Of all the constants in life, cause and effect is the law that governs sequence and continuity, the “flow” of things.
If you know about the law of attraction, then you know that you can manifest a specific reality into being. One of the methods to do so is the consistent use of creative visualisation where a person “sees” him/herself already having the desired outcome in his/her mind.
But even the manifestation itself is subject to cause and effect. Said differently, if you wanted to manifest a cheesecake into your life and you visualised it every night and every day before and after sleep, that cheesecake would not suddenly appear before you, it would need to “make it’s way” to you or you to it. The law of attraction utilises the law of cause and effect in the deployment of other people and ‘freak’ timing that often gets brushed aside as coincidence. You could look at cause and effect as the logistics in the universe. In order for something to happen, something needs to happen.
Many quote the scientific definition of the law of cause and effect: “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. While this is indeed a very accurate explanation of this law (a soft punch won’t hurt as much as a hard punch) there is not much significance for this definition of this law in the context of human experience which is what matters most for people. If we do not understand how this law affects our life in a direct manner, what real motivation is there to study the different aspects of this principle?
For this purpose, I have a definition of cause and effect in the human application which makes it very relevant: “for every action, there is an experience” or “DO –> HAVE” for short.
Every action has an experience for the doer of the action. Out of that experience the experiencer does an action which then has an experience which creates an action which has an experience and so on and so forth, you get the point.
What ever action you do, you get to have the experience of that action. This is a law. So even if you did “nothing”, you will still get to have that experience. As this is a law, there is no getting around it, even inaction is actually an action of sorts because it has an experience. There is no such thing as “actionlessness” in this physical realm that we occupy. If you do nothing, you’ll have that experience of having accomplished nothing. Paradoxically speaking, if you intended to do nothing intentionally, there is great reward in that (provided it was “done” intentionally), like resting, relaxing or meditating. If it was not intentional and it came to pass as procrastination, that would not be so pleasant, but it would still show up in the principled sequence of DO –> HAVE where I did nothing and felt like a bum.
This law (as well as the other universal laws) are taken for granted and are hardly even noticed. This is unfortunate because this law is so central to our human experience. Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. What this is supposed to mean is that if you do something and the result/experience is not what you hoped for, you need to change what you’re doing. Not changing your input will bring about no change in the output. According to Einstein, a sane mind is one that adheres to this principle and makes corrections according to it.
I make practical use and often refer to the law of cause and effect in it’s human application of DO –> HAVE.
The DO part is an action (or inaction) that we make as well as words that we speak or say. The truth is that thoughts also form part of this as thoughts precede all actions and all words.
The HAVE part is what follows. This is key in understanding human experience and human performance and so it is, naturally, also key in understanding human transformation and personal breakthrough.
One way of looking at life is this respect is as a series of actions. Those actions have their own experiences but the experiences are direct results of the actions. If you want to change the nature of your life experience, you must look at changing what you do and what you say.
As this is a universal law, we can rely on it the same way we rely on the laws of nature when we plant a seed in the ground. We know and possibly take for granted that all we have to do is plant a seed in the earth and that as long as it gets water and sun, a plant will sprout out of the ground. That’s how one tree grows and that’s how every plant in every garden, field, forest or jungle has ever grown.
So to in our lives, we can rely on the fact that by doing and thinking differently, our lives not only can change, they will change.