One of the major causes of our suffering is not accepting whatever life situation is given to us if the life situation conflicts with our idea of how our life should be.
We say, “How could God do this to me,” or “God is a cruel God” or “I deserve better than this,” or “I have never done anything evil how could all this bad happen to me” or “He is such a good and pious person how could God give me such harsh punishment.”
Or, most famously, some waive off all as “Oh, it’s just Karma,” “it’s just Destiny.”
Karma is neither passively accepting everything that comes our way nor is it fighting against something. It is simply a total of Cause and Effect over all the lifetimes combined.
Karma
Spiritual Laws apply equally to everyone. For every choice we make and every action we take, there is a consequence. We are co-creators of our destiny. God is not an arbitrary outside agency imposing consequences on us.
Picture this:
There is a very busy actor high in demand. He is working in 10 different movies as separate characters in various costumes in one week, one after the other. He goes to one movie set, puts on the costume, and plays his role.
Once done with the first movie set, he changes his costume, goes to the second movie set, puts on a different outfit, and plays that character. When he’s completed his part at the second movie set, he takes off his costume, goes to the third movie set, puts on a new costume, and plays the part of the character there. So on and so forth.
When the actor changes his movie sets and costumes and plays the character, they are just movie roles. Underneath it, all actor is still a fully intact individual.
Similarly, the game of life and death is seamless. Our soul never changes; it is fully intact. It just keeps moving seamlessly from one movie set to another, one incarnation to another.
The word ‘DEATH’ seems to have become such a scary word! It has been used too often with negative connotations, and so the word death has taken on a whole fearful life of its own.
Death is nothing more than a SEAMLESS TRANSITION from playing one character role in one movie set to another movie set as a different character!
The thoughts he thinks, the choices he makes, the actions he takes, and its consequences all carry over as seamlessly with the actor from one movie set to another.
That is Karma-Total impact at a given moment of all the past actions of the actor.
The actor himself earned this impact (or Karma). It is not imposed upon him from something outside of himself, not even God.
Humans are considered the most superior of all earthly creatures because humans have individual consciousness and the power of choice. Humans get to choose how to act when to act, where to act, who to act with. This ability to make a choice is the incredible power of humans! We are co-creators with God!
Our past actions up to the current moment create our movie set and the setting. How do we play the roles, what choices we make, and how we respond to the role all determine our present moment and situation.
God is not to blame; no one is to blame. We invited the situations and the reality that was best suited towards our Spiritual growth.
To the extent we keep shifting the responsibility of our suffering upon external people and circumstances, we stand in our way of moving towards Divine Self Realization.
It terribly hurts our ego to accept that there is any remote possibility that we could have created our suffering ourselves. We do not want to consider looking inside ourselves. It is easier to resign helplessly to some unseen outside force as the primary culprit behind our seemingly adverse circumstances.
In and of itself, all people and situations in our lives have the foremost reason to be there to help us find our Divine Center. They may come as friends or foes, but everyone’s role in our life is the same. It is our awareness that we can either find a higher meaning from a Spiritual perspective or blame, curse, and fall into bitterness over life as it is happening.
It is also interesting to note that as much as we blame external forces for our suffering, how much do we credit the same external forces for all the ‘good’ in our life. We tend to take credit for that. We play at life with a double standard. If you don’t own responsibility for the negative, then don’t accept the credit for the positive either. Then you get out of attachment to either type of situation and rise above ‘doership.’ When you are not the ‘doer,’ then you detach yourself from your external identity. You become a Witness (Sakshi Bhaav) to your physical self-playing the game of life and rise above the trappings of ‘Karma.’
Picture This:
There is a basketball sports team. It has its framework of rules and regulations. In the team, there are players of varying capacities. Each player has their own level of expertise to contribute to the game. The player’s amount of practice, dedication, and perseverance has all contributed towards the potential success of the player and the team.
Each player not only represents himself but his entire team. He has to give his very best not only for himself but for his whole team.
Even if the team loses the match, on the whole, the player can still be the player of the game. He can still stand distinguished from the overall team performance.
Similarly, our past actions from all lifetimes combined set up the framework of a ‘destined path’ for our current lifetime. But within this framework, we have the complete power of choice; we have free Will.
We play the game of life not only for ourselves but in co-operation with the rest of the creation. Our every action impacts the whole of humanity in physical and nonphysical ways.
Ironically, what appears to be a ‘destined path’ results from choices made with ‘free Will” before the present moment, so there never was anything but Free Will! What we call Karma is Free Will,
Blessed Be.
Ritu
