Karma (part 3)

See Part 1 & 2… (continued)

So back to how I believe the Universe works and how “karma/darma” operates. The Universe is intelligence beyond our comprehension.  Ours is one of an infinite number of Universes and ours is one of an infinite number of dimensions. The best way to describe it is a circle within a circle within a circle forever smaller and larger than the circle we occupy. The Great Intelligence is infinite in every direction without beginning or end. It does not directly create, have judgment or take sides.

Actually, it is my belief that the Great Intelligence (I don’t want to call it God or Goddess because these terms are to anthropomorphic and loaded) is an energetic field in and part of all of creation – meaning each of us carries a piece of this animating force known in occult literature as the Higher Self or in religious vernacular, the soul.

So we literally have direct access to the Great Intelligence. All of us are equally connected, equally a part of this Great Intelligence as the Great Intelligence experiences/learns and grows through our processes of individuation which is also and equally a part of the Great Intelligences’ individuation and growth process – in other words we are one and the same, all of creation is directly linked to the Great Intelligence.

This being said, conversely the Great Intelligence is eternal, all-knowing, pure unconditional love. And I don’t mean love as an emotion, but love as a beingness or energetic glue of oneness which in our language is best expressed as love. The Great Intelligence is in a constant state of creative evolution and experiences all of Itself (of which I’m including you, I, and everything in the Everythingness) as an extension of itself. The Great Intelligence does not possess human emotions, motives or anything we can remotely wrap our heads around. This is where karma/darma comes in. Each Universe is set up with a set of rules and conditions that those who occupy that Universe must abide by. Our Universe is dualistic; we have light and dark, good and evil, black and white, man and woman and all that lay in-between these opposites.

In our Universe we can not know one side without experiencing the other. It is through contrast that we learn and evolve, for whatever reason this is the path our soul took in this lifetime to learn whatever it needed to in order to further our own individuation and add to the collective growth/knowledge and self-understanding of the Great Intelligence. Or, hey, maybe we just like it and find it fun and entertaining.

We know through science that time is an illusion and actually as quantum physics evolves (through string theory) the notion of parallel dimensions has become a primary component, without this string theory is rendered useless. Just by extrapolation of this theory (which dovetails well with ancient occult teachings) there are endless versions of our world where: you are born, you are not born, you decide to marry, not marry, have children, not have children, etc. And of course you are but one component of the endless possibilities and how all these things coalesce to make for the current universe we inhabit. In a sense karma helps to keep the balance among all these possibilities, without this law our souls could not make the connection between the light and dark or between action and reaction.

Karma in other words is the connective tissue between the call and the answer. I don’t believe it is punishment or favor. It is nothing more than a universal law set up so we may understand how our actions create and effect our world, loved ones, future trajectories, and really everything.

In eastern religions it is thought that we are on a wheel of Samsara or suffering. That our world is a kind of purgatory from which the ultimate goal is to ascend. I don’t believe that either. In this version of karma the idea is to reach a state of karma-lessness through meditation, and never causing injury (or help for that matter) to anything whether it be ant or human. The problem with this idea is (of which there are many in my opinion) is in order to live someone else has to die, be that plant, animal or even microbes that one breathes. There is no escaping the impact one will have by the very act of being alive. And hiding away on a mountain to meditate all night and day, eating only things without faces is a form of escapism (in my opinion, not that one doesn’t learn a lot about the soul and ones connection to the Great Intelligence this way, one does, and there is great wisdom to garner from a lifetime spent in meditation, but it won’t get anyone off the wheel).

I have this opinion because I would like nothing more than to spend all day in a tower meditating, having someone else put some bread and a bowl of soup at my door for me to “evolve” off the wheel of Samsara. But from my own memories I’ve spent many lifetimes doing just that, and I’m still here. And we have the example of the Dali Lama who keeps coming back despite leading countless ascetic hermetic lives. I’ve had to make a conscious effort not to hide away in this lifetime because I realized life was and is meant to be lived, mistakes are meant to be, and one moves off the wheel, or off this planet whenever one feels he or she is ready. It’s really that simple. What isn’t simple is our souls are far wiser than we are and hold us to a standard not easy to pass until we are truly ready and have exhausted all growth needed to move on

….In other words I believe we participate out of choice, a choice to grow and become greater than we started and whatever it is in the human experience that moves us forward, it is one of many experiences our soul will have in its eternal life. And we can choice to incarnate here or there or wherever. We have to play by the rules of the game we get into and that is that. Let’s face it hanging on the astral plane and reading the Akashic records all day would get pretty boring after awhile and one would hunger for a new way to experience the self just as the Great Intelligence hungers to grow more intelligent and to experience the self through all of Its many facets and pieces.

In part 4 I’ll talk about heaven and hell…

Best to all,

Denise

Karma (part 2) new

So in my opinion karma/darma is one in a set of governing laws provided as boundaries/laws which evolved to move us and the Great Intelligence (of which we are one with) forward. Christ said, “the Kingdom of Heaven is within,” a quote often overlooked and in many ways misunderstood. What he meant isn’t you can find internal peace or happiness inside, but that the way to Heaven (or the Great Intelligence) is through the divine part of the self, the part that is at one with the Great Intelligence, the part that returns to the eternal oneness, the part that is itself eternal just as the Great Intelligence is, sometimes referred to as the soul, spirit, higher-self.

We are like innumerable sparks taken from the Great Intelligence, cast out by It on myriad of adventures to expand, grow and bring back greater knowledge of the Great Self.

I had a knowing in my early 20s that we were all Individual and all One at the same time. That the nature of our dualistic universe does not allow us to see beyond Ain Soph to Kether. These restrictions are placed on us so we will stay grounded in our agreed upon time and space, so we may interact in order to learn the lessons we feel we need to learn in order to grow.

As odd as it seems, it’s been my experience and belief that to a lesser or greater degree we are co-creators of our lives. I do not believe in The Secret‘s idea of this. It is far more complicated, delicate and random than the New Age has sold this idea. I do not believe people born into poverty or to terrible parents did awful things in their past lives. Chances are better that these are highly evolved souls who choose a more difficult path, one they knew would be fraught with sacrifice and hardship in order to learn far more than those who live an easy life.

I do not believe being wealthy, famous or born into those privileges are a blessing. Instead I believe they create distortion, a bubble of isolation, misunderstanding of the world around, often a lack of empathy, a feeling of aimlessness and self-absorption. Faust sold his soul to the devil for fame and fortune and indeed this metaphor is apt. In our narcissistic culture it seems everyone is all too ready to sell even their children soul (such as Balloon Man) for a taste of fame – a tiny rush of power and a chance at prosperity.

Yet all that we seek here in the west, fame, fortune, power over others – those things that have become hallmarks of being “special,” actually take us away from the true experience of life and those things that are actually precious. It is no accident that Christ said, “It’s easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than a rich man into the kingdom of heaven.” And what he meant was: the more one looks outward for reward (through riches, power, fame) the further one gets from their connection to God/Great Intelligence as they fall into a bubble of narcissistic power tripping that others are all to happy to indulge due to their own ego driven narcissistic tendencies.

Take for example the recent example of Andrew Young’s book The Politician which exemplifies this idea. From Young’s interview (I haven’t read the book yet) he seemed to lack insight and of course this was and is to his benefit. He sold his soul to be close to power. John Edwards may have been his devil, but Young was surely Faust, and his attempt to purge his conscious and clear his name lacked the same insight. He didn’t seem to understand the position Elizabeth Edwards was put in, or have much compassion for her – a woman who was diagnosed with cancer and had her husband lie and cheat on her. I suppose this was because his ego was bruised from his participation in her injury and the fact that she took out her anger on him in her desire to believe her husband. I’m not saying she was perfect or that she didn’t have issues. But it’s clear that she was a typical woman, she’d been in love and married to the same man (faithfully) for 30 years. Gone through the loss of a child with this man, supported his dreams and sublimated her own desires for his. Young mentioned that they had an “odd” relationship, that Elizabeth was more like a mother than anything else to John.

Well, this is often the case when both partners are in love with the same person – in other words she was in love with a narcissist, but I’d hate to give narcissists such a bad name, I think we can go several steps farther and say this man was more likely a non-violent sociopath (they do exist – an excellent book on the topic is called The Sociopath Next Door). John Edwards not only lacked empathy, he was pathological in his lack of care for those he “loved.” His crazed narcissistic high was so great he was willing to throw everyone,  under the bus, including his dying wife, his best friends, his mistress and the whole of the Democratic Party for his own selfish ambition. Let’s face it if the dude had gotten the nomination and his affair and love child came out then, well, hey we’d have 8 years with Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the red button. That to me proves he is at the darkest levels of selfishness besides his pathological lying, cheating and general douchbaggery.

Part 3 of karma tomorrow…