The Law of Cycles and Tithing

During the Kriyashakti seminar I attended last year, at one point the discussion turned to the topic of tithing. I remember our instructor telling us that we should tithe regularly, meaning once a month. However, he also added that tithing in advance doesn't work. For example, if one regularly tithes P100/month, tithing P1,200 all at once to represent the whole year's tithe will not work. He was speaking from experience because one time he gave an amount that was 6 months' worth of tithe, so that he wouldn't have to do it every month. After all, he was going to tithe the amount anyway, so might as well give it all in one go. For the first 2 months he was okay, but after that period, a lot of misfortune started appearing in his life again.

Since he was speaking from experience, then there is something to what he was saying. Acknowledging a fact is not the same as understanding it, though, so it did not stop me from wondering why. After all, a tenth is a tenth, so 10% of one's monthly income given every month for a whole year is still the same as 10% of the total yearly income given in one go, so why does the timing matter? I had to set that question aside for a long time before I got the glimmerings of an answer.

A possible answer begins to show itself if we look at the way karma works. Aside from the basic "good" and "bad" karma, there are many other subdivisions of karma as well. There is national karma, family karma, prosperity karma, health karma, etc. It's a very complicated subject, but suffice it to say that before incarnating, the soul is shown how one's accumulated good and bad karma from previous lives will determine the parents, the nationality, one's station in life and all other important life events of one's upcoming corporeal existence.

The soul then forgets all of this upon incarnating in a physical body, in order to allow the lessons of life to proceed unhampered by any mental burdens. Once those karmic situations come up, a person's choices will determine if one has learned the lesson and therefore revokes the karma that brought about the situation in the first place or will necessitate the repeat of a similar situation sometime in the future. Master Choa's book Achieving Oneness with the Higher Soul discusses this in more detail. Since a soul's lifeplan has been laid out before incarnation, this explains why people have deja vu. The person happens to remember part of it again as the situation is encountered.

I will not go into any more detail on this subject because, as I said, it's very complicated. But I wanted to show that the good and bad karma for one's lifestream does not manifest all at once. Different situations are spaced out along certain intervals so that the individual has the chance to make the choices and learn the appropriate lessons. How is it all managed, then?

First, let us take a look around us. What do you notice about the world around you? It's governed by cycles. Summer gives way to fall, fall gives in to winter, and as spring comes, the melting ice and snow is transformed to water and rain that nourishes the land, and the leaves that fell last autumn fertilize the soil to give it new life. The Earth spins a certain number of times a day, completes a revolution around the sun once a year, the moon circles the Earth and goes through certain lunar phases every month. Even our bodies follow cycles as well. Childhood gives way to the fires of adolescence, then the enthusiasm of adulthood, the mellowing of middle age, and the golden days of retirement, the quiescence of old age until our bodies complete their eventual return to the earth it came from.

Since everything in nature is governed by cycles, then going by the principle of "as above, so below; as below, so above" it stands to reason that the manifestation of good and bad karma follows certain cycles as well. It is like when one is watching a movie on DVD. You experience the whole movie as one continuous, seamless whole, but once you get to the menu, you find out there are different scenes divided into chapters. Just consult any competent astrologer who can forecast whether a certain time period is favorable or unfavorable for the person concerned, depending on the particular astrological cycle being entered. This is why there is the expression of "beginning a new chapter in one's life" and "closing the chapter."

There are big cycles and there are small cycles. Some of the best astrologers can predict the death date of a person, while others can determine the most fortuitous times to gamble and thus make a killing at the casino (supposedly, some of the best feng shui experts in Hong Kong do this).

However, there is an esoteric saying that while the stars may impel, they do not compel. One always has the free will to choose those courses of action that will break negative cycles and generate good ones. This is where tithing, service, inner reflection and character development come in. These are the tools that one can use to shape one's future and destiny, instead of being allowed to be thrown hither and thither by one's astrological cycles.

It is my theory that it is because of these cycles that the timing of one's tithe matters. A really big tithe, representing one year's worth of normal tithe, all given within a certain cycle will influence that cycle the most, but once the next cycle starts, there is not as much energy left over. So it is better to apportion one's tithe over the course of several cycles, to get control of each of them.

For most people, their cycles revolve around the months of the Gregorian calendar (and one's salary disbursement usually follows that cycle as well). Other, more knowledgeable people may choose to follow their astrological cycle, but unless one has access to an astrologer (or is one), this may be hard to follow. There are other esoteric cycles that even fewer people may know about. But whatever cycle one follows, the best principle would be to tithe at the beginning of the cycle, so that one is all set to control and influence the rest of the cycle.

So far, I have not yet encountered any other esoteric work that specifically discusses tithing and the law of cycles, so this is just a working theory. But by far, it is the best explanation I can come up with regarding the experience of my Kriyashakti instructor. In any case, if one regularly does tithing anyway, then it wouldn't hurt to modify the timing of one's tithe.