Topic: past life karmas

Hi Ruchika,

Thank you for your comments and questions. Of course it is better to treat
people well and let the good effects of your actions grow in this life and if
you believe so, in future lives. But there is one thing that stands completely
outside of karma and that’s the one thing that we often overlook. It is our
own Being, which is Consciousness and Bliss.

When we return to our nature we find what people were actually looking for
when they treated you well and when they treated you poorly. Standing here
at the source, we find an unbreakable connection to harmony and bliss, not
as a separate thing, but as our real identity.

Here we can stand at the source of the opposites that our mind thinks makes
up reality. That means that this harmony does not depend on our life being
easy and is not the less when our life is tough.

The good news is that no matter what condition we find ourselves in, whether
we are rich or poor, young or old, healthy or sick, we can wake up and find the
freedom that comes from our identity. It is just a matter of standing as the
one that sees limitation, not the one who is stuck in it.

We assume that reality comes from what we see but now we can find that
reality comes from what we are. When we discover this we can put an end
to Karma, both good and bad, forever.

I hope that you will meditate on this and see how it is true. See if you can
find a freedom that does not depend on the ups and downs that Ruchika
seems to experience in her mind and in her life. You are the seer of Ruchika
not the one caught in her limitations. Does this begin to answer your question?
Of course comments from everyone on  this forum our welcome.

Best Wishes,

Michael  

thanks for the reply ..it is a very good explanation..but I am bit confused here..

In my heart is love for all, respect for all...and as they say be what you want others to be with you...but, the more I am nice and courteous the more people take advantgae of me/take me for gratned...I dont want this...therefore what I have now decied is to just be...be yourself, which is true divine beautiful loving being, who is selfless and in serive to others but at the same time not be overly saintly, because if everyone has a right ot be happy, so do I. adn noone can take that right away from me...

I have decied that I will always be my very best to everyone, but not at the cost of my happiness, coz it makes me miserable and that is definitely not a good state, not blissful, not contented..

THanks ahain Michael...

Appreciate your response...

God Bless

Hi Ruchika,

Thank you for your comments and insights. Sometimes when we treat people
nicely we have ulterior motives. We could be afraid of the people that we
treat nicely and afraid of what they will do to us. We could also be afraid of
karmic retribution in the form of future misery.

Sometimes we act in a way that we think will be spiritual. But this is the ego
trying to imitate our own self-nature. It may seem overly saintly. I think
that people can sense when our niceness comes from a false place with false
motives. That may be when they start to take advantage of us.

But as you are seeing, when you abide in love you find a connection, in
oneness, that is deeper than the mind. Then you can act is a way that is
natural without pretence. That’s how Christ could get angry at the money
lenders in the temple without losing his enlightenment.

So when you find this deeper connection there are no rules about how
you should act. The distinction is that you abide as the source of love.
This is your nature, not a construction in your mind. Being your nature
it never comes to an end.

If you act in a way where you feel limited and out of sorts just examine
what you are taking to be true. Are you taking your self to be a limited
person in a limited world that is somehow opposed to you? Once you
see limitation as limitation and not as your identity, you are free.
That’s because your nature is as the seer of limitation, not the one
caught in it. The seer and the source of love are a single one and
that’s who you are. Stand as your true nature and tolerate nothing less.

Also look for my blog on karma as lots of people have been asking
me about karma recently. So this is a more traditional understanding
of karma set in modern English.

Best Wishes,

Michael

Here is my blog on karma. I hope that this begins to clarify this term:

Is there an end to karma?

Lately people have been asking me questions about karma: “Are these situations in my life the result of bad karma?” “I don’t mind dying because I know that I will be born again.” I don’t usually sit around trying to define technical terms but since karma has almost become an English word, I think it is worth knowing what it means and how you experience it.

As far as waking up to your original nature is concerned, any limiting concept that you need to examine and let go of, you can do in this lifetime. Whether the concept apparently came from past lives or from this one is irrelevant. You only need to see that limiting conceptual frameworks are unnatural thought patterns that you can let go of in an instant.

 

So what is karma anyway?
So with all of this being said, let’s take a look at karma. It is often said that karma is the result of your actions that fructify over time. But karma is more subtle than that. After all people can do the same action for completely different reasons. For instance, killing to protect your grandma is different than killing as you attempt to rob her. So karma is really the effect of your motivation as you act. 

The karmic results of your actions could affect your physical environment such as the type of body you are born in, human or animal, the family you are born into, and your county etc.

Karma can also affect your mental environment such as your fears and desires, your talents, and how your concepts will affect you in this life. Any parent can tell you that children born in the same environment can have completely different personalities. This may be due to different Karma.

 

The three types of karma
There are three types of karma. Parabda karma is the karma that plays out in this lifetime. Then, as you exhaust the karma in this lifetime, you desire new things and fear new things too. Thus you create new karma to be resolved in the future called agami karma. This agami karma gets put in your bank account so to speak, which is your storehouse of karma for the future called sanchitta karma.

And thus, according to the laws of karma you go from lifetime to lifetime in an endless cycle fulfilling some karma and taking on new karma. Sometimes you are born as an animal, sometimes as a human, sometimes rich and sometimes poor, sometimes happy and sometimes sad, sometimes sick and sometimes healthy, all to fulfill a certain measure of karma.

Can you put an end to karma for good?
But now that I described the law of karma, here is the good news. There is a way out of this cycle of births and deaths. The key to finding your way out of the ups and downs of life is to know yourself. This is not an identity that you create. It is what you were in the past when you appeared to experience karma and what you are even now.

It is the discovery that the happiness you thought came from the world actually comes from your own being; that the sense of reality that the world seems to have comes from you and not from the world, and that consciousness, which seems to come from your mind actually comes from your own being, which is the seer of the mind. That’s why sages sometimes call your identity existence, consciousness, and bliss.

Seated firmly in your real identity you gain everything that you thought you would get from things in the world. You gain the kind of freedom that is so rich that it cannot be put into words.

Fate or freewill?
And finally you get to resolve the age old controversy, is your life a matter of fate or free will. You get to see that when you resolve the conceptual frameworks that seem to box in your mind, you gain a freedom that you could not have dreamed of. And that is the end of the story. The body may live on until this life draws to its natural end. But you know for sure that the suffering of the body is not your suffering. Indeed nothing can ever bind you again. You are now and free for ever.

Other resources available to you
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You have my best wishes,

Michael Gluckman