Law of Karma or Law of Cause and Effect

The Law of Karma is The Deepak Chopra's third spiritual law of success.

I like this one. It's usually at the top of my stack as a reminder that I am the one who ultimately decides how my life is gonna go.

Everything that I have now in this life is the result of choices I have made. I have the choice of how to react to things. The saying goes, it's not what happens to us, but how we react to those things that defines who we are.

I used to think that intention was more important than what people actually did. So, if someone hurt someone, but their intention was to help, then it was the intention that counted more. But I'm starting to think I had it all wrong. That in fact, it's what we do that defines us and changes us, and makes our life go one way or the other. Intention lays the groundwork in our minds of what we are going to do, but what good are they if we don't actually do anything? What we do, or what we don't do, tells the world, and ourselves, what we really believe and what's really important to us.

So, each moment is a choice. It was a choice that I posted this blog entry instead of cleaning my desk, or replying to a difficult email that I've been avoiding. Mindfulness, as Deepak says, is the awareness of the choices I make in each moment, and taking responsibility for them.