Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet without effects there
is no cause. The cause a cause is MADE by its effects; the Father is a
father by His Son. Effects do not create their cause, but they establish
its causation. Thus, the Son gives fatherhood to his Creator, and
receives the gift that he has given Him. It is BECAUSE he is God’s Son
that he must also be a father, who creates as God created him. The
circle of creation has no end. Its starting and its ending are the same.
But in itself it holds the universe of all creation, without beginning
and without an end.

Fatherhood IS creation. Love must be extended. Purity is not confined.
It is the nature of the innocent to be forever uncontained, without a
barrier or limitation. Thus is purity not of the body. Nor can it be
found where limitation is. The body can be healed by its effects, which
are as limitless as is itself. Yet must all healing come about because
the mind is recognized as not within the body, and its innocence is
quite apart from it, and where ALL healing is. Where, then, is healing?
Only where its cause is given its effects. For sickness is a meaningless
attempt to give effects to causelessness, and MAKE it be a cause.

Always in sickness does the Son of God attempt to make himself his
cause, and not allow himself to be his Father’s Son. For this impossible
desire, he does not believe that he is Love’s effect, and must be cause
because of what he is. The cause of healing is the only Cause of
everything. It has but ONE effect. And in that recognition,
causelessness is given no effects, and none are seen. A mind within a
body, and a world of other bodies, each with separate minds, are your
“creations,” you the “other” mind, creating with effects unlike
yourself. And as their “father,” you must be like them. Nothing at all
has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a
dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone
else’s dream.

The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the dreamer
IS. It teaches you there is a choice of dreams while you are still
asleep, depending on the purpose of your dreaming. Do you wish for
dreams of healing, or for dreams of death? A dream is like a memory in
that it pictures what you WANTED shown to you. An empty storehouse, with
an open door, holds all your shreds of memories and dreams. Yet if you
are the dreamer, you perceive this much at least; that YOU have caused
the dream, and can accept another dream as well. But for this change in
content of the dream, it must be realized that it is you who dreamed the
dreaming that you do not like. It is but an effect which YOU have
caused, and you would not BE cause of this effect.

In dreams of murder and attack are you the victim in a dying body slain.
But in forgiving dreams is no-one asked to be the victim and the
sufferer. These are the happy dreams the miracle exchanges for your own.
It does not ask you make another; only that you see you made the one you
would exchange for this. This world is causeless, as is every dream that
anyone has dreamed within the world. No plans are possible, and no
design exists that could be found and understood.

What else could be expected from a thing that has no cause? Yet if it
has no cause, it has no purpose. You may cause a dream, but never will
you give it real effects. For that would change its cause, and it is
this you cannot do. The dreamer of a dream is not awake, but does not
know he sleeps. He sees illusions of himself as sick or well, depressed
or happy, but without a stable cause with guaranteed effects.

The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not
true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions. No-one is afraid
of them when he perceives he made them up. The fear was held in place
BECAUSE he did not see that he was author of the dream, and not a figure
in the dream. He gives HIMSELF the consequences which he dreams he gave
his brother. And it is but this the dream has put together and has
offered him, to show him that his
wishes have been done. Thus does he fear his OWN attack, but sees it at
another’s hands. As victim, he is suffering from its effects, but not
their cause. He authored not his own attack, and he is innocent of what
he caused. The miracle does nothing but to show him that he has done
nothing. What he fears is cause without the consequences which would
MAKE it cause. And so it never was.

The separation started with the dream the Father was deprived of His
effects, and powerless to keep them, since He was no longer their
Creator. In the dream, the dreamer made himself, but what he made has
turned against him, taking on the role of its creator, as the dreamer
had. And as he hated his Creator, so the figures in the dream have hated
him. His body is their slave, which they abuse because the motives he
has given it have they adopted as their own. And hate it for the
vengeance it would offer them. It is their vengeance on the body which
appears to prove the dreamer could not be the maker of the dream. Effect
and cause are first split off, and then reversed, so that effect becomes
a cause; the cause, effect.

This is the separation’s final step, with which salvation, which
proceeds to go the OTHER way, begins. This final step is an effect of
what has gone before, appearing as a cause. The miracle is the first
step in giving back to cause the function of causation, not effect. For
this confusion has produced the dream, and while it lasts, will wakening
be feared. Nor will the call to wakening be heard, because it seems to
be the call to fear.

Like every lesson which the Holy Spirit requests you learn, the miracle
is clear. It demonstrates what He would have you learn, and shows you
its effects are what you WANT. In His forgiving dreams are the effects
of yours undone, and hated enemies perceived as friends, with merciful
intent. Their enmity is seen as causeless now, because they did not make
it. And you can accept the role of maker of their hate because you SEE
that it has no effects. Now are you freed from this much of the dream;
the world is neutral, and the bodies which still seem to move about as
separate things need not be feared. And so they are not sick.

The miracle returns the cause of fear to you who made it. But it also
shows that, having no effects it is not cause, because the function of
causation is to have effects. And where effects are gone, there IS no
cause. Thus is the body healed by miracles because they show the mind
MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or effect, of what it
made. Yet half the lesson will not teach the whole. The miracle is
useless if you learn but that the body can be healed, for this is not
the lesson it was sent to teach. The lesson is the MIND was sick that
thought the body could be sick; projecting out its guilt caused nothing,
and had no effects.

This world is full of miracles. They stand in shining silence next to
every dream of pain and suffering, of sin and guilt. They are the
dream’s alternative, the choice to be the dreamer, rather than deny the
active role in making up the dream. They are the glad effects of taking
back the consequence of sickness to its cause. The body is released
because the mind acknowledges “this is not done to me, but I am doing
this.” And thus the mind is free to make another choice instead.
Beginning here, salvation will proceed to change the course of every
step in the descent to separation, until all the steps have been
retraced, the ladder gone, and all the dreaming of the world undone.