As we close the cycle of the Winter Solistice and this passing year, I have been contemplating the many cycles we experience in life. Birth, seasons, aging, relationships, hardships, illnesses, prosperity, death. All having a beginning and and an end, cycling into anther beginning, another end, and so forth. As if they were mechanisms in clock all turning together, creating your rhythmic journey of life.
These revolutions are an intricate part of your healing and growth. Within them, you take actions that have an impact on how you develop on your journey. At the end of your term, at death, there is a sum total of your actions.
Karma is the sum total of all your actions in this life and previous lives.
In this current life, you may work through Karma and/or you may accumulate more. In the Vedic texts, it said that you are then re-birthed into a new life if you have more Karma to work through. Therefore, Karma is that which binds us to the cycle of birth and death.
The earliest appearance of the word Karma is found in the Rigveda, one of the oldest Vedic texts. It is described as an active law of existence. One that illustrates the spiritual cosmos and your divine connection to its revolutions.
In present day, Karma is a widely used Sanskrit word. In the West, it is a term that has too often been seen as a scoring system, good or bad. As if it is a curse, ‘what comes around, goes around.’ This is a minuscule way to look at the vastness and wisdom of Karma.
Instead of good or bad, more correctly we can say that Karma is cause and effect. The causalities are:
- through thoughts
- through speech/words
- through actions that we perform ourselves
- through actions others perform under our instructions
How you use your thoughts informs your speech which informs your actions and the actions others take under your instruction. The effect, whether the causes were good or bad, is your Karma. Simply put, if you are start with being impeccable with your thoughts then you will not accumulate any new Karma. And vice versa.
There are three types of Karma that are interwoven:
Sanchita Karma– All accumulated Karma from past lives.
Prarabdha Karma– Fruit-bearing Karma experienced in present life.
– It is impossible to experience and endure all Karmas in one lifetime. And not all Karmas rebound immediately. Some accumulate and return unexpectedly in this or other lifetimes. Prarahdha Karma is a selection of Karma from Sanchita Karma that appears in this current life span
Kriyamana Karma– The sum total of actions produced in the current life.
– All Kriyamana Karma flow in to Sanchita Karma and consequently shape our future. Only in life can we change our future destiny. After death we lose the ability to act (Kriya Shakti) and do (Kriyamana Karma) until we are born again in another human body.
Tulsidas, a wise Hindu saint, said: “Our destiny was shaped long before the body came into being.”
You are divinely woven into the fabric of life. Karma colors the design in which you make. Starting with thought.
May these words provoke further contemplation and deepen your experience of life.
Aum shanti.
.
