Karma. Me and my fucked up Karma.

I read this article on Karma and it's helping me deal with my bad karma.

What is Karma?

I've been struggling with the fact that I know my "karma" has brought me to this really tough, shitty situation that I'm having to move through. And I take it on with a sense of deep guilt. I've carried around this idea that I did something horrible at some point in this life or another to acquire this shit storm. I pray for forgiveness every night, and morning.

It turns out that karma isn't quite that simple. Karma means "passed on from the past" not just "punishment for things you did in the past".  Not all of your karma originates from you. People pass on karma that hurts themselves and others. It's like setting off a chain reaction. So what that means is that karma started somewhere, and when we acquire it, no matter its origin, we still have to be the ones that transmute it.

So we take on societal karma, family karma, and we create our own karma. Basically it's all very interconnected, but the solution is within the self. This doesn't mean that I can go on blaming my problems on other people, it means I have to take responsibility for the things that I learned and chose to carry out, the actions that I took based on ignorance and through awareness or "enlightenment", change it.

This is helpful for me because I tend to take it all on like I am responsible for the gravity of every wrong situation I encounter. Even if someone does something to me I say it is my karma that brought me here. I now don't think this is entirely true. I think that I struggle with resisting other people's bad karma because I feel it is my fault. So I stay stuck. This perpetuates that bad karma. I bring it in, I don't sidestep it. I say "yes, this is my burden I must bear it", and I suffer deeply.

So I must learn to recognize bad karma and not feel the need to internalize it. It is not me. It is not anybody, really. The true self is exempt from the cycles of cause and effect in the physical world. It is source energy, love, obviously. Consciousness. But that consciousness comes into this mess of energetic processes expressing themselves physically, and from what I can tell so far, it is like a game. I'm not sure what the end goal is, people say "enlightenment", and I think that's probably true, but the word does explain itself so I'm still not sure if that's correct or not.

But it seems like a game. And the game seems to have to do with learning to recognize that which is around us. Learning to understand this existence and these experiences, recognize their mechanism of action, and after understanding this we then... ?  So we come to see and then from there I'm not sure what we're supposed to do with it. Avoid pain? Become productive? This brings to mind a few teachings of Jesus, found in the Gnostic Bible of Thomas, which read;

5 Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.

For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised."]

In other words, come to understand yourself and your world and why things are happening the way they are. If you can come to understand that, you will see what you cannot see. 

Because your world is being created by these undiscovered cycles of karma. And while you may want to hide from them, your ignorance will not free you from it, rather it will force itself onto you with strength in an effort to reveal itself. 

"When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."

"2 Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]"

Holy crap, this stuff blows my mind. 

buddhist wheel of karma

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