Mental anguish, along with the thinking process that produces emotions, is based on the notions of time and causality. You cannot make yourself suffer unless you think in terms of causality and time. When you suffer, usually you’re saying, “Now I’m angry because someone did this to me. Now I’m hurt because such-and-such happened. Now I’m scared because someone did that to me.” If you simply eliminate the thought of time and causality, suffering ends. You could be aware of what’s right at that moment, know that whatever you’re thinking at that moment is actually just happening in that moment. What you feel has nothing to do with what happened yesterday. Just be aware of yourself this very second. Just realize that you are instantaneously emerging. Break the temporal continuity of sensation. Realize instantaneously, right at this very second, that you are emerging. You are absolutely instantaneous emergence. You are not a continuity in time. – Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, ch.11
You could say there’s only one cause that is causing everything all the time. You could call that the Absolute or God or Truth or the Prime Mover—something that is always and completely cause. There’s only one mover that moves everything, instantaneously, universally, cosmically. So when you take a breath, then exhale, the exhalation is not the result of the inhalation. The exhalation is completely independent of the inhalation. Independence, though, does not mean arbitrary chaos. Law and harmony are in the movement. After I inhale, the next thing that appears in the flow is an exhalation. My mind might focus and decide, “I am doing it, and there is a cause and an effect.” The direct perception is that my chest rises and my chest falls. But I’m not seeing that one causes the other. Like the movie, one frame materializes instantly after the other. In this perception, there isn’t a sense of causation. – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Five: Inexhaustible Mystery, Ch. 11