Your Whackadoodle Weekly Nudge: Not Karma. Not Magic. Just Cause and Effect.
Each week this summer, we’ll offer a gentle nudge to reflect on one of the fourteen Guideposts. This week, we start with the first—and most foundational—Guidepost of all: Cause and Effect.
“Karma is both action and consequence of action; it is cause and effect simultaneously, because every action generates a force of energy that returns to us in kind.”
— Deepak Chopra, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success
I was elbow-deep in green mango slices, mixing soy sauce and lime into a bowl on the deck, when she came around the corner.
“You forgot,” she said.
I didn’t look up. “Forgot what?”
“This week’s Guidepost reminder. We promised a post every week.” She reached for a mango strip and dipped it without asking. “So I made a list of what I think is important about Guidepost One for us to post. You can tell me if something’s missing after I read it to you.”
“Sounds like an excellent plan,” I said out loud; inside I was thinking, “Good, less work for me.”
She cleared her throat. “Cause and Effect isn’t just an idea. It’s a force. Like gravity. It’s always there, always running in the background. We don’t have to believe in it for it to knock us flat.” She glanced up. “That sound about right so far?”
I nodded. She continued.
“You say in your books that Cause and Effect is the bedrock—that the rest of the Guideposts only make sense because of this one. That the others are basically all causes, and their actual usefulness is in the effects they generate.”
She paused, waiting for my nod, then continued scrolling.
“It’s not karma. It’s not punishment. It’s not the universe out to get you. It’s just… math, kind of. Inputs and outputs. Action, consequence. And it’s a tool. Like, if something in your life isn’t working, maybe stop trying to change the result and actually change the cause.”
She hesitated here, like she was about to skip something, then said, “It’s like the story in your book. The one about the woman who kept nagging her husband to pick up after himself using the exact same words, the same tone, like she was pressing ‘replay’ on a broken record? I really got that. Not because of the marriage thing—obviously—but because I did the same thing with studying. I kept highlighting everything like it was an art project, then panicked when I couldn’t remember anything for the test. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t really studying the content; I was just coloring the words. I switched to flash cards. Better effect. New cause.”
I nodded encouragement, and she continued. “Also, you said this thing that kind of broke my brain—that the effect of one thing is often the cause of the next. Like a chain reaction. Which means sometimes if you want to change something bigger, you have to start way earlier.”
I stopped her there. “Hang on. Why does that one break your brain?”
She made a face, somewhere between skeptical and game. “It doesn’t really. I mean, I get it sort of. Like… if I skip breakfast, that’s a cause. And then I’m starving during class and can’t focus—that’s an effect. But then I bomb the quiz, which becomes the cause of a bad grade, which becomes the cause of a lecture from my parents, which becomes the cause of me stress-eating Hot Cheetos in bed and hating my life.”
I tilted my head in question.
She shrugged again. “It’s just weird to think about how long the trail can go. Or how many places I could’ve stepped in to change it. It’s like…once you see it, you kind of can’t unsee it.” She looked up expectantly, “So did I get the basics.”
I smiled. “Pretty much, but you have left out one essential bit about Cause and Effect and how to use it as a tool.”
“What part’s that,” she frowned.
“The part that says ‘A Problem is only a problem if you can and want to do something about it. Everything else is a fact of life…’”
“…So get over it,” she finished for me, nodding. Picking at a piece of mango, she added, “So…you think people really don’t see it? Cause and effect, I mean?”
“I think that people often confuse the two. They stop with, ‘The cause of our problem is your bad attitude;’ they don’t bother to consider what caused the bad attitude.”
“Or how their actions might have contributed,” she added with a sly smile.
“Sometimes,” I nodded. “Not always.” I found myself adding wryly, “And sometimes people are happy not looking past the nose on their face.”
“What do you do about those people?”
“That’s a topic for one of the other guideposts,” I shrugged, putting the cover over the mangos and giving the whole bowl a giant shake. “Possibly guideposts twelve and thirteen.”
“That’s Understanding and Persuasion, right?”
“Right,” I confirmed. “I will tell you one things that’s certain, it’s important to be sure that you understand what’s really going on before you go around trying to fix others.” I headed to the refrigerator, carrying my precious burden. She stayed behind, still thinking.
A gentle nudge for the week:
Try following the thread. Keep asking questions that begin with who, what, when, where, why, or how. Especially why. And never assume you’re right. There’s always more to know and see.
If something’s not working, don’t just tug at the outcome—trace it back to its root.
If something is working, do the same. Figure out what caused the win.
Keep an eye out for loops. For patterns. For little changes that ripple forward.
Guidepost One isn’t here to judge you. It’s here to show you.
And once you start seeing it, you can start choosing your course purposefully.
Let us know in the comments if anything in your life looks a little clearer under that light. We’ll be looking, too.
—Miss Lynn, Et al.