The parents you are born, how they are, the social environment, it’s challenges, people we meet and have significant influence on us, the weaknesses and strenghts we posess, all the crysis, illnesses are part of our karma.
Karma is not juts thoughts, and samskaras. It can be explained that way, yes, it can be seen that way, yes, but that’s just one point of view, what, even if true as I beleive it is, cannot clearly show the whole picture. Karma is the very life we live.
A few important thoughts here:
Karma does not work on the ground of cause and effect alone.That would be a blindly deterministic view, one, I admit so fitting in that often not recognized materialist world view what lurks in the backs of our minds.
Karma works on the ground of continual challenges, for our personal growth. If a person old enough to have significant life expereince looks back on his/her life, often will realize that there have been situations, happenings, expereinces, what led to his/her current state, and they are so beautifully crafted, that no other outcome would have been possible, as if one was led to the present by some hidden director. This is when the thought of fate, karma dawns on us. We realize that a much higher intelligence has guided our steps, so we can become like we are now.
Several other thoughts flow from this.
First, that somehow, it all supposed to happen the way it did, no matter how unjust or hard it has been. Like a man, who lost his parents and their support in his/her early life, and when decades later looks back on his/her life, he/she realizes that the strenght, confidence, and self reliance he/she posesses now would have been impossible to reach, if things went on differently. Sooner or later one will come to the thought that this guidance is not an outer one, but something so deeply connected with us, that it really cannot be separated from our very being. This guide is the Self, what bears the results of all former incarnations, and it brings a wonderfully crafted plan to direct our life accordingly.
Knowing your past lives is really nothing but knowing yourself beyond the portal of the birth of this incarnation, and beyond the portal of your former death.
Karma, fate is not blind … we are blind to it, and with a purpose. If one would know in advance what trials one must face to develop certain traits, than one, still lacking those very traits, would feel totally unable, lost, and would do anything to avoid the coming expereince.
Our fate is part of the world’s fate. It all has a purpose, and we have a great destiny. Some parts of our karma will never be revealed because of the reason I said above … a fateless person is a dead person, one not needing any earthly expereince, a person who never comes back down here, unless from some higher, selfless reason.
There is much more to this, of course, but there is also a danger of knowing too much of these things, before we have the strenght to bear it. The often mentioned guardian of the treshold is simply facing our fate, karma, in it’s nakedness. In fact, there are two guardians … take these as figures of speech, as the images might vary depending on culture or individual expereinces … the first “guardian” is facing our selves as we are now, with all the weakness, selfishness, limitedness, misery, and what all that has meant for the world, for other people … something so terryfiing that it requires tremendous presence of spirit, faith in ourselves, and honesty … no wonder we do not meet this “guardian” until we are able to bear it’s sight … as soon as it tyries to surface from the subconscious we run for some outer expoerience, some sensorial comfort, or if we can’t do that, we run for manras, prayers, images, meditation,where we can expereince our better selves, usually in form of our limited, cherished ego of who we would like to think we are.
The second guardian is not related to our karma, or life, but to the world’s karma. It is a figure of incrediblke radiance, light, love, peace, and compassion. It it’s light, our lackings are just more obvious, but the very presence fills us with hope, love, and a promis that everything will be allright. This is what we could have become, we should become, we must be able to purify ourselves, but not just that, we need to grow to be able to bear this wonderful presence … let just call it Higher Self, now on this forum, even if that;s misleading as this is the Cosmig Self, Cosmic Ego, Christ consciousness, Atman, the spirit man we will become. (Eventualy, through many, many incarnations, in various environments, the more in the future, the more less we can picture) This is happening for everyone. There is anormal course of evolution, and there are some who go through an accelerated growth (not normal, and one more challenging … think of a soldier, what hardships he/she must endure to become worthy of defending the country … the soldiers of God go through much harder training so they can help building and defending The Kingdom of God - what is a state very far in the future where a separation of those who are spiritual, from those who could not find the way to grow will happen. The former will be ready to live in the world of angels (devas) , the latter will be still bound to the physical realm , only that the physical realm will have grown to a much denser one than the presnt one, and in it the sufferings of what we know are part of a physical expereince, will become much greater. That will be a hell in the fullest meaning of the world. Somewhere far in the future counted in the time of the physical world… and yet close, as the incarnations take greater leaps than we usually think.
PS. To justwannabe
The only limits in realizing and understanding karma are our own. In karma there is not only divine justice, but also divine grace. It is not mechanical, but living. It is not eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, because it makes you see the eye you harmed as your own, and it will not require to give your own eye in return, it will just show you your deed from the perspective of the suffering part, and you are the very one who will accept that you will make up for it, in a way that usually passes our normal level of undertsanding.
