What
is Karma? Where
does it come from? What is its purpose? How
do you create it and how do you resolve it?
When
you know the answers to these questions you gain an advantage
in learning to handle karma. The more you know about karma, the
greater your ability to complete it and reduce its control over
your life.
In
your culture, you frequently confuse karma with fate or the notion
that the future is written indelibly in ink. You may even believe
that you are a victim of karma and that no matter what you do
you can not escape its tentacles. Most of you have had lives where
you despaired and gave up all hope because you felt that karma
would inevitably deal you a terrible blow. You might even think
that karma is a punishment for misdeeds meted out from a cosmic
parent that harshly judges and disciplines you.
Another
error you can fall into is the belief that karma is good or bad.
You might subscribe to the notion that good karma is like good
luck, while bad karma is bad luck. These beliefs, while hinting
at the truth, are misleading and confusing at best.
Law
of Consequences
Karma
is the universal law of consequences. Any experience of a certain
basic intensity will record and generate the necessity for a balance
of that intensity. Let us go into to this a bit more specifically.
Intensity
is the medium through which thoughts, deeds, and emotional experiences
are recorded in the Akashic records. The Akashic records are a
complete record of all events and experiences that occur on every
plane of existence. Remember that the Tao created the game of
life to experience as much of itself as it is able. The
law of karma is what makes this possible.
Let
us look at it this way. Any thought, action, or emotional event
is like a pebble thrown onto the calm surface of a pond. The pebble
creates ripples that have consequences as they spread out on the
pond's surface and interact with floating objects and the shoreline.
The greater the size of the pebble and the stronger the intensity
with which it is thrown, the greater the size of the ripples.
This of course creates an experience for the pond, so to speak,
and this is what the Tao is looking for, experiences.
Throwing
the pebble in the pond ensures that there will be consequences
leading to more consequences and so on. The game of life then
is in process. The Akashic Records, the Tao's memory bank, keeps
track of events according to certain blocks or ribbons of experience.
Think of it this way. With each event, an imbalance is recorded
in an open file on the imbalance column. The imbalance generates
an impetus for immediate or eventual balance of the sheet. When
the event has been experienced in reverse the balance column is
checked and the file is then considered closed. This is the law
of karma, sometimes called the law of debt.
The
Akashic records are kept perfectly and no file is ever lost or
forgotten. Let us look at some examples of the law of debt regarding
emotional experiences. If a thief steals a person's life's savings,
that person will probably feel intense emotions as a consequence.
The thief will also probably have intense feelings during and
after the course of the theft -- perhaps excitement, fear, guilt,
and so on. These intense emotional experiences are recorded and
generate the necessity for both the thief and the victim to experience
the opposite emotion. So the victim will then become the thief
who steals the former thief's savings. If John shoots Mary in
one life, karma is recorded. An imbalance remains on the books
waiting for another lifetime when comparable circumstances exist
for repayment. Mary will then cause John's death and the balance
sheet is complete.
You
may ask at this point, "Is that the only way karma can be repaid,
a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye?" The answer of course
is no, not necessarily. If John shoots Mary when he is a baby
soul and does not meet up with her again until they are both old
souls, Mary is not likely to repay the karma by wanting to shoot
Tom. A number of alternatives exist for them. John could save
Mary's life and lose his own life in the process, and the debt
would be satisfied. On the other hand, Mary might inadvertently
kill John in a traffic accident and again the debt would be repaid.
The
creation of karma has everything to do with choice. You choose
all your karmic lessons no matter how disagreeable you might feel
they are. However, whether you judge karma good or bad has to
do with your impact on other people's choices. When you interfere
with the free choices of others, you create what looks like negative
karma. When you promote and create the opportunity for greater
choices for others, you create what appears to be positive karma.
Karma however is neither good nor bad. It is your judgment which
makes it appear positive or negative. You may generate what you
may call positive karma by donating a large sum of money to a
needy individual. In another incident, you may generate what you
call negative karma by stealing a large sum of money from your
neighbor. Both are important lessons in living that ultimately
lead toward greater human understanding and love. The one judged
negative simply is the longer path.
Remember
that karma is necessary in order to play the game of the physical
universe. Karma makes it possible for lessons to be learned and
development to take place.
