Guiding Thought

Gratitude makes all things new! When we are aware of our Source in Love, we see its activity everywhere. It is the Substance of Life itself! We are in the flow and create and expand with Love, in Life!

Reflection / Contemplation

A short, simple way of understanding karma is: what goes around comes around. That is why karma is understood as a “wheel”– we take an action that comes back to us over and over and over again, repeating the same cycle. It’s the “history repeats itself” syndrome.

While it’s true that if we repeat an action that creates a specific result, it’s also true that if we change the action, we will get a different result.

Karma is a universal principle: what you give you get; what you sow, you reap.

This is why there is so much talk about results and experience. You know what you’re giving by the results you are getting, and by the experiences you are having. This is why if you want different results, you need to figure out the actions that are giving you those results and change the action. This is why there is now a common saying, “insanity is taking the same action, expecting a different result”. (Though, note, that it is the expectation of a different result that is insane, not the fact that the same action gets the same result.)

However, repeating results is not necessary if you change your actions. The only reason Karma is understood as a wheel is because we do not change. We do not learn. We do not figure out why we are getting undesired results and then do something different.

Learning and changing shifts the wheel of karma to the spiral of ascension.

Think about it this way:

You want to make a cup of hot chocolate from scratch, and you’ve never done this before; you don’t even know how to begin (for the sake of the analogy, let’s pretend that the internet is not at your fingertips, with instructions and YouTube videos), and all you know that there is chocolate involved. So you take some chocolate bits and boil some water, throw the bits in, heat it up, and drink it. >bleh< it tastes horrible.

If you were on the wheel of karma, the next time you wanted to try to make hot chocolate from scratch you would do the exact same thing, the hot chocolate would again taste terrible, and you would wonder what was wrong, but not change anything.

But if you were on the spiral of ascension, you would think to yourself, “what can I do differently”? So you might take those same bits of chocolate, and use milk instead of water. OK! that tastes better, but maybe not rich enough. How do you make it richer?

The next time you make hot chocolate you seek to answer that question… how to make it richer. In the meantime, you are aware of wanting to find out, you look for options, look for alternatives, and you find out there’s this thing called bakers chocolate that has like 90% cocoa in it. That would make it rich, you think.

So you take your bakers chocolate, melt it in the milk, and expecting a really good, rich cup of hot cocoa, take a big sip! AK! >pew-pew-pew< this tastes like crap WTH?

Since you are still on the ascension spiral, and you got a really bad result, now you’re not just thinking “what can I do differently”, but you are thinking, “what must I do to enjoy this?” and you start looking at your actions, and the results. What changed? What was the result?

And you realize that the baker’s chocolate with 90% cocoa means that there is less sweetener, and that‘s why it tasted like crap. So you know what to change: add sweetener.

Now it’s a matter of figuring out what kind of sweetener and how much, but you’re on the right track. You know the direction to go. You may not know the specifics, but you are confident that eventually you will get an amazing cup of hot chocolate out of it.

Then…once you get the exact right proportion through trial and error of sweetener-milk-cocoa, then you can begin to think, “how can I make this even better?” and you try things like adding cinnamon or vanilla.

The wheel of karma turns into the spiral of ascension by learning through the process. What do you want? What do you want to experience, what results do you want (the cup of hot cocoa).

How do you get it? Try something. Take an action.

Then, really experience your result, and ask yourself…is this what I wanted (notice, this is ties into intention). If it’s not what you wanted, think about how you might change something to get what you want (richer cocoa). Then keep noticing your results and fine-tuning your actions.

In some ways you are doing the same thing over and over again. But on the other hand, you are making small changes that bring about different results and change the entire experience.

This is why it’s a spiral: you’re doing the same thing, differently. You return to the same spot, with a new outlook, with a new approach, so you are never at the exact same place; it’s the same place, but just one small shift “up”.