"The conventional logic is that the mother precedes the child, and is the cause of the child´s existence. However, in order for a mother to actually be a mother there must be a child. Therefore the designation of mother is dependent upon the child. This reverses the expected cause and effect. The so-called cause (mother) is understood to depend on the so-called effect (child) for its designation, which renders the effect as a cause. Considering the fluidity with which the reversal is understood cuts through causality and allows the mystery of the continuum to outshine its coordinates.
The same fluidity applied to breaking through casual designations can be applied to the universe and perception. How would we know that there was a universe at all unless it entered somehow into perceiving? It is assumed that the universe precedes what perceives it, and that the perceiving mind is born into a universe that has prior existence, and allows it to exist. Therefore the universe seems to be the cause and perceiving is its effect. However, the effect of perceiving becomes the cause of the universe because of the necessity of the universe having to be perceived in order to be known at all. Therefore the perceiving becomes the cause and the universe becomes its effect. Like the Sefer Yetzirah states: "Their end is imbedded in their beginning, and their beginning in their end, like a flame in a burning coal (1:7)
If the seed of awareness impregnates the womb of its own expanse, is it a parent to its own thoughts? Which is cause and which is effect? How do mental phenomena indicate any coherent autorship? Why would it be assumed that there is a thinker prior to the thought? Is identity not designated by the thinking alone? Do you exist before the thought that you exist?
The nontheistic view held here assumes that creativity does not require a prior divine entity to pull its strings. Creative activity is uncaused, sourceless and spontaneous. The Fountain of Wisdom states: "Only that which generates itself can be called truly existent." Consideration of the magic of spontaneous uncaused creativity nullifies the linear causal progression, because a thing cannot create itself. In order to create itself a thing would have to exist before the act of creation to do the creating. This is impossible, and contemplation of the scenario allows a break in conceptuality.
The remedy for linear causality is a return to the open space "prior to" manifestation, without rejecting the display of its phenomena. The razor´s edge that equalizes form and formlessness can be realized in that space, no matter what seems to arise. Each mental construct can be taken as a body, and each body has five functions symbolized by five inner organs. Each organ corresponds to an alchemical function. The inner organs of the fivefold body of each mental construct mirror the senses of touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight.
Each fivefold collection of functions is the pregnant beast laid upon the fiery altar of sacrifice in contemplative practice, where the body surrenders to the fire of wisdom. As each functional unit is caught, bound, and consumed its life force is extracted, and allowed to dissolve in the same basic space that presents it. Space is a complete undifferentiated body that appears in the paradox of differentiation. No construct ever leaves space even for a moment. Therefore the sacrifice of the space-body marks the return to what it actually never left. The return is the sacrificial offering, its fire is sheer aspiration, and its rising smoke is the perfume of poetic resonance. Each moment of awakening enacts this scenario.
The fivefold organ system that constitutes a contemplative body can be applied to either the macrocosm or the microcosm, but it doesn´t really matter in the greater sense of the work. The main point is that each construct, whether vast or tiny, can be unmade in the midst of its apparent relative functioning. It doesn´t matter how the construct was made, as long as it can be unmade in the recognition of the essential nature of its life force. The assumption of independent existence that is imputed to the construct is the actual animal of sacrifice. This is the true meaning of the temple sacrifices described in the five books of the Torah.
The body is a whole offering, which sacrifices itself through the alchemical process. Immersion, absorption, and surrender unify the beast, and send its twitching impulses off garmented in clouds of variation, perfumed with the smoke of aspiration. Its smoldering flesh passes away in each moment. All constructs are impermanent, and their passing away is used by the practitioner as a sacrifice. The dissolution of phenomena is inherent in every moment anyway, so why not infuse it with gnostic intention? Why not make what is already happening into prayer?
(David Chaim Smith - The Awakening Ground)