-and-effect section in the Text of A Course in Miracles is challenging to understand, perhaps more challenging than most other passages of the theology.  As part of the theology, understanding cause and effect is not absolutely necessary, because theology can delay us, and there is no universal theology.  I am much more interested in the practical that Jesus extols as being most important in ACIM.  But for those who do care about the theology, this prayer explains, succinctly, the relationship between God and ourselves.

2 – Cause and Effect Explained

God is the Cause, the Prime Mover (if you will).  He created us; we did not create ourselves.  So we are still as He created us.   We have made an egoic version of ourselves for this world, and we have suffered mightily for failing to laugh at the tiny, mad idea that there was something more that we ought to experience, apart from God.  But we are still His Effect, the one that He created who has not changed since that creation.

3 – Co-Creators with God

We are meant to be co-creators with God.  Cause and Effect thus become indistinguishable, as stated in the prayer.  God does not have anything that He will not ultimately share with us.  But preparation is necessary first.  God could not have miscreation go too far afield, and thus he set the limits on our power to miscreate.  This was through the pain that we experience.  The threshold for pain may be high, but it is not unlimited.  Sooner or later we have to recognize that there is a better way.  And A Course in Miracles points out that better way.  We are heading, once again, to a reiteration of the fact that Awakening (or Christ-consciousness, as A Course of Love says) is the ultimate aim of this world.  Then we will fully understand that Cause and Effect are One.

Prayer:

Dear Father/Mother,

I have become lost many times in the cause-and-effect explanations in A Course in Miracles.  May I articulate today what Your true meaning is.  May all of us who reread these passage learn more each time that we confront them.  May their theology not delay us or divide us; it is an experience that we seek.  And we do not have to subscribe to theology if it delays or divides us.  We are all One, seekers for You.

Be with me today as I contemplate, once again, what ACIM is saying about Cause-and-Effect.  May I never be so arrogant as to think, as the ego does, that I made myself.  We are Your children, and there is much that we do not know.  Guide us to the greater understanding of Yourself that will sustain in this sometimes troubled world.

Amen.