#163: The Spiritual Cause of Events

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.