truth
Escaping Karma
Karma is often one of the most misunderstood spiritual experiences that we have as humans. People will often use the word ‘karma’ to represent something punitive, or to point out that another person will “get what’s coming to them.”
But looking at karma through the lens of retribution is almost the opposite of the reason why karma actually exists. In fact, when we hold a perspective about karma that is punitive, we tend to create some sticky karma for ourselves in the process.
Karma is in truth an expression of the self-correcting Universe, reflecting its intelligent, loving design. The goal of karma is to expand a person’s awareness of love, joy, and serenity. Karma simply means that whatever we give out, comes back to us multiplied.
The concept of “karma is going to get that person,” is often directly associated with personal vendetta. Therefore, so many spiritual teachers throughout history talked about forgiveness and loving our enemies. When we focus on karma “getting” the other person, we tend to bring about harsh justice for ourselves.
It is also important to understand that the karma that other people experience is not proportional to how offended we are. The goal of karma is not to ‘make’ other people feel the way that we felt when we were offended.
The Dreary Room Of Unbearable, Silent Suffering
Some people spend their life as if they are trapped in a cheap motel room with drawn, yellowed shades and a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door. Is this possibly your life too?
To ponder such an important question, to be sure, brings an illuminating insight not necessarily appreciated until consciously recognized – but not while holding a ‘passing fancy’ flippant attitude of nonchalant concern. Long-awaited release often only arrives after the slit, which has formed from those unbalanced motel drapes, offers a hint of brightness to the dreary room of denial and pretense.
Too many days of too many lives are dissipated in unexpressed anger, masked as benevolent concern. Until you come to grips with the gnawing unsettling disturbance, in your chest, you will, in no way, be able to embrace the fullness of unfulfilled potential in your life.
Raw adventure, insatiable variety, fun-loving spontaneity, and serendipitous enjoyment: words which now maybe symbolize an alien state of mind for you, are but a numbing reminder of how easily things which were so much a part of your life have slipped into another phase, which does no longer interests you in the least. In other words, could it be that you have become an unbearable bore to yourself and others?
You know how to create unending comedy in all of our endeavors, but may have forsaken the practice for a duller, somber, ‘more responsible,’ serious nature… which you feel is more appropriate and acceptable. You need to be more committed, you say, and much more dependable, in order to be happy. But, pray tell me, what has happened to your contented spirit? Where is your vivaciousness and vitality? By working so hard to achieve a specific way of producing certain results, you have deposited yourself in a sealed bank vault where there seems to be no possible method of withdrawal.
Shenpa Is Not About Getting ‘Called Out’
A true teacher offers you a path to extraordinary personal expansion, because she has no investment in praising you in your mediocrity or dysfunction, in order to help you falsely ‘feel good,’ so you will keep coming back for more. But many people find it hard, threatening, or embarrassing, to practice shenpa, even if it is coming from a teacher that loves them enough to be sometimes more committed to their advancement than they are themselves.
Shenpa is a form of mindfulness, applied to you, so you can basically call it ‘mindful self-awareness.’ It is originally a concept in Tibetan Buddhism, meaning ‘attachment’ or a place where we become ‘hooked’ or ‘stuck.’ Pema Chödrön describes shenpa as “the urge, the hook, that triggers our habitual tendency to close down. We get hooked in that moment of tightening when we reach for relief. To get unhooked, we begin by recognizing that moment of unease and learn to relax in that moment.”
In this age of ‘victim worship,’ most people have been taught and rewarded for being or praising victims, no matter what. This approach infers that the victim is a deformed, delicate, broken porcelain object that must be treated with soft gloves. The victim is considered to be so emotionally and mentally deranged that you must coddle them, because deep down inside you don’t believe they have the resources in their own Self to recover, to grow, to self-validate.
This ultimately is a putdown… not a vote of confidence. This gives the message to the victim that they are ruined for life and therefore you will tolerate any behavior from them. This gives the subliminal message that you feel sorry for them, do not expect much, if anything from them, and also do not ultimately believe they will ever recover. They are, in your mind, and how you treat them, damaged for life. But actually they are not. Getting a scar is not brain damage! Continue reading
Living Ecstatic Bliss By Remaining Open To Life!
Nothing is for certain. We are not locked in. Everything is at our disposal. We are as free as the wind. Responsibility remains with ourselves, while duty and obligation have no place in our lives, when subjected onto us by someone else. It’s an inside job. The greatest disservice and most fierce act of unkindness we will ever do to another is when we negate, abate and sublimate our ‘natural and convenient’ innate desires.
Unless we are authentic and the real deal, we do not, have not, and will not show up for our lives, relationships and work. We are merely playing ridiculous games of pretense. Regrettably and stupidly, not the first one of them fulfills, sustains or registers. It’s simply a dreary monotonous merry-go-round.
The long and short of it is this: it matters what we do – but only to us! If we are doing anything for anyone at anytime, for any other reason than for the gut-driven, instinctive passion that drives us to express our deeply embedded sublime, sensual, sacred, sexual, artistic natures, we are nothing but disposable phonies. We are merely walking around, in a desperately empty, apathetically numbed, half-awake daze… haphazardly avoiding the next car that may plow right into us. The one and only problem with that unlived scenario: we won’t even know what hit us. Our short time here on Earth would have been null, void and without meaning.
What meaning, you may ask? You might not see any meaning, but you know you are here for some reason or purpose, you just don’t know what that is. Of course, you don’t, because you have not showed up for your life, yet. You walk around with either a chip (boulder) on your shoulder, because your life hasn’t’ worked out as you planned. Or maybe you are displaying an exalted sense of elevated importance, thinking you deserve more than you have.
Facing Yourself As The Other In Your Relationship
Relationships are funny things. They are by their very nature designed to elicit the best and worst from the individuals involved in them.
Although it may appear in a relationship as if you are involved with another distinct person, you are, in fact involved with an underlying, obscured part of yourself, which needs identifying and relating to. With appropriate understanding and recognition, you can see your way clear to an insightful experience.
Once having subjected yourself to the nebulous involvement, you will no longer need to refer to your actions with dread of ‘doing the wrong thing,’ or suffering unnecessary hurt. You will comprehend that it is impossible to avoid anything and there is no guarantee associated with the leap into the depths of your own foreboding abyss.
The fact of the matter is that you will emerge unscathed and filled with unmistakable self-knowledge and power attached to the plummeting into the relational depths of tense despair. By facing both the dark side and light side of your vehemently nervous, fretful mind, you will be freed from the bonds of panic and contentious worry that forever plague you.
Your undisclosed, insecure personality, as revealed in the other person, is laden with criticism, negativity and lack of confidence, based upon the premise of unawareness. The guilt, anxiety, and duty you have attached to personal responsibility in the outcome of the relationship is nothing short of nauseating. You are not that important in the material scope of things.
When A Relationship Ends
When a relationship ends, no matter which partner ended it, a certain amount of healing and forgiveness is always needed. But people deal with break-ups differently and everyone handles it in their own, unique way. There is no right or wrong way. Some people seem to move on more quickly, while for others it can take months, or even years.
In truth, when a relationship ends it has usually been over for some time already. Some people take years to end a relationship, and often they have already grieved the relationship for quite some time.
It is all too easy to sit in judgment of your former partner, or place the blame solely on the other person. You may have been a really good partner in your own eyes, but what was your part in the puzzle of the relationship? One must look at all sides of the story to truly understand why the relationship did not work.
So, although a break-up is uncomfortable and painful, usually accompanied by lots of tears due to self-examination, your own part in any relationship failure must be examined for your own personal growth.
It’s hard to take a look at yourself and be brutally honest on all levels. For example, you may feel that your gave the relationship 110% percent. Well, truth be told, if you really were the only one giving your all to keep the relationship going, then you most likely also became resentful without even realizing it. Your own needs were probably not being met in the relationship. You started to lose yourself and became only the mirror of the other person.
The Universe Provides The Help We Need
Recently, a very dear friend discovered that her partner, who she had been living with for the past three years, was secretly battling an addiction to narcotics. She discovered this in a very hurtful way.
They were getting ready to go out for the evening and she was looking for a specific item of jewelry. When she could not find what she was looking for, she asked him if he had seen it anywhere. He tried to downplay the situation and persuaded her to pick another piece of jewelry to wear. He was sure it would soon turn up.
But my friend was on a mission. That piece of jewelry was her grandmother’s. She would have never misplaced it. After more searching, she eventually discovered that almost all of her jewelry was missing! Thinking they had been robbed by a visitor, she was naturally upset. For weeks my friend was obsessing over what had happened to her jewelry.
Finally she asked for help from her guides, that the truth be shown to her, and sure enough about a month after the first discovery of missing items, she was sorting laundry and checking pockets when, to her surprise, in one of her partner’s pockets she found her grandmother’s diamond earrings!
Shocked, she began to question him about why her earrings were in his pocket. Did he find them somewhere and put them in his pocket, then forgot about them? She was sure there had to be a legitimate reason for this discovery. After all, this is the man who she has lived with, loved, and trusted, for several years. The thought of him actually being the thief never came to mind. Continue reading