What goes round comes round - In your dreams by Jane Teresa Anderson

If you want to understand the meaning of life, or see the mysteries of the universe revealed before your eyes, go to your local supermarket.

Yesterday’s trip to our local Woolworths to buy some bread and fish – yes, how biblical – reminded me how stunningly the universe is revealed in the apparently mundane. “To see a world in a grain of sand,” wrote William Blake in 1794. I saw the world in a grain of bread, rice bread to be precise.

My story starts two days ago, when Michael and I slipped into Woolworths to buy some milk and cheese on our way home. We chose the self serve checkout, scanned our milk and cheese, and noted the total was less than $10. Michael fed a $20 note (a $20 bill) into the machine, and out popped brand new two dollar coins. They were so gleamingly gold and shiny that they captured our attention, and we wandered away, supermarket bag in hand, talking about the mysteries of coin circulation.

It was only when we got home that we realised we’d overlooked picking up the rest of our change, the $10 note.

“Oh well,” Michael said, “the people behind us must have needed it more than us.”

The next day, we dropped into the same supermarket on the way home to buy some bread and fish. Now, I like wheat free bread, and my usual brand of pure rye had been sold out. That’s when I noticed a packet of wrap bread, advertised as gluten free.

“This will do for now,” I said. It was rice bread, not the wholemeal I prefer, but it would do the job. “Oh, it’s on special today,” I said to Michael, “two for $5, two for the price of one. Might as well take two.”

Hey, I know this is mundane, but wait! (William Blake nods in spirit.)

We chose the self serve checkout again. The scanner charged the first wrap bread at full price, $4.98, so Michael called over the assistant who suggested scanning the second wrap to see what happened. Full price was charged again. She asked us to wait; people to consult, decisions to be made.

This was getting silly, we thought. Why don’t we just pay full price and leave?

“Come this way,” commanded the assistant, leading us to another checkout, where we were reimbursed $9.96 because the supermarket has a rule that anything scanned at the wrong price is given for free. (I should have known. Look at the pic: It was written.)

So what did we get? We pretty much got the $10 back from the day before, considering the full price of the bread, and we received it as ‘bread’, slang for money.

What goes round comes round. What you give away, or what you let go or surrender, comes back, wrapped as manna perhaps. A reminder of the law of karma, delivered in a humble round wrap made from grains of rice.

What will you see and what can you learn about the mysteries of the universe today if you keep your eyes open to the humble events of This Waking Life?

Today’s story throws new light on yesterday’s blog about the ant that was walking round and round the table as I was eating my wheat-free cheese sandwich.

What goes round, comes round.

I have just read Blake’s full poem, Auguries of Innocence, and noted its many reflections on karma.

I wonder how many of us only know the first verse:

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Continued …

You might also enjoy

Online learning at your pace

Listen to The Dream Show

PAT on Route 77 November 4, 2009

3 comments on “What goes round comes round”

Pingback: uberVU - social comments
Sarah November 3, 2009

Spooky!!!!!
PAT on Route 77 November 4, 2009

An Ant’s Link to Freedom … Origins, Origins, Origins … so says Willam Blake

Well, JT, you’ve done it again – another link to American history, I wonder if you know this one:

“The F. W. Woolworth Company (often referred to as Woolworth’s) was a retail company that was one of the original American five-and-dime stores. The first Woolworth’s store was founded, with a loan of $300, in 1878 by Frank Winfield Woolworth. Despite growing to be one of the largest retail chains in the world through most of the 20th century, increased competition led to its decline beginning in the 1980s. In 1997, F. W. Woolworth Company converted itself into a sporting goods retailer, closing its remaining retail stores operating under the “Woolworth’s” brand name and renaming itself Venator Group. By 2001, the company focused exclusively on the sporting goods market, changing its name to the present Foot Locker Inc (NYSE: FL).

Retail chains using the Woolworth name survive in Germany, Austria, Mexico, and South Africa, and, until the start of 2009, in the United Kingdom. The similarly-named Woolworth’s supermarkets in Australia and New Zealand are operated by Woolworths Limited, a separate company with no historical links to the F. W. Woolworth Company or Foot Locker, Inc. However, this company did take the name from F. W. Woolworth as it had global appeal.” (From Wikopedia …. End Thread)

Did you know that the Woolworth counter in N Carolina is part of the Smithsonian now? It is a very sobering reminder of our not-so-worthy record in civil liberties here once upon a time:

“On February 1, 1960, four African-American students sat down at a segregated lunch counter in a Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth’s store. They were refused service, touching off six months of sit-ins and economic boycotts that became a landmark event in the U.S. civil-rights movement. In 1993, an eight-foot section of the lunch counter was moved to the Smithsonian Institution and a civil rights museum is now planned at the store site.” [Wikopedia]

What goes round, comes around indeed …. the little lunch counter that could, all the way across distant shores, still “counts” in Australia as an emblem of freedom, in 2$ gold “bread” no less 🙂 and a King’s currency if there ever was one …

William Blake would be proud …

God appears, and God is light,
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

(From Auguries of Innocence)

Comments are closed.