Karma

From the very earliest stages of our lives we are taught that we are being judged. The older we get, the longer our list of judges seems to become. Our first judges come in the form of our parents. As we gain motor skills our parents have to begin keeping a closer eye on us. To keep us safe during this phase of exploration parents alert us to danger through verbal cues like “NO!” or a smack on the hand. We subconsciously learn during this stage that our actions are being watched. When we move into the verbal communication phase, a shift occurs. As we develop language skills our parents tell us they are watching us and begin teaching us what they believe to be “right” and “wrong”.

There is a very subtle shift between these two phases. The former is about safety and protection while the latter is about judgment and control. Our parents begin to imprint their belief systems on to us at this stage just as their parents did to them. We are taught what our parents, our gender, our family, our society, our country, our culture, our race and religious organizations believe to be acceptable behavior. Each of these comes with their own set of judgments upon our actions and plenty of people willing to judge us, consciously and unconsciously, for those actions.



UNSEEN JUDGES

In early childhood most of us are introduced to our next judge, Santa. We are taught that beyond the visible watchful eyes of our parents there is a magical being who watches us from the North Pole. He knows what we’re doing and knows when we’ve been “good” or “bad”. When Christmas arrives we are given “rewards” if we were good or “switches” if we were bad. The difference depends upon Santa’s judgments of our actions throughout the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s not real, what matters is that we are taught to believe that he is real and that he is watching us every moment.

As we grow into childhood we learn about our next supreme judge, God. We are taught that yet another mythical, magical being is able to remotely observe our actions and behaviors and pass judgment upon us. Interestingly enough, if we behave according to the rules of all the layered entities I mentioned above we are on God’s good side. When we step out of line however we are taught that punishment is on its way in the form of bad things that begin happening in our lives. By this same school of thought, if enough of us are seriously misbehaving then we will receive larger punishments such as accidents, disease and any form of natural disaster. Above all this we are led to believe that this incredibly judgmental super human who is keeping tabs on our every single thought and behavior and will administer the ultimate coup de grâce after we die in the form of an eternity in “Heaven” or “Hell”.



JUDGE NOT LEST YE BE JUDGED

With all the judgments being placed upon us at every level from our parents on up the line to God, it should come as no surprise then that we become deeply judgmental of ourselves and project that judgmental attitude out onto others. These judgments then become the filters with which we view the world. We no longer see just the action but rather we judge and label everything as “right” or “wrong”. As long as we hold these self-judgments upon ourselves we can never truly feel the full measure of unconditional love that the Divine has for us. It is not possible to sit in judgment and feel love at the same time.

Ultimately we end up with a world full of people unable to fully love and accept themselves because of their own judgments. If you can’t feel unconditional love yourself, how will you give unconditional love to the world? You cannot give what you do not have. Projecting our judgments out into the world and on to others does not mean “I am right and you are wrong” but rather it says “I have a need to judge”. It is not possible to sit in judgment and feel love at the same time.



KARMA IS ENERGY IN MOTION

The above is actually an example of karma in action. Most people hear the word karma and believe it is the product of a judgment. If I do something good I get “good karma” and if I do something bad I get “bad karma”. Karma is frequently misunderstood and equated to the Hindu version of the Christian view of God’s system of reward and punishment for each of us based upon the summation and judgment of our Earthly sojourn.

In truth the term karma originates in Hindu philosophy but it has nothing to do with judgment. Karma is the term for the process of balancing of energy. It is more closely related to Newtons third law of motion which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Karma is simply the balancing of energy which has been set in motion. In conjunction with the laws of physics, energy naturally seeks to balance itself unconditionally.

When we come to understand the non-judgmental workings of karma we begin to see that whatever is happening TO US now is the consequence of our past actions. In the example above we see that when we teach others to judge themselves and others, ultimately these judgments will come back on us and we will feel judged and rebel against it and proclaim it wrong to judge.



CLAIM YOUR POWER

To move into a space of healing when we feel judged we have to own the original cause within ourselves and not blame the other person for judging us. “I feel judged…therefore I must be judging others” is the enlightened approach to balancing our karma. By owning our actions and reactions, which we have full control over, we can learn to stop judging others and ourselves and thereby free ourselves from our own judgment. Our own judgments are really the ONLY ones which have a direct impact on us. Any judgments that I might hold against you, are my judgments and only affect me.

Each of our actions sets energy in motion. Once we acknowledge this for ourselves and are willing to own the consequences of our actions, we learn that by controlling our actions we can begin to create positive outcomes for ourselves. As long as we deny our power to create our own destiny we will remain nothing more than powerless victims in our own self-constructed karmic prisons. This shifts us away from the notion that we must please an angry judgmental God in an effort to win favor with him and it puts the onus directly on each of us. It’s not about being judged at all but rather acknowledging the basic physics of energy. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You get back what you send out.

When we are able to remove the judgmental aspect from the essence of karma, we begin to see how we are moving into alignment with the deepest teachings of every major world religion. Judgment belongs to the realm of the egoic human consciousness and is not a quality associated with true Divinity. Therefore judgments pull us out of alignment with the Divine. Karma is not judgmental or selective but it is exacting because it simply is our own energy balancing itself. It is the process by which your consciousness, or what the Yogis call your Atman, is stabilizing itself in the physical realm.



LAYERS OF KARMA

Karma occurs on many levels. Individually we create our own karmic consequences. When we belong to larger groups (and we all do) we also begin to generate collective karma. The actions that we take as clubs, teams and organizations have a noticeable impact on our lives. The actions that we take as a society, culture, race, religion or nation have a much larger impact on our world. Most importantly the actions that we take as a species have a direct result on our planet and ultimately our existence as a species.

Individually I may believe that my actions have very little impact on what we do as a nation but that doesn’t mean that I get out of the karmic consequences of our nations actions. I may disagree completely with our nation going to war with another country but energetically I will have to accept the impact this action has on our planet and on me. In owning this I will be more motivated to seek more peaceful solutions to each of the challenges I am presented with. When love and peace are what I want to receive, I know that loving and peaceful actions are part of the steps I must take to achieve it. I know that I will never receive love by propagating hate even if I am doing it in the name of God.



NO HIDING FROM YOURSELF

It is important to note that while karma is always just and exacting, it is not always evident. For example let’s say that I become angry at something you say to me and I chose to punch you. Odds are that you will then become angry with me and punch me back. That’s instant karma where I can see the immediate consequences of my actions. The smaller the disturbance in energy, the faster the response and the smaller the resulting return impact is.

If I generally tend to be an angry person, people will tend to not want to associate with me because of my attitude. Eventually I will realize that I have no close friends and certainly can’t hold down a loving relationship and so I am all alone. In the depths of my anger I will of course blame it on the fact that “everyone else” is cold and mean because they won’t be my friend. Everyone’s coldness will of course make me angry. With deeper, personal introspection I might finally see that I am the source of my own misery. Accepting that allows me to chose to be friendly rather than angry and in return receive a friendlier welcome from others. Remember, emotions too are just energy in motion. (http://peacefulmichael.blogspot.com/2009/06/energy-of-emotions.html)



WE’RE ALL IN IT TOGETHER

When we move up to the karma that we create as a nation for example, the consequences of our actions are often greater but more difficult to associate with the initial action. If we do not have knowledge of our history then it is very easy to place the blame for the unfolding of major karmic events on others. For example, we could look at the events of September 11th, 2000 as “we were unjustly attacked by those opposed to our freedom and our liberties.” This would seem to indicate a belief on our part that we had nothing to do with these “unprovoked attacks”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If we take the time to examine our history, including the secretive and manipulative actions of our government, we see that the events of 9/11 were just another punch in an ongoing conflict with those that we have deemed to be “unlike us”. Our nation and in particular our government are not the keepers of “truth, liberty and justice” for the entire planet the way we like to believe that they are. Our fear-based actions of the past motivated us to destabilize foreign governments, overthrow elected heads of state and generate atrocities of massive proportion all in the pursuit of “freedom”. When viewed from a still larger perspective it was just one more event in an unending battle that has been raging since before recorded history when one person (group or entity) tried to assert power over another. At this scale we can see that we are in essence paying the karmic consequences for the actions and reactions of our ancient ancestors.



TEMPORARY BODY/ETERNAL SOUL

At the most subtle level however there is individual lifetime karma. This is part of our individual soul’s karmic destiny. For every action that I generate personally, energetically the results of that action will come back to the source of that action. Imagine that you toss a pebble into a small pool of water. The ripples from the impact of the pebble with the water will radiate out, hit the edge of the pool and reverberate back to the center of the pool. No other pool of water is disturbed by this action.

Now imagine that the above pool was the size of the Pacific Ocean and the pebble grew in direct proportion to the increase in size of the pool. When this pebble is dropped into that ocean, it will take much more time for the waves to reach the shore and make their way back to the site of the impact. They would eventually make it back but it might take so long to happen that I would probably lose the association between the waves at that site and the original impact of the pebble.

This is the case with lifetime karma. Lifetime karma is the result of cumulative actions which I generate which are so constant that I may not experience the consequences of those actions in a single lifetime. To understand the inner-workings of karma at this level, we have to explore the concept of reincarnation. That topic however is far too broad to discuss as part of this posting so I’ll save that for a future posting on that specific topic.



OWN IT

Once you understand that you alone are in complete control of your karmic destiny, you empower yourself to generate desirable results for yourself. In that empowerment you step out of victim mentality and into self actualization. No one can create our actions for us and no one can save us from the consequences of those actions. It has nothing to do with judgment, fairness, reward or punishment but rather it is simple, basic physics in action in the world of energy in which we exist. We are beings of energy at every single level of our existence.

When you begin to understand the workings of karma and move in accordance with it, your life will transform. Despite religious myth to the contrary, no one can be born for me, live for me, suffer for me or die for me. These are all actions which I alone must experience. When I awaken to the fact that my own actions create my own destiny, I can moderate my actions to receive more desirable outcomes. I do not need to judge and blame others, nor depend upon them to save me. Reclaiming that power is just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine the positive outcomes that you can achieve for yourself by simply moving from victim mentality to a fully empowered co-creator with the Universe, the Divine, God, Great Spirit.

So what pebbles will you toss into the ocean of existence?