'You Get What You Give'
By Roshan, New Age Islam
24 December, 2014
Just as there are universal laws of physics and chemistry, there are also universal laws of the psyche or soul. One of these laws is the ‘You Get What You Give’ law, the YGYG Law for short. Different religions have explained this law in different terms—as rewards for good deeds and punishments for bad ones, for instance, or as the law of karma. While the laws of physics and chemistry might be too complex for us lay people to fathom, the veracity of the YGYG Law can be easily understood by just about anyone.
One doesn’t have to do any complicated experiment in a laboratory to understand how the YGYG Law works. All you need is to take some time off and reflect on yourself and examine how you feel. If you feel happy at this moment, you’ll discover that it is because you have been good and kind to people around you today. If you feel contented, you’ll recognise that it is because for a change you haven’t been going around complaining about things, not even about the weather or the amount of salt in your soup. If you feel relaxed and at ease, you’ll realise that it’s because you resisted the temptation to backbite and gossip about someone this morning, or perhaps because you did a good deed to someone in need. If you feel exuberant and buoyant, you may find that it is because you’ve been recently spreading love and good cheer all around, even smiling at perfect strangers you find yourself sharing a few seconds with in an elevator. If you find that someone arrives at just the right moment to give you the help you need, you may realise that it is because of the positive energy that you have been radiating all around you, which, in turn, is attracting goodness back to you just when you need it.
On the other hand, if you find yourself depressed and fed up of life, it is likely that you have been nursing ill-will against all and sundry or against specific people. If you are down and out and feel that no one in the world loves you, it is because you haven’t been very loving to others yourself. If you’re upset because you are lonely and no one wants to be friends with you, it is likely that you haven’t bothered to be friendly with people either. If you think others, even close relatives and people you once thought of as good friends, ignore you, it is very likely that you’ve been ignoring them yourself or even secretly resenting their presence. If you are upset that no one seems to smile at you, it’s probably because you didn’t take the initiative to smile at them. The negative energy that you send out ensures, in accordance with the YGYG Law, that you get back the very same energy from others.
The YGYG Law also seems to operate at the level of groups—entire communities—and in roughly the same way as it does at the individual level. If a community as a whole radiates positivity, it is likely to receive positivity from others in return. If it contributes to the good of others—through advances in knowledge and useful technology, for instance, or in the field of social service—it is likely to win the respect, admiration and love of other communities, who will consider it as a precious asset. On the other hand, a community that sends out only negative energies, that constantly complains against others but does nothing positive for them, that spreads hate, not love, and that engages in destruction, terror and violence, can hardly hope to earn respect and love from others or to be treated as anything else than a liability. If it thinks that other communities are driven by a visceral hatred for it, it is likely that this is because it itself harbours such hate for others. In accordance with the YGYG Law, it will get from others precisely what it gives to them—aversion, scorn, disgust and hate. It really can’t hope for much else.
But there’s hope even for the most reprobate. God has blessed us with the gift of free will (or, some would say, the illusion of it). We—individuals and entire communities—can, if we choose to, change our behaviour, and, consequently, what we receive from others. We aren’t compelled to be negative forever and to continue to receive negativity from others in return. If we aren’t happy about being unhappy, friendless and loveless, then, in accordance with the YGYG Law, there’s no way for us but to give out what we want to get back. If we want others to love and respect us and to be good and kind to us, all we need to do is to love and respect them and be good and kind to them ourselves and then sit back and see the miraculous results of the YGYG Law as they start to unfold!
URL: https://newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/get-give/d/100677