September, 2017 | Spirituality for Seekers

We live in a universe which operates according to the law of cause and effect, which means that every action has consequences. Kick a ball in bare feet and the kinetic energy of the movement will cause the ball to move. Kick a brick wall in bare feet and the kinetic energy of the movement will probably cause one or more of your toes to bruise or break. Although the consequences that we experience in life can be as varied as the actions we take, the basic principle of cause and effect is constant.

The Karmic Principle, which is also known as the Law of Karma, states that the very same law of cause and effect also applies on a spiritual level, and that every action you take – or fail to take – as a spiritual being will be followed by corresponding consequences. The only difference here is that the chain of cause and effect can be harder to discern.

Think negative thoughts on a regular basis and you will probably act in a similarly negative way. Those negative actions, in turn, will reap negative results. Fortunately, the principle applies in a positive way too. Think positive thoughts on a regular basis and you will act in a more positive way, which will lead to more positive results.

The words positive and negative in this sense are, of course, quite arbitrary concepts which have no real meaning, for what is viewed as positive by one person might be perceived as quite negative by another, but that is a topic for another time.

Some traditions talk about the Karmic Principle only in relation to how a person experiences his current life, but others say that the principle works over multiple lifetimes, which means that you may, in this current life, be reaping the consequences of your actions in previous lifetimes. At the same time, the actions that you take in this current lifetime is setting the stage for the consequences you will experience in future incarnations.

Whether or not you, as a Seeker, believe in the idea of past or future lifetimes is really quite irrelevant, because the fact remains that the Karmic Principle is at work right now, irrespective of your views about what happens after physical death. That being the case, it makes sense to spend some time thinking about the principle and the role that it has played in your life to this point, and how you might work with it more mindfully in the days, weeks, months and years ahead.

Consider the following, being careful to listen to your intuition and recording your responses in your spiritual notebook:

– Every action has a consequence, so every effect that comes into being must have had a previous cause. What are some of the decisions you have made, words you have said and actions you have taken in the past that have brought you to where you currently are in life?

– What past actions do you regret, and why?

– What past actions are you pleased about, and why?

– What kind of actions (of thought, word and deed) have you been taking in recent days and weeks?

– What kind of consequences might those actions bring in the days and weeks ahead?

– What kind of consequences would you like to experience in the future?

– What kind of actions (of thought, word and deed) are most likely to result in you experiencing your desired future consequences?

By thinking carefully about the Karmic Principle in this very practical and down-to-earth manner, you can begin to live in accordance with it in a more mindful and productive way.

Imagine that you have, right there in front of you, one whole apple. Any apple will do, but for illustration purposes you might want to imagine a crisp, fresh, green one, with a leaf growing from the stem. When that image is firmly established in your mind, imagine that you slice the apple into five separate pieces, and that you arrange those pieces on a plate so that none of them are touching.

Now, how many apples do you have on the plate?

The answer is, I hope, rather obvious. You have just one apple, exactly as you did before you started cutting the fruit. The division of the apple into five separate pieces didn’t increase the number of apples that you have, nor did it reduce the number.

Alright then, how many whole apples do you have on the plate?

This question can be a little trickier to answer, because many of you will tend to think of the word whole as meaning undivided, and you have clearly divided the apple by cutting it. In that sense, you might quite rationally respond that you no longer have any whole apples.

In a mathematical sense, however, having all of the parts which collectively comprise the whole means that you still have one whole apple. As any mathematician will be happy to confirm, having five fifths is pretty much the same as having one whole. The overall quantity is therefore exactly the same even though the whole has been divided into five separate pieces.

What’s the point of all this apple talk, you may ask? Well it’s not a thinly disguised attempt to become the next Jamie Oliver, believe me. I simply wanted to illustrate the point that dividing one whole thing into separate pieces doesn’t actually change the mathematical number of things which actually exist. All it really does is change the way the one whole is arranged in physical terms.

The Unity Principle states that there is no real separation between you and the rest of the universe, or between the universe and the Creative Principle itself. On the contrary, everything is actually just one whole thing, and the only reason you experience a feeling of duality, or separation from everything else is because you choose to view yourself as an individual rather than as equally valuable and important pieces of that whole.

If it were possible to separate an ocean into an extraordinary number of individual droplets of water, would the ocean cease to exist? Yes and no. Yes, because ocean is the word we use to describe a vast amount of water, but also no, because that vast amount of water is still there, albeit in a different form. If you were to bring all of those droplets of water together again, the ocean would be just as apparent as it was at the beginning.

What if you were to view the contents of this universe in exactly the same way? What if, rather than viewing yourself as an individual human being which is separate from everything else, you were more mindful of the fact that you are also a part of a much greater whole?

The atoms which make up your physical body have been around since the beginning of time, and they will remain in this universe until the end of time. Why, then, do you view your physical body as being quite separate from the universe at large just because its atoms are currently arranged in this particular way?

Similarly, for those of you who have embraced the concept of yourselves as spiritual beings, why view yourself as a spiritual being which is quite separate from the Creative Principle? Why not instead view yourself as a temporary and only seemingly separate manifestation of the one Creative Principle?

Examine spiritual traditions from around the world and you will often find that their founders spoke about ‘being one’ with something greater than themselves. Some spoke of being one with God, whilst others spoke of being one with the universe, or simply of the concept of non-duality, but the terminology is not nearly as important as the basic concept which is being described, which is the concept of unity.

If, as a Seeker, you choose to look for God, I would suggest that you don’t become too attached to the idea of looking for the whole, because that apple may have already been sliced. Instead, consider looking at yourself, your neighbour, your enemy, your pets and everything else in your experience, and recognising that God may well have been right in front of you all along, cleverly disguising itself as separation.

Archives for September 2017