Lesson 19: I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts.
We could stop reading and doing the workbook at this point if we just completely internalized and lived into this lesson alone. We, of course, don’t want to because we like the idea that we have our own mind and our thoughts and can think them anytime we want and keep them private. But, if it’s true, as the last lesson said, that “all minds are joined” then there’s not such thing as a private thought. What we think, on any level, becomes a manifested experience on some level.
Cause and effect are the same, the lesson tells us. Thoughts simultaneously result in the reality that we think we see. We like to think the two are separate – something I see in my world causes me to think something, or that I think something and then see it outside of myself. In reality, the Course says, these things happen at once.
The ego wants us to keep thinking cause and effect are separate so it can get us to play its game of competition, distrust, separation and fear. If we think we are at the effect of our own thoughts or the thoughts of others, we can justify staying separate from those who think differently than we do. If we understood the true power of our thoughts, we would awaken to the realization that changing our thoughts – changing our minds – would change the reality we lived in. We don’t have to be at the effect of our thoughts or others – we don’t have to feel fearful and vulnerable in the world. We created it – we can recreate it.
Hafiz understands that cause and effect are one and that the Holy is always trying to bring us into a state of unity. He writes:
I
taste what you taste,
I know the kind of lyrics that you most like,
I know which sounds will become resplendent
in your mind
and bring such pleasure to your feet
that they will need to jump or whirl.
When anything touches or enter your body,
Never say it is not me,
My lips are now burning and everywhere.
I am running from every corner of this earth and sky –
just wanting to kiss you.
I am every particle of wheat and dust –
I am rioting at your soul’s door,
I am spinning midair like golden, fallen leaves
Trying to win your glance.
I am sweetly rolling against your walls and shores all night
even though you are asleep.
I am singing from the mouth of animals and birds
My dear, when anything ever touches or enters your body
never say that it is not me – for God is just trying,
the Beloved is just trying, to get close.
Rushing to your side from every corner
of existence, needing to say,
“I am yours.”
The point of A Course in Miracles is to teach us that we belong to one another – that we are one another – and the only way to find our way back home is to realize there really is one cause and effect – because there is only one of us here.
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