In going through old conversations (putting together what I hope will be another book, perhaps to be called Life More Abundantly) I was struck by this disquisition on karma delivered as a response to a question by Louisa Calio.
Sunday, September 5, 2021
Louisa’s question:
[I am particularly interested in karma and this idea of pliable when approached in the Proper Manner- Would love to know more regarding the manner that can make what seems so stuck pliable.]
This referenced this quotation:
Thus – we have said this before – karma is not punishment nor reward except in the sense of the saying that “virtue is its own reward.” It is the starting conditions for your 3D life, and is a sort of continuing unseen or half-felt boundary that limits your reactions to things. But it is not unchangeable nor even particularly recalcitrant. Like most things, it is quite pliable when approached in the proper manner.
People’s ideas about the word “karma” may be accurate or wildly inaccurate or anywhere between – the usual range of conditions. But even if accurate, that will be an accurate idea of a term in another system, and thus may carry an unsuspected load of freight: unconscious associations that may warp the understanding by making the person hear “X plus Y” when we have said only “X.”
And yet presumably you find advantage in using the word, or you’d find another.
Well, the same process that may cause problems may also provide benefits. If we can show karma in a different light – and we think we can do it, pretty easily – we may free some people from limitations caused by unconscious assumptions. As always, the fact that one is unconscious of something renders that something impossible to change, but, once conscious, it becomes quite malleable. Only, it must be worked. It must be mixed with one’s intent.
Karma has become connected in many people’s minds with helplessness. They say, “It’s my karma,” as others say, “It’s something I’m stuck with.” And this is true even of people who are free of the idea that karma is some kind of punishment, which it certainly is not.
We say again: Life is a combination of predestination and free will. But these terms as we use them may not mean to others what they mean to us – so we’ll spell them out once more, in a sentence. Predestination is your starting-place at any given life, not a force condemning you pretend to choose while actually controlling you. You are not puppets, nor actors performing a script rather than improv.
And what is true of your starting place in life is true of every moment of that life. At any moment, you are in a place, you are subject to forces, and you cannot change that starting-place. To that extent every moment is a net you are caught in. You can exercise your free will, or refuse to exercise it (which is also an exercise of free will, if a negative one), only from within that moment. Your freely willed decision may result in your moving invisibly to another timeline, so that in effect you alter your past, but even then, you will have done so from the moment you were exercising it from.
I know at least a part of where you’re going, and it ought to be able to be said almost offhand.
We did say it offhand. “It is not unchangeable or even particularly recalcitrant. It is quite pliable when approached in the proper manner.” Very well:
- Any dilemma one faces, is of course faced in the present moment. But the present moment has two aspects, call them living and dead.
- The living present moment is experienced when you are here, You are focused, intent, aware. You are not running scripts, replaying past melodramas. You are awake.
- The dead present is how things feel when you are not here, now. Things seem solid; life seems dead, determined, without savor or possibilities.
- The good news is that you may at any time, and for no particular reason, re-enter the living present moment. There are no preconditions, no boxes to tick, no ticket to be punched.
- The bad news is that to return to the living present moment requires that you wake up. How do you remember to wake up, if you think you already are awake?
- Leaving aside the difficulty, the fact remains: The “external” world is inert if you are in the dead present and is malleable and cooperative when you are in the living present.
- Now, as to remaining awake, or regaining consciousness once asleep, several considerations apply:
- Habits, reminders, companions, sustained intent. All these tend to offer the possibilities of reminders that may jog you awake.
- Your own non-3D self has a vested interest in you being conscious. (You are in 3D for a reason.) So the better you communicate with it on a daily natural basis, the easier it will find it to provide you with reminders.
- The “external” world itself will provide you with opportunities. Obviously this amounts to saying your parts of which you are unconscious, often experienced as separate and external and independent and indifferent, if not hostile, to your wishes.
Look at your 3D life as unending opportunity – which it is.
And look at it as preparation for a continued longer life beyond 3D – which it is.
And look at it as only one part of a larger, correctly functioning organism – which it is.
Can you see that the three elements of your existence that we numbered are three complementary ways of assisting the 3D mind to transcend itself? To wake up? To choose in its own best interest?
- If you are asleep, you cannot choose anything. While it is true that sleep is necessary sometimes, yet it is true that nothing is accomplished during sleep to help you become what you choose to become, because in sleep you cannot choose. At best, sleep allows you to renew your connection with parts of you that you may deny or ignore when conscious.
- To prod you to wake up is not to determine what you will do or refuse to do when awake: That is up to you to choose. But it is to restore to you the chance to choose.
Now, having laid out all this, we come to the simple thing we might have said straight off, had we thought it would be understood.
What you experience as karma is largely the inertia of the past, manifested in 3D form as an “external” problem or situation or even opportunity. While you are asleep, you can do nothing to change it, because change comes only after an exercise of will, and will can be exercised only when you are awake. Therefore – your freedom inheres in your being awake. Every external situation that affects your life, be it health problems or relationship problems, or matters of availability of resources or opportunities – every situation that is “sticky” – may be seen as a manifestation of the third of the three manifestations numbered above.
Therefore – again – karma becomes quite pliable, as we said, when approached in the proper manner – that is, consciously. Louisa asked you how to make what is stuck malleable, and the answer is, make it conscious. That is, wake up and stay awake and, if you fall asleep, wake up again.
Nothing can be done in sleep. If you want life more abundantly, the prerequisite is that you live more in the living present moment and less in scripts and daydreams, frozen emotions, frozen attitudes. Every “external” problem can be used as reminder, and if approached in that way will change its nature to be less conspicuous. But removing the physical cause or manifestation is not the goal but the desired side-effect of pursuing the goal. The only goal that makes sense, given your situation in the 3D, is to wake up so that you may live in the present living moment.