Lately, it seems to me that karma is coming due for people I know, and people I don’t know, and entire societies around the world. I wonder, is karma really coming due in some greater frequency now than it used to, or am I just more aware of it lately? Let’s explore it a little.
Sadhguru suggests that karma is just the accumulation of memory. He notes in his book on karma that this accumulation of memory shapes our reality and appears to be repercussions from our actions. And it kind of is. He notes that karma is not the judgement or punishment from some deity on high, but simply a consequence of our own thoughts, beliefs and actions, stored in memory, affecting our lives today.
He says that karma arises more from your intentions than from your actions. You can take a detrimental action out of a good intentions, or you can do a good deed from a place of negative emotion. Sadhguru suggests that it is the intention, or the emotional root of your actions (as I always preach) that is the key.
Sometimes we wonder why things happen to us. There is a difference between karma and soul contract. Contracts are agreements that we make with other souls before we incarnate. We agree to play certain roles in each other’s life so that we can learn specific lessons while we are here. We agree to a set of life lessons, like classes, so sometimes what is happening in your life is a contractual lesson, not a consequence of your past intentions. Sometimes it is both. Karma stems from what you do while you are human, while contracts are made before you are human. Both affect your reality in real ways.
The biggest misconception about karma is that it is a bad, or negative, or unpleasant result that that is extracting a price for your previous bad deed or mean thoughts. But karma is really just a reaction from the universe to your past emotional roots that you sent forth. It’s an action-reaction thing. It can be good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant. Your years of doing good things from a place of love and joy result in multiplying your love and joy. And your time spent doing things out of anger and fear multiply your anger and fear.
The most interesting thing about karma is that you receive what you put out to the world, but it rarely arrives back to you on the same channel that you sent it out on. For example, you may be kind and treat someone with love and compassion, and months later, find that someone completely unassociated with that event is kind to you and treats you with compassion. In other words, you may borrow from one person and repay it to someone else. Our you may give a gift to one person and receive a gift from someone else. It is all balanced in the grand scheme of life.
Because we are all one, what you do to one person, you do to all people. So it doesn’t matter who balances the karma for you. We are all one. Situations end up looking like irony because of this. For example, imagine a business man who spent decades exploiting the people closest to him for personal gain, who then one day finds himself in cognitive decline, being used by yet others for personal gain, unable to comprehend enough to stop it. It’s not irony. It’s karma. And this is the natural order of things. It’s a sort of spiritual physics playing out in your life. Don’t be fooled by the sometimes long timeframes between debt and payment, or investment and reward. It all comes back to you.
So my question for you today is this: what karma have you balanced already? Good and bad? And where is your balance sheet still seeking resolution? If your karma came due today, what would that look like? Would feelings would it return to you?
