Cause And Effect
Clarity into understanding circumstance.
"Random". You've heard the word a thousand times. A random phone call. A random event. Someone's words heard synchronistically at the right time. All "random". Whatever it was, in that moment it seemed like a single event. It appeared as something, a circumstance, that presented itself, in the here and now.
But it wasn't… "random".
We experience cause and effect throughout our incarnation, and it is on a level much deeper than most people will ever realize. The reason is that the true depth of cause and effect, and the distance it travels, usually go completely unrecognized. Instead, we take each circumstance to be an isolated event.
The truth is that nothing is isolated. Ever. There is no such thing as a singular circumstance. The action of "One" ripples throughout all versions of possibility, eternally, crossing time and space and touching all things.
Understanding Cause
Cause is the circumstance or the condition presented to you for your human experience in any given moment. It is what shows up, and it is never yours alone.
Most are unaware of the origin of a "cause" regarding a particular circumstance. How it came about, or how many that cause has already affected. They only see what is in front of them in what they believe to be a singular circumstance.
And unfortunately, most people just respond directly to that "cause", the circumstance, in the form of a reaction.
Unknowingly to them, the reaction is what allows "cause", the circumstance, to continue rippling through all possibility and all time for all to experience.
Understanding Effect
Effect is the result of the reaction. It is not the result of the circumstance itself. It is the result of the reaction to the circumstance. The reaction to the "cause".
The reaction is derived from internal programming: the accepted automatic response we run because we have always run it. Or the programming that has been deemed acceptable through what you see in the world: your family, schooling, entertainment, society, etc.
The circumstance presents itself. Your programming responds as a reaction. The result then follows. Lack of awareness is why you never see your programming and you assume the circumstance is what created the result. Not the reaction.
The circumstance did not create the result. The circumstance merely offered an opening. An opportunity. The reaction was the deciding factor on what was presented to you and all others.
State
This is the part that is so difficult to understand about the circumstances we encounter in existence.
Cause and effect have to do with state.
State is the condition you are in as you meet the circumstance, carried into the moment before you have a single thought about it.
Two people can meet the same exact circumstance in two different states and experience two entirely different realities. The circumstance was the same. The state was not.
The Ripples
Consider the first person whose state dictated the committing of an unloving act.
You could say that act birthed every unloving act through all possibility everywhere, as the ripple effect of that one change in state continued through everyone everywhere. Every echo of it, across every life, traces back to that first shift from love into something else.
This isn't about placing blame. It is about revealing the scale of "cause and effect" ripples. One change in state can ripple through everything, everywhere, infinitely. State is one of the most powerful things we carry.
We think we are dealing with just this particular circumstance in time, just this person, just this problem. But we are all experiencing the ripple effects of every single circumstance of cause and effect that has ever occurred for every human being. This is why a circumstance is never yours alone. Everybody experiences it, just not in the way you would rationally believe.
This Plays Out As Time
The cause and effect ripples we experience are presented as circumstances over time.
Sequence, before and after, this and then that: these are all the experience of ripples in state from all time. Time is the way ripples are lived.
This is why circumstances can feel so inevitable. We are standing inside of many ripples that began long before this incarnation, perceiving their unfolding as the clock moves forward.
Catch It
To experience circumstances is to experience cause and effect: the many ripples of state traveling throughout time and existence. But the ripples can be extinguished.
The most meaningful moment is the one found between cause and reaction. Reaction allows a ripple to continue on through you for all time. Awareness, and the choice to operate from the state of love, are what can extinguish the ripple you are aware of.
The state of love is something that a ripple of cause and effect cannot continue past.
Every time you meet a circumstance in a changed state, you either become a new point of origin for its continuation or the one who extinguishes the ripple.
That space between cause and reaction is small, but it is where you have choice.
Are you the cause? Are you the effect? Are you that which allows a ripple to continue? Or are you the state which allows a ripple to gently dissolve?
One change in state began all of this. One change in state can begin something else.
© Jonathan Ashford. All rights reserved.
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