An Important Thought About Cause and Effect

Some people call it karma – the idea that ‘what goes around comes around.’ Other people prefer to look at it as the Golden Rule – ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ We can also look at it from a scientific perspective with Newton’s Law of Effect which states that ‘for every action, there exists an equal and opposing reaction.’

Regardless of how we like to understand the process of cause and effect, through experience we begin to become open to the idea that the choices that we make ripple out and have the potentiality to come back to us. ‘We reap what we sow.’

Sometimes we are able to easily see the harvest of our kindness or grace – in our healthy or reciprocal relationships, the flow between cause and effect is tangible. Less obvious to us is how this plays out in our more difficult relationships, or in our experiences of injustice or hardship. Betrayal compromises our ability to forgive, and for anyone who has experienced a violation of trust, karmic rule seems to somehow feed the injustice.

An important thought about cause and effect: however, touches upon the idea that perhaps the way we choose to live our life can also be one that is meant to include the law in an indirect way. There are times when we are kind to someone and they are not kind back. There are times when we apologize but aren’t granted the same courtesy. There are times when regardless of the obvious betrayal, no one asks for forgiveness.

It is in these times when we can remind ourselves that the kindness or forgiveness will come to us in other ways, in a bigger, more universal sense. That the conscious choice of grace will come back to us through the richness of our lives; we will see it in our blessings, we will feel it in our peace.

Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@elias_kauerhof