Law of Cause and Effect

Given a full cycle instead of a single evening, Law of Cause and Effect changes character: it gets quieter and more accurate at the same time.

At its best it brings a felt sense of connection rather than a borrowed belief. Left unexamined it turns into collecting practices without living any of them. The honest work between those two ends is this: keep one practice for a full lunar cycle.

The most common misreading of Law of Cause and Effect is expecting it to remove discomfort, when its actual gift is making discomfort legible.

If you notice that happening, you have not failed — you have found the exact place the work lives.

Track your sleep and appetite while you work with this. The first sign of movement is usually somatic, not spiritual.

Best begun at the New Moon, when the instruction is to plant intentions.

1. Clear a small surface and sit down properly. No phone, no music with words.

2. Say what you are actually here about — one sentence, plain language, no spiritual vocabulary.

3. Bring Law of Cause and Effect into it: hold it, light it, draw it, or simply read its name aloud, whichever suits.

4. Ask: what am I avoiding inside this? Write for four minutes without stopping.

5. Choose one action from what you wrote and put it in the diary with a date.

Close by naming one thing you are no longer willing to negotiate.

Shadow with Law of Cause and Effect usually appears as collecting practices without living any of them.

Ask, without softening it: who taught me this was safer? What does it protect me from feeling? What would I have to face if I stopped doing it? Write the answers even if they are unflattering — especially then.

Day one — read the entry again slowly and write the line that irritated you.

Day two — keep one practice for a full lunar cycle.

Day three — find where collecting practices without living any of them has been true for you.

Day four — do the smaller version of the thing you keep postponing.

Day five — tell one person one true sentence about this.

Day six — notice what a felt sense of connection rather than a borrowed belief would actually feel like in your ordinary day.

Day seven — rest, and write what changed without grading yourself.

• What did Law of Cause and Effect show me that I already suspected?

• Where in my life is a felt sense of connection rather than a borrowed belief already quietly present?

• What is the cost of continuing to collecting practices without living any of them?

• If I trusted this completely, what would I stop doing this week?

• Who would notice if I actually lived this?

Give Law of Cause and Effect one full lunar cycle before deciding what it is worth to you. Come back to this page at the next New Moon and read your notes below — the change is usually visible in your own handwriting before it is visible anywhere else.