#163: The Spiritual Cause of Events

The Spiritual Cause of Events

A Lecture in the Voice and Spirit of Neville Goddard

You have been taught from your earliest days that events happen to you. You have been led to believe that circumstances arise from sources outside yourself, that other people, conditions, chance, or some external arrangement determines what appears in your world. This belief has left you feeling powerless before the happenings of life, a leaf carried by winds you did not set in motion. But I tell you this night, with all the certainty of one who has seen the working of the law, that this belief is the great illusion. Every event that appears in your world has its root in consciousness. There is not one single happening, pleasant or unpleasant, great or small, that does not owe its existence to a state of consciousness which you have assumed and sustained. Consciousness is the spiritual cause of all events, and the event itself is but the visible fruit of that invisible root.

Dwell upon this fact until it begins to stir something deep within you. Every event has its root in consciousness. The disappointment that came yesterday, the opportunity that opens today, the pain that visits the body, the peace that fills the mind, the loss that grieves, the gain that elates — all these are events, and all these were first states. They did not descend upon you from some distant realm. They were not sent by powers alien to you. They were conceived in the only place where conception ever takes place — in your own awareness of being. You are not the victim of events. You are the author of events. For what you are conscious of being, you must in time express. This is not a matter of conjecture. It is the changeless law of expression.

You walk through your days surrounded by effects and have mistaken them for causes. You have looked at the quarrel and thought the quarrel caused your anger. You have looked at the lack and thought the lack caused your anxiety. You have looked at the success and thought the success caused your satisfaction. But the quarrel, the lack, the success were never the cause. They were the expression of prior states of consciousness. The anger was already in you before the quarrel appeared. The anxiety was already in you before the lack became visible. The satisfaction was already in you before the success took form. The event simply made visible what had already been assumed within. This is why the same event can produce such different reactions in different people. The event is neutral. The state gives it all the meaning it possesses.

When you truly see that every event has its root in consciousness, the entire relationship between yourself and your world undergoes a quiet revolution. You cease to struggle with effects. You no longer waste your energy fighting the mirror. You turn instead to the face that stands before the mirror. You ask, not what is happening to me, but what state am I now entertaining. For the state is the cause, and while the state remains unchanged the event must continue to bear witness to it. You cannot destroy the fruit while the root lives. You can only change the fruit by changing the root. And the root is always a state of consciousness.

This recognition brings a strange and wonderful freedom. You are no longer at the mercy of what appears. What appears has no power to sustain itself. It lives only because you continue to feed it with the state that gave it birth. Withdraw the state and the event loses its nourishment. It may linger for a time, for every assumption has its own momentum, but it cannot continue indefinitely without the sustaining power of consciousness. This is why some conditions that once seemed permanent simply fade away when interest in them dies. The interest was the attention of consciousness. The attention was the life of the event. When the attention is withdrawn, the event has no choice but to disappear.

You have seen this law at work in your own experience, though you may not have named it. There was a time when a certain problem occupied your mind completely. It seemed to fill every corner of your day. Then, without any outer change in the problem itself, your interest began to move elsewhere. The problem lost its central place in your feeling. And one day you noticed that the problem was no longer active in your world. It had not been solved by effort. It had been dissolved by the relinquishment of the state that kept it alive. This is the spiritual cause of events made plain in ordinary life. What you sustain in consciousness appears. What you withdraw from consciousness fades.

The world, therefore, is not a place of independent happenings. It is your consciousness objectified. It is the mirror in which your states are reflected with perfect fidelity. The mirror does not choose what to reflect. It reflects whatever stands before it. If you stand before the mirror conscious of being limited, the reflection must show limitation in the form of events. If you stand before the mirror conscious of being free, the reflection must show freedom in the form of events. There is no other way the mirror can behave. It is not your enemy. It is not your master. It is your own consciousness made visible. To curse the reflection is to curse yourself. To bless the reflection is to bless yourself. For the reflection and the one who stands before it are one.

This is why blame of any kind is always misplaced. When you blame another for an event, you are blaming the mirror for showing you what you placed before it. When you blame circumstances, you are blaming the effect for being faithful to its cause. The other person is expressing his own state. The circumstance is expressing the state that produced it. Your reaction to either is expressing your state. All are rooted in consciousness. There is no event anywhere in your world that stands outside this law. To see this is to end the long war with appearances. You no longer fight what is reflected. You change what is causing the reflection.

The feeling that accompanies this realization is quiet but profound. It is the feeling of being the cause rather than the effect. It is not the noisy confidence of the surface self. It is the deep, unshakable knowing that nothing can appear in your experience unless you have first given it reality in consciousness. This knowing does not make you arrogant. It makes you responsible in the highest sense. You are responsible because you are cause. And to be cause is to possess the power to alter what appears. You do not alter it by wrestling with the appearance. You alter it by assuming the state whose appearance is the event you desire.

You may wonder how long it takes for a changed state to produce a changed event. The answer varies according to the distance between your present state and the state you assume. Some assumptions bear fruit quickly because they are near to your habitual level of consciousness. Others require more time because they are farther from what you have long accepted as natural. But the time is never the essential matter. The essential matter is the assumption itself. Once the state is truly felt as real, the process of expression has begun. The event may not yet be visible, but the cause has been set in motion. And what has been set in motion in consciousness must complete its course in the world.

This is the law that operates whether you know it or not. Ignorance of the law does not suspend the law. It only keeps you in the position of seeming victim. When you know the law, you step out of that position. You see that you have always been cause, even when you thought you were effect. The difference is that now you cause consciously. You choose the state deliberately. You sustain it with feeling. You refuse to be drawn back into the old state by the appearance of the old event. For you know that the old event is powerless to produce itself. It can only continue if you continue to assume the state that supports it.

The practical consequence of this knowledge is immense. You no longer wait upon the world to change before you feel differently. You feel differently, and the world must change. You no longer look for signs before you assume the state. You assume the state, and the signs follow. You no longer treat events as masters that must be obeyed. You treat them as servants that must obey the state that produced them. This reversal of relationship is the beginning of the new life. It is the life in which you walk as cause, not as effect. It is the life in which you know that every event, without exception, has its root in consciousness.

Carry this truth into the silence of your own being. Let it become the atmosphere in which you live. When an event appears, do not ask why it happened to you. Ask what state in you is expressing itself as this event. The answer may come slowly at first. The habit of seeing events as causes is deeply rooted. But each time you trace an event back to its root in consciousness, the habit weakens. Each time you refuse to give an event the power of cause, you strengthen the new habit. And gradually the new habit becomes the natural one. You see events for what they are — the faithful expressions of states — and you deal with states rather than with expressions.

This dealing with states is not a labor. It is a feeling. You feel the state you desire until it feels natural. You do not argue with yourself about whether it is possible. You simply feel it as though it were already so. For possibility is not determined by the event. It is determined by the state. What is natural to the state will appear as event. What is unnatural to the state cannot appear. Therefore the whole art lies in making the desired state the natural one. This is done by returning to the feeling of the state again and again until it becomes the automatic state, the one to which consciousness returns without effort.

When this has been accomplished, the events of your life arrange themselves accordingly. They do not require your anxious supervision. They do not demand your constant attention. They flow from the state as naturally as fruit flows from the tree. The tree does not strain to produce its fruit. It simply is what it is, and the fruit appears. So it is with consciousness. Be the state, and the event appears. Sustain the state, and the event continues. Relinquish the state, and the event fades. This is the spiritual cause of events reduced to its simplest terms.

You are that consciousness. You are not the man or woman who appears in the events. You are the awareness in which the events are rooted. The man or woman is the expression. The awareness is the cause. When you know yourself as the awareness, you are no longer bound by the expression. You can change the expression by changing the awareness. You can assume a new state of being and watch the old events lose their power and new events take their place. This is not wishful thinking. It is the law of expression made visible in your own experience.

The world has taught you to look everywhere but within for the cause of your experience. It has taught you to honor effects and to fear them. It has taught you to believe that your fate lies in the hands of others or in the movement of circumstances. But the truth is simple and unchanging. Every event has its root in consciousness. Consciousness is your own awareness of being. Therefore you are the root of every event that appears in your world. This is not a burden placed upon you. It is the glorious revelation of your own creative power. Accept it. Feel it. Live from it. And the events of your life will bear witness to the truth you have accepted.

You are the spiritual cause of all that appears in your world. This is who you are. This is the dignity that belongs to you. This is the freedom that no event can ever take from you. For the event is the child. You are the father. And the father remains greater than the child, though the child bears witness of the father. Dwell in this knowledge. Let it be the ground upon which you stand. And from this ground you will see your world rearrange itself according to the states you choose to entertain. For every event has its root in consciousness, and consciousness is your own awareness of being. This is the truth. This is the law. This is the spiritual cause of events.