[Uma]

Day 37 of 40: May 1, 2016

Karma: action-consequence-action-consequence-action-consequence...

Today Sri Vasudeva took a deeper look into the karmic play to see how it relates to the journey of self-transformation and freedom. There was much to contemplate in his talk and as I am focusing on the power of meditation in these threads, today I contemplate how to change the karmic play on the outside working from the karmic play on the inside.

Karma as seen through the eyes of vedic astrology
As an amateur vedic astrologer I understand how karma works amazingly on the inside and outside. Sri Vasudeva mentioned this - how the moment of birth determines one's individual karma and the tremendous effect this template of the natal horoscope has on our bodies and psyches. In astrology the mind is indicated by the Moon and the Moon also indicates the mother, so my chart reveals the mysterious karmic link between my mind and my relationship with my mother! And so it does with all my loved ones, friends, associates and the challengers in my life. For every karmic relationship I have on the outside (between the different parts of my being), there is a corresponding psychic relationship I'm having on the inside - that I can explore through meditation. So everything on the outside is a mirror of what is happening on the inside. Therefore the more I transform the inner, the more the outer will transform. I have seen this happen in my life - it is absolutely amazing! But to get to this point, I have had to learn what karma is really all about and to be able to be in that Witness or Observing mode to become aware of it manifesting in my life and in my meditation practice.

Karma as a Guide
Sri Vasudeva has spoken about karma over the years and I wanted to take a quote from something he wrote in 2004 to dispel one of the myths about karma that it is about punishment:

"Each time you act, you are influencing your destiny. Be more aware in your actions. The law of Karma is not there to punish us but to guide us to freedom. It tells us when we are going wrong - pain and suffering comes. It also tells us when we are going in the right direction - peace, love and harmony follow. So let us try to understand how the Universe works and try to be in harmony with it," ~ Sri Vasudeva

Karma is my friend on the journey. Everything that happens to me is a result of choices I made in the past so this is teaching me how to choose wisely. Sri Vasudeva said it today that karma brings challenges in the space for growth and transformation. It is up to me to see challenges as opportunities and transform the challenges into opportunities - by transforming myself, my actions and my receiving. He said that karma brings disappointments to show me why my actions of the past didn't work out the way I hoped they would. And he also said that having lots and lots of negative karma in this life could mean that I purposefully chose a difficult lifetime to burn away a lot of baggage so I could liberate myself from the karmic play more quickly.

Mastering challenging karmic relationships
The karma teachings tell me not to blame anybody for anything only myself. Sri Vasudeva said we should ask ourselves: Where is it that I am going wrong? What are the things that need to be changed in me? Karmic closure between people is about mutual detachment, a win-win situation. And if I have transformed myself but the other person is still negative, I am now protected and I don't owe them anything - their own karmic play will deal with them.

And he said that the karmic relationship I have with my physical body is also a result of how I would have treated my body in a past life. So if I take better care of the body I have now I am co-creating my body of the future in the now.

Spiritual qualities
Ego qualities I need to cultivate apart from non-attachment or dispassion are spiritual qualities that uplift myself and my world. By uniting head, heart and hands in meditation these result in virtuous action. Virtuous action means virtuous thinking, virturous feeling, and virtuous doing - head, heart and hand working as one.

It occurred to me one day that the world is like the body of God and just like my own body, it has a powerful immune system. Negative action is like the germ or the cancer cell that the immune system needs to attack so it doesn't destroy the whole. And in the same way that cancer can go into remission, when the negative action transforms into positive, it restablizes and contributes to the health of the whole. This is how I view the karmic play - that everyone is like a cell in a whole body and we need to uphold the whole by supporting one another.

Burning karma - the easy way
I work very hard on burning karma, enduring karma, trying to ignore karma…but the most wonderful promise of all is what Sri Vasudeva mentioned yesterday that meditation can burn the karmas:

"We burn the karmas away by changing the consciousness, so someone can sit in meditation only and burn the karmas away by shifting the consciousness. All those chakra points that you go to, all those points that you go to with the life breath (the prana) to open up the consciousness, that's a way of burning the karmas away," ~ Sri Vasudeva

And full Enlightenment brings full protection from the karmas in that the old karmic patterns have no power anymore, become obsolete and one would have no attachment to them anymore.

There is a lot to the karma teachings, but these are the most powerful things that struck me today.