Discussing karma how it works and what it means for us on our life journey.
Karma can be easily misunderstood
Karma is often seen as some kind of sliding-scale points system, set in the terms of the material world.
Do good things get good things.
Do bad things get bad things.
Gold stars for good behaviour.
Black marks for bad.
For example, if we give to a poor person, good things will come to us.
If we hurt others then others will hurt us.
It is clear that things do not work like this.
'Bad' people often 'do very well', in wordly terms.
Some people will stop at nothing to get money and power, and some of them get a great deal of it.
They then pay or command others to do their bidding and pay for, or take, everything they want.
In our crazy topsy-turvy world it often seems that our best interests are served by 'bad' behaviour.
'Bad' people 'succeed'.
There is no 'good' or 'bad' karma
Indeed, there is no good or bad.
These can, of course, be useful words to describe things we need to talk about.
I could not write this article without using these words.
We cannot conduct our lives as they currently are without a concept of opposites and using the words relevant to them.
Nevertheless, they come from a limited perspective based in a small-self/ego misunderstanding of the universe and our place in it.
They come from the perception of ourselves as separate.
There are no opposites when all things are viewed as a whole, as One.
For example, day and night are thought of as opposites, yet they form a whole - we call it day (as in the entire 24 hours, not just the bit when the sun is up :b ).
Up and down ... are these opposites ... or are they based on our perspective?
Answer... just ask an astronaut.
Man and woman, might be seen as separate and opposite.
But looked at as a whole they become humankind.
'Good' and 'bad' are terms we use to describe things (as we interpret them) as they relate to our small selves (or those of others).
They have no place in a holistic understanding of ourselves and the universe as a whole.
So if someone kills another person for personal gain ... does that not mean bad karma for them?
Well, no, it just means karma is generated appropriate to the situation.
Not killing would mean simply not generating that karma.
What about a 'good' action?
Like saving a person's life?
Again, there is no such thing as good and bad as far as karma is concerned.
All action outside of an understanding of the Whole, the One, generates karma.
The function of this is to bring us, each of us as we individually need (there's me talking in the terms of opposites/separates again :b ), to understand the Whole.
As long as our action is based in misunderstanding of ourselves and the universe it will result in the karma we need in order to progress towards understanding.
The karma generated in any given situation depends on what is needed for that progress to happen.
Action in alignment with the Whole, does not generate karma.
Unaligned action does.
Karma is neutral, and does not judge.
It is a law of nature.
It just is and does.
Part of our Soul journey
Life/karma can seem harsh.
What about children with Aids, for example?
What about people born into disabilities/disease/poverty.
The principle of karma is fundamentally intertwined with the process of life-death-rebirth, with reincarnation.
We carry the karma we generate from one life to the next until understanding processes it out.
It has a profound purpose.
We get what we need in our life, via our karma generated by our past actions in this and previous lives, depending on what we need in order to grow/evolve and become Free/Enlightened.
This does not mean that we should not have compassion for others, by the way, as our compassion helps both us and others to progress.
Whilst we can, and do, becoming disconnected from It, the Soul cannot be harmed directly by this wordly suffering.
We each get what we need in order to progress on our Soul journey.
Anything matters in our life only insofar as it relates to that Soul journey, it's what karma is all about.
Indeed it is what everything is all about.
We all get pain and suffering as the direct and unavoidable result of our karma.
Thus karma and suffering are inextricably related.
The suffering in this life is extremely challenging ... and it will always continue until we stop generating karma (as individuals and as a race).
Our karma/suffering challenges us to change and gives us the means to do so.
How does Yoga/meditation help with that?
Karma lessens as we learn to act in ways that are more aligned with Source/Flow/Reality and the Laws of Nature.
When we have fully processed our karma we become Free.
Until we act in alignment with that reality generation of karma continues, and we continue on the wheel of death-rebirth.
By the law of karma unconscious/unaligned action leaves deep impressions in our minds.
Yoga refers to these as vasana - which means 'seeds'.
We carry these seeds - which are thought patterns in our minds - from one incarnation to the next.
They wait, dormant, until the moment is right and they germinate as our actions.
So long as we are unconscious of them, these germinated seeds create action in us.
These actions, if unaligned, create yet more karma.
Round and round we go.
Simply acting in conscious alignment prevents generation of new karma.
By coming into alignment we free ourselves.
The rub is, of course, that we do not live in conscious alignment.
Karma works as a function of that coming into alignment, and in order to free ourselves of karma, and thus all suffering, we have to work with it.
We have to understand it, to process existing karma, and to stop generating new karma.
Yoga/meditation provide tools and techniques for helping us to do exactly this.
Working with these tools we come more and more into understanding ourselves as the Whole, as the One.
I will offer more detail on the many options available in future articles, I'm just laying the groundwork here :)
Here's the basic process;
As our minds become quieter we come more and more to centre in our Consciousness.
We come to identify with the Reality of Our True Self rather than our false small ego self.
As we identify more with our Higher Reality our karma-inducing actions lessen.
Until we act entirely without generating karma.
We have learned our lessons.
No more are we bound to the karma-defined limits of physical living.
We become Enlightened.
We become Free.
Have you had enough of suffering?
Are you up for the work?
:)
