Day 145 of 365 - Musings on Karma

Do you believe in the concept or principle of karma?  We will often flippantly comment on the negative actions of someone, saying that karma will take care of it, in reference to the person receiving their due or punishment at some later point.  The general and common understanding of karma relates to this idea of bad deeds being punished.  But karma is more than that.

The definition of karma from the Oxford dictionary says that:  in Hinduism and Buddhism karma is the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.  There are different ways of considering this, ranging from having a fatalistic view that our lives are predetermined to that of karma guiding our spiritual evolution and potential for growth.

In the Western world, our cultures have mostly guided us to the belief that God controls our destiny and that we must follow God's laws or reap the consequences.  In the Eastern system of karma our rewards and punishments, and the rate at which we evolve spiritually is due mainly to our own efforts.

Basic laws of cause and effect apply to everyone. All of our choices have consequences.  My motivations and intentions can influence the quality of that consequence and increase the likelihood of it being positive.

At different points in our lives, we may wonder about our overall life purpose, even wonder whether 'this is all there is'.  I choose to believe that we live more than once, that my current lifetime is influenced by previous ones and that it too will influence the next one.

There is an underlying thread of order in the Universe which you can think of as God or the Divine.  Divine will has an influence on our life path, as does karma and as does free will.  Because we have free will,  when we examine our motivations for our actions, we are reflecting on our connection with this Divine undercurrent of life.  We usually have a sense of when we are on the right path, and when we're not, even if we don't clearly understand the journey we have agreed to take in this life.

Everything we do has a purpose, contributes to life around us and affects our life and that of others in ways we may never fully understand. We are active participants in the process, not just pawns in the chess game of life.

A strategy which can help with our understanding of the progression of our spiritual growth or evolution of consciousness is, to consider a past life regression experience.  I trained in a technique for this several years ago.  You do not actually have to believe in past lives to benefit from it.  Virtually everyone I have done it with, has felt that the insights gained from their 'memories' relate to their current life situation.  You can think of it as bringing something up from your unconscious to your conscious awareness to help you understand your current life experience and even help find resolution to an issue.

The more we use our free will to explore the lessons of our life journey and to aid us in our spiritual growth, the less random and haphazard our life will seem.

A mantra for this week from a teacher I follow online summarizes my feeling on this in a way.  It goes like this:

What is my identity
Outside my social role?
It's not what people think or say,
But my connection to my Soul.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 53 of 365 - Christmas Decorating at Tortoise Pace

This past weekend the Facebook posts with photos of completed Christmas decorating began showing up.  Some people decorate every room of their common areas.  Some have up to three Christmas trees.  I admire those photos.  It's all very lovely and festive.  Those people are the hares in the race to Christmas.  I am the tortoise. I'm not judging.  People have their reasons for wanting to get it all done early.  That way they can enjoy gazing upon their holiday décor for several weeks.  Or, they may be entertaining with holiday parties or family get togethers on whatever date works for them. I love the holiday season, the lights, the decorations, the food, the general sense of magic in the air.  But this year I'm just having a little trouble getting the momentum going for decorating.  Before our first snow, which is now gone thanks to a few days of rain, I got excited and put up the balcony lights and garlands.  We have been e...
Read more

Day 86 of 365 - Year End Gratitude

Today I was out doing some of my usual weekend grocery and household shopping.  I noticed that the selection was more limited and that there were empty spaces and shelves.  Most of the holiday inventory that was added to aisles and end displays is disappearing, now at clearance prices.  Regular inventory shelves have not been fully restocked, probably due to some staff being on a vacation break. This made me realize how much we take for granted that everything we want will just 'be there' when we arrive at stores to shop.  It's part of our instant gratification culture here in North America, but it is certainly not at all typical in many other parts of the world.  We are so fortunate with all the choices we have, but we also just assume they will always be there. I felt grateful for the staff of the stores who are spending their shifts restocking the shelves for us.  I said a friendly hello to the produce manager at the grocery store, a man who goes out...
Read more

Day 13 of 365 - The Joy of Singing - Part 1

When I was growing up we had an old upright piano in our living room.  My mother had learned to play piano and organ as a young girl.  She continued to enjoy it as a past time during her years of homemaking and raising a family.  Often she would play from one of her songbooks and some of the children, usually the girls, would stand nearby singing and looking over her shoulder to read the lyrics. Those were fun times for me and I enjoyed singing melody lines and sometimes trying a harmony.  In elementary school I learned some basic sight reading of music and had some time in the school choir.  But, most of my singing happened at home or at church. I was raised as a Catholic and in my pre-teen and early teen years what were then known as folk choirs and now are better known as contemporary choirs came into vogue.  Our small town choir seemed to have limited access to that spiritual music genre and struggled by with a limited number of hymns/songs.  I...
Read more