What is Karma?

Process Theology

What is Karma?

We each have our own unique karmic imprint, a psychic DNA code, that leads us into our predicaments. Are we the actions we make or are the actions we do simply a reflection of the trap of our karmic predicament?

Karma or kamma in Pali, is both the executed action and the intent. The unfolding of life in essence is a deep karmic unfolding. Be careful though because we can become attached to our karma.

How do we live in a way that does not contain ‘habits’ (Bergson’s reifications) of denying truths they know to be self evident at the highest spiritual level. Truths such as the unity of all beings, I am not my body or my thoughts, how to serve God, etc.

The game involves becoming aware of your own personal karmic predicament, learning how to ‘listen to it’ such that you keep yourself in a position to bring full and open consciousness to humankind. To bring and know the differences of:

• Wisdom instead of knowledge

• Love instead of kindness

• Compassion

This does not mean a denial or giving up of all technology and possessions. This is not a declaration of giving up all worldly possessions to go meditate under a tree for the rest of your life or to attempt to live as the ‘poorest worker’.

It means to be able to look into the eye of a homeless person, and say “Yes I am spending this $5 on a movie ticket instead of feeding you because this is my role.”

The Game = treat everyone you meet like they are God in drag

Your role in serving God is seeing God in everyone and everything. But that means seeing God in the homeless person and recognizing how best to serve his soul and not his person. To recognize the conscious possibilities in every moment and be as open as possible is the work we can do on ourselves. This is a power we can derive from within and is available by simply becoming aware of it.

We don’t walk through the forest saying, “that tree would be better than the one beside it if it was a little taller” we simply enjoy all the trees in the forest. When we see humans we start to perform these types of judgements. Each human has their karmic predicament that causes them to do things (that’s their problem) - these things in turn can Affect us, and cause us to feel and possibly lash out in response (that’s our own problem).

“If someone throws you a hand grenade, you don’t have to hold on to it”

If I’m hurt by something you said, I can acknowledge it and start to work with it. I don’t necessarily have to get them to stop doing the thing because they are like a tree - phenomena happening from the unfolding of karmic DNA.

In esoteric spirituality literature, it is said that the last gate into the inner temple is Righteousness or the feeling of being right — one of the last obstacles. One of the problems of spiritual work is ending up a ‘Good Yogi’: you know all the right rituals and do them flawlessly, you are really righteous and Good but you aren’t free. This is called the Golden Chain or the trap of righteousness.

When you desire to be free, then your anger and righteousness become less interesting than they were. You feel less comfortable sitting in your righteousness than you would ‘throwing it back into the pot’ in order to become free.

The issue with the game of learning to become a somebody (somebody training) is it operates with a deprivation model. For instance with love, you fall in love with someone - that person allows you to become aware of love within you and you enjoy the sensation. You enjoy it so much you crave what this external entity can not only give you but seem to be able to keep you in this trance. So you want to stay in this trance forever, but it’s easiest when you are with them - so you routinely schedule yourself to be around them (hopelessly all the time in some cases). The problem is what if they find love in someone else and leave you? Then how will you have this experience when they aren’t around anymore? This is the issue with operating on a deprivation model (externally seeking behavior), through the eternally changing nature of life we attempt to hold onto things when they are destined to disappear. We need to recognize that this model is just that - a model and not to be confused with reality.

We must extricate ourselves from our somebodyness, from our thoughts. We are so much more than our personalities - who we are has no time and no space. When we are thrown into life, the blow makes us forget everything and individualizes us through the tragedy of living. From this we rise and become a somebody but we must not forget that we are the thing acting but also the thing watching the action (the witness).

The game isn’t to be high (spiritual knowledge), it is to be free. There’s nothing to grab and nothing to let go - nowhere to stand and nowhere not to stand. Everything we push away will have to be dealt with sooner or later because there is no place for it to go or be forever hidden. The desire to want to get high is the desire to avoid suffering as hard as you can. When you desire to be free, the words of the Buddha start to echo - about the cause of suffering being the clinging of the mind. The only reason you suffer is because that’s the way the universe tells you about the clinging of the mind and is being offered to you as a gift:

“Pain falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom - through the awful grace of God.” Aeschylus

It’s interesting, as long as you identify with your personality the things that get you uptight (or bring you down) are your enemies. But when you identify as your awareness, then the things that previously got you uptight now show you where your awareness still has sticky fingers.

The mind likes dealing in polarities or dualities, therefore if you aren’t happy you may think that you are sad - but you want to be happy so you push away things that make you sad. If you are going to be free, there is nothing you can turn away from or turn off. If we are to be free, we must accept life in its entirety (all the goods and all the bads).

Spinoza speaks of a Conatus that man is guided by: the passive man being passive due to his weak Conatus therefore making him a slave to trends/opinions/passions; but the active man with his strong Conatus is able to led reason and led by his own wishes in life to do what he himself deems important. This Conatus provides him with two things, strength of character (the will to strive to understand the world) and the possibility of being Active (not pushed around by affections). An individual is simply a collection or bundle of Affects, and their ability to govern themselves or be governed by these Affects depends on Conatus. Individuals should strive to minimize negativity and increase their Conatus- the experience of your Conatus increasing is literally the feeling of Joy.

Can we change? Maybe we could define a macro change or micro change, a micro change would happen in your life but a macro change happens on reincarnation. Reincarnation is a type of vehicle for personal growth - with each reincarnation, our karmic DNA gets altered from the experience of the previous life. The experience of life is simply the unfolding of each individual karmic DNA - the sum total of each of these individual karmic predicaments is Ram or God. We are the universe experiencing itself, or like a wave in the ocean waving at itself. The appearance of our individuality is simply a veil to the connection of our divine nature. Each karmic predicament has one thing to do, unfold it’s predicament in space and time (on Earth). That’s all it can do really, for even the refusal to live your life becomes another way of living life.

With each round of samsara (karmic cycle of birth and death) we learn a little something to take in a priori into the next life. But in this next life we still have our limits to learn and explore yet these in a way are pre-determined (and subject to the physical laws of nature). Therefore when you are looking upon another individual that may be causing a ‘bad’ feeling in you due to something they did - you can be aware that they are simply stuck in a karmic predicament just like your own. But you have your limitations on how much you could theoretically change them - so why try? If change is in the cards for them then it will happen (maybe through you or through someone or something else). Same goes for you, if you have this thing you really want to change in yourself just let go. If it will happen it will happen, you forcing it to happen will not help (and will simply be you using a bunch of energy in futile ways). Use that energy for something else for you are fighting God himself in this hypothetical conflict.

This is the Taoist principle of Wu-Wei or action through non action. Make yourself aware of the situation enough to understand your limits and the nature of things - are you working in a dumb way based on models you created of the world? Use things to your advantage and go with the flow as much as possible.

There is nothing to do, and nowhere to go, nothing you’ve missed out on and nothing to see. You are the reason for the show and why everyone is here. A couple more rounds of samsara and maybe that will become clear to you. Through successive rounds of samsara we come into our Conatus and bodies through the natural unfolding of our karmic dna - there is an appreciation that can be cultivated for our individually absurd predicaments that life allots to us. Of course what is life without duality:

1. We are our sufferings, our upbringings, our genetics, our privileges (or lack there or), we are born somewhere in some time and from that we receive our tragedy

2. We also have the ability to cultivate an awareness of the equanimity and order of it all. The dance of life (Shiva’s Dance)

This balance between these two divergent drives is the cultivation of compassion between our human heart and divine heart.  It holds the key to unlock psychic energy to do and transform all types of things.

“Judging comes from your own fear, you’re a liar, cheat, and a scoundrel, but I love you. You need to work on yourself if you want to change others, why do you want them to change? Love them as they are and no problems will arise.” Ram Dass

The game is to see entities as souls, souls are innocent - neither good nor evil. Actions can be good or evil, personalities can be good or evil but not souls. The second you condemn a person and identify them as their actions that are creating the suffering, you have locked them into continuing to be who they are with your mind.

“To label me is to negate me.” Kierkegaard

You do not have to identify as your neuroses, all of the great saints were neurotic. You don’t have to change your neuroses, since this would require a tremendous amount of energy, you can do something much simpler - you just stop identify as them. Make friends with them, when they come around offer them some tea and be aware of them. But do not cling to them, deny them, negate them, run away from them, pretend they don’t exist or over identify with them.

People in response to uncertainty and anxiety act with fear. This fear needs to be dissipated and can be done so with various strategies. One of these being the material strategy, where modern consumerism comes into the picture. Consumption can be cathartic, like Adorno says, can be used to relieve the valve so to say on fears and anxieties about the world. This is a type of religion almost, a worldly material kind of religion where you want pleasure and you want it now because it might not always be there (deprivation model holding fears of scarcity).

Another strategy involves joining the side of the ‘Good guys’ to reduce the fear and anxieties from the world. If you are part of the elect, and push away the ‘Bad guys’ then you will be protected from the uncertainty of the world. People grab on to belief systems to make them feel in the right (Righteousness) to reduce their anxiety. In order for them to hold this position they have got to convince themselves that other people therefore are in the wrong - polarizing the world in doing so. From this position you can say things like, “Our way is the only way”, or “if you don’t do it then you are missing it and are wrong”.

What you need is to develop and cultivate compassion for the stages other people are in.   

A compassion for their karmic conundrums in all of their absurdities and see them as other souls caught up in this karmic web just like yourself. The essence of an individual just is, it isn’t good/evil, and it has heavy stuff to work out and good stuff to work out according to its Karmic Psychic DNA. Human beings can possess very dark karma and can carry extremely heavy load that burden them to utter exhaustion at times. This makes them project into the world immense suffering onto other people - and there is a point in your being where you can feel this incredible compassion for the horror of the predicament of that being. The art of the game is to stay aware enough and conscious enough to habitually see these beings as they are and at the same time as their actions, but their actions are a projection of their karmic predicament.

I’ll leave you with a beautiful mantra Ram Dass has shown us:

In Hindu - Aditya Rdiyam Punyam Sarv Shatru Beena Shenam

In English- All evil vanishes from life, for him who keeps the sun in his heart