A short Heroic Plus One podcast episode (Brian Johnson) exploring the Law of Karma, framed as the Law of Cause and Effect drawing on Michael Singer’s writing. Brian connects Singer’s examples to daily habits—sleep, exercise, diet, a set of 11 burpees—and explains how recognizing cause-and-effect helps build supportive habits for energy, parenting, and service. The episode closes with a practical call to cultivate willpower and habit 'algorithms' to run beneficial behaviors on autopilot.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. As we've discussed, Michael Singer is one of my favorite spiritual teachers. After reading the Untethered Soul and Living Untethered, I decided to follow Joseph Campbell's advice and take a deeper dive into his work. I went to Amazon to see what else he's written and I found a couple of books he wrote nearly 50 years ago. One of those books is called Three Essays on Universal Laws. The book has a chapter essay on each of his three laws the Law of Karma, the Law of Will, and the Law of Love. Today we're going to chat about his and my take on the Law of Karma. Singer tells us we can also call this the Law of Cause and Effect. The basic idea is really simple. He tells us, I quote, for example, when we walk up and touch a hot stove, the body gets burned. And thus we learn a lesson. Or if we stay up too long without sleep, the body gets sick. And again we have been taught a lesson. This holds true for staying out in the rain, eating the wrong kinds of food, staying too long underwater, and so on. By means of the law of Cause and Effect, which will invariably repeat itself given the same conditions, we learn many lessons concerning the care of the body, for there are certain activities which are in balance with the use of our bodily tool, while others are not. Now as I was working on that idea in the note I was creating, my thousand second timer went off. As you know, if you've been following along, that's the prompt trigger cue for me to get up and if it's my AM1 deep work block, which it was. As I typed that idea out, bang out a set of 11 burpees. So that's what I did. And as I hammered out the 11 burpees, I thought about why I do them. It's simple. I know with zero doubt that I feel more energized when I go to bed early, spend nine to 10 hours in bed, meditate, do my burpees, and hit the other 30 plus energy targets I set up in my big three protocol on the Heroic app. And I really like feeling really energized so I can show up as my best, most heroic self in service to you and to our mission. So it's easy for me to do the right thing all day, every day. Except of course, when I don't, alas, I'm still human. And tragically, I will not be the first perfect human being. And there are plenty of times when I'm lazy and a little demon takes over pushing my daimon aside and I do things that I know aren't optimal, which leads to feeling less than heroically energized. Then I step back half an inch, let my daimon view the situation from what Singer beautifully calls the soul's point of view, AKA the objective observer, AKA the witness. And I make the connection between doing X and experiencing. Yes, I shine a spotlight on what needs work, remind myself of what works when I do it, and then take a hammer to the construction project that is my life as I strengthen the habits that help me stay plugged in and weaken the habits that don't. That's the law of cause and effect in action. In short, if we do this, then we experience that. That's also one of the most important things Alexandra and I are trying to teach our kids. We want them to have the wisdom to make the connection between eating sugar and getting sick, between not exercising or sleeping well and feeling tired and cranky. And of course, we want them to feel the joy of doing the little things that they know help them feel great. Call it whatever you want. The law of Karma, the law of cause and effect. It's real. We need to make the connection between the thoughts and behaviors that help us and our kids can create the lives we want and the thoughts and behaviors that do the opposite. Then we need to cultivate our structural, reactive and expansive disciplines as we use our willpower wisely to install the habits that will run on autopilot via empowering algorithms. When Today. Let's go hero.
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