Karma

Karma is the action of conscious choice-making,

Cause and Effect

In every moment of our day, we have the opportunity to make choices aligned with our true-self, a balanced ego that chooses love & kindness OR we can align with our unbalanced ego that chooses fear and keeps us in reactivity to all that is going on around us.

The choice is always ours

Even if it seems like it isn’t our choice – how we respond or react to anything going on around us – is always our choice.

We all understand to a certain extend “cause & effect”. For example, if we never exercise and continue eating food that isn’t good for us, the effect will be health issues and/or weight gain. It is up to us to make the conscious decision to exercise regularly and eat healthy in order to create better health for ourselves and/or lose weight.

The best way to understand and utilize karma is to become consciously aware of every choice we make in every moment. Last week, we consciously set intentions to give to others the exact things we wanted most – now that is a powerful practice to create great karma! This week we take it a step further. We get to consciously choose every decision we make for the greater good for all. To create happiness, joy, health and love all around us. 

How empowering is that!

“Every action we take generates a force of energy that returns to us in kind” ~Deepak Chopra

We always have a choice

If someone unfairly judges us, we have a choice to take offense and defend ourselves OR we have a choice to not take offense to it at all – therefore not needing to defend anything. Taking offense or defending ourselves is an unconscious gut-reaction that we all have experienced – but we don’t have to take offense to anything – even if it feels unfair! We CAN choose NOT to be offended.

When we are in our ego that acts from fear, we WILL take offense to the judgement and feel the need to defend ourselves. When we can shift into love though (kindness, self-love, compassion, appreciation) we can consciously choose to NOT let the opinions of others bother us. It is always a choice.

The choice we make creates our karma.

The more we take offense to all the judgements & assumptions coming at us in our world, the more we feel the need to defend ourselves and this just creates a never-ending loop of karma for ourselves both in coming back to us and what we give out because essential it is a mirror to what we are also sending out. This creates a karmic debt which puts many people at odds in the world and in a place of suffering.

This is why so many of us suffer in many areas of our life

Whether we like it or not, everything that has happened to us or is happening at this moment is a direct result of the choices (many of them unconscious) that we have made in the past.

Now that we have this awareness as to what kind of karma we are creating in our life, we can consciously move forward, and make different choices that can & will affect our future.

How do we go from unconscious decision making to conscious decision making and create better karma for ourselves?

Practice leaning back and witnessing the choices we are making in every moment. This is very empowering…because when we do this, a different choice can be made!

When we do take a moment to lean back, we can ask ourselves 2 questions;

1. “What are the consequences of this choice that I am making?” (We can ask ourselves this question with everything & anything we do from the food we are putting in our mouth, to the thoughts we are thinking, to the way we are responding to life & those around us)
2. “Is this choice I am making coming from fear or love and if I make it will it bring peace to me and those around me?” When we consciously act with the intention to bring peace to others, the unfolding of karma in our lives will be peace.

As everything in the Universe is a constant “to and fro” or “give & receive” exchange of energy, Karma does mean that “what we sow is what we reap” and many people believe this means we needs to pay (usually with suffering) for our “bad karma” or “bad choices”

However, this is not entirely true. There are ways we can stop the loop of karma and transmute the karmic debts without needing to suffer.

We can choose instead to learn from our karmic mistakes.  

So, what can we do if we have some past karma we are worried about, or recognize we may have accumulated some in our day from unconscious choices & reactions?

Deepak Chopra in his 7 Spiritual Laws of Success book gives 3 options that I found very helpful in bringing awareness to my own karma and what I could do to stop the loop and shift my karma.  

Here are 3 options Deepak offers;

1. We could continue to pay our karmic debt with suffering. We can go on believing we have to pay & suffer for our karmic debts – this is what our ego that reacts from fear will do. It doesn’t have to be this way though. We do not need to suffer in order to pay a karmic debt.
2. We can transmute or transform our Karma though. How? We need to shift into appreciation and align with our ego that comes from a space of curiosity & love and ask ourselves these 3 questions 1) “What can I learn from this experience?” 2) “Why is this happening and what is the message the Universe is giving to me? And 3) “How can I make this experience useful for myself and my fellow human beings” Answering these 3 questions openly & honestly transmutes the karma to a learning experience – which creates growth for ourselves and good karma!
3. We can also transcend our Karma. Through the practice of meditation (stillness, silence, nature, non-judgement) we can practice aligning ourselves with love. First & fore-most, love for ourselves. Every time we align with self-love the karma will begin to wash away – it’s like washing a piece of clothing, every time we wash it (sit in meditation & self-love) we release more dirt (karmic debt).

This Week’s Intention

Below are some examples of what you may want to set your intentions on. As always word your intentions in a way that feel right for you and give you the inspiration to follow through on them.

• “Today, I make conscious choices”
• “Today, I reflect & respond to what is happening instead of reacting on impulse”
• “Today, I  consciously choose to refrain from… (judgement, complaining, anger…)
• Today, I  consciously take time to play & laugh”

Have an awesome week and as we create and spread “good” karma everywhere, be sure to enjoy the effects that conscious choice-making has on your day, your week and well, you might as well keep going all year long! It will make us wonder why we didn’t do this sooner 😊

Let’s Tap this IN…