There are no "causes", but instead Beings.

If you agree that the primary unit of reality is Beings, then there are no "causes". 

If beings are the reality, then the first step in anything is the freedom of some Being as expressed spiritually; and that is not "a" cause. It can be thought of as some kind of action of their "self", their ultimate nature. 

This can't be explained, because it is the ultimate. If it could be explained, it would not be ultimate. 

"Causes" are abstractions, they are the product of some consciousness drawing lines around some chunk of living reality, of detaching something specific from a reality that is not thus divided. 

Beings are alive and always-living, and their "actions" are dynamic and a totality. If we divide the living behaviour of a Beings into causes, or events, or actions; then this is (just) a model of reality. 

The boundaries of the cause (its definition) are artificial and not really-real. 

Since we communicate by models, and by abstractions, this might seem like meaningless hair-splitting; but regarding causes as if they were real discrete entities has been the reason for much incoherent, confusing, and even demoralizing philosophical reflection, over centuries, perhaps millennia. 

People draw lines around causes, and do the same for "effects" - on the assumption that these are ultimate and real categories - on the assumption that these models are instead reality; and then they find that they can't understand freedom, or creation, or love, or anything fundamental when using these models. 

The confusion is caused by the (false) assumptions of the models, and it is therefore mistaken to infer that the confusion is as aspect of reality.  

I try to remember this when I find myself reasoning about causes and effects; but it isn't easy - because the cause and effect way of thinking is built into our assumptions...

To the extent that we use cause and effect reasoning to try and explain Beings - when reality is in the opposite direction!

 

Note: These notions were stimulated by some aside-comments by Laeth. Although I am confident of the reality of what I am saying; I'm aware the above points are hard to follow. The best I hope for, is that something of this will lodge in your mind, and you will think it through for yourself - next time you find yourself wresting with the paradoxes and contradictions of cause and effect thinking.