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Henceforth, I ask not good fortune. I myself am good fortune. Walt Whitman
Shared karmic situations fall into two subcategories: national and individual karma. An example of national karma is that you may be born in a particular country where you always have to relate with 7-Elevens, take-out pizza, and badly made cars. You end up in certain environments or worlds, but you cannot totally blame that on yourself. The whole country is made up that way.
The second subcategory is individual karma within national karma. For example, if the sewage system in your neighborhood is not good, that karma is particularly and personally yours, in a sense, because the pipes keep breaking and costing you a lot of money and effort. Another example is winding up with a bad teacher who gets grumpy because he is poorly paid by the school system. On one hand, that situation is not your fault; but on the other hand, you did end up in that particular school. You have a television network, but you have your own personal TV with which to tune in, and you also choose your own particular station. It’s very simple. Environmental and individual karma complement each other; they feed each other.
The extraordinary qualities of great beings who hide their nature escapes ordinary people like us, despite our best efforts in examining them. On the other hand, even ordinary charlatans are expert at deceiving others by behaving like saints.
-Patrul Rinpoche
This Karma machine only takes quarters.
Through Qigong practice we become conscious participants in our destiny. The Chinese call this yuan fen, a concept that goes beyond destiny, fate, and even karma. As yuan fen includes these ideas, we can see that there is a continuum of energy that ties the past with the future, placing us in a present that stretches in both directions along the time line. Qigong helps us understand that nothing is fixed, as the Tao is an everchanging flow of energy. So our yuan fen is also flowing, constantly in flux, moving with our very thoughts and actions. As this constant transformative process takes place, our past and future constantly change as well. This may seem like a strange concept at first as we are taken to believe the past is a fixed reality, completed, and thus unchangeable. If we understand the Tao, this cannot be an acceptable conclusion. As we flow with the natural way, all in our existence flexes and reforms. Qigong practice awakens us to the fact even our past can undergo a drastic metamorphosis. When this occurs, the lines of causality are redefined. Past experiences are perceived in a more universal way and with an objective clarity. The perceived present is concurrently objectified and we are released from the perceived past. We must simply allow ourselves to become free of the trappings that bind us to form. As "Dreamtime" describes a maleable reality for the Aboriginal people of Australia, Qi Space assists us in releasing form and becoming the free souls we truly are.
It’s not about how to achieve your dreams. It’s about how to lead your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you.
The most decisive actions in our life... are most often unconsidered actions.
Never kick a skunk.
When you say "Wait a moment," you are bound by your own karma; when you say "Yes I will," you are free.
I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator. Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that I will fall heir.
The Buddha may open the door, but you must decide to walk through to the world of wisdom and enlightenment
Take karma, make dharma.
see karma, make dharma
Due to having made karma, rebirth consciousness arises. But we need not think of rebirth only in a future life. We are in actual fact reborn every moment with new thoughts and feelings, and we bring with us the karma that we made in past moments. If we were angry a moment ago, we are not going to feel good immediately. If we were loving a minute ago, we would be feeling fine now. Thus we live from moment to moment with the results of our karma. Every morning, particularly, can be seen as a rebirth. The day is young, we are full of energy, and have a whole day ahead of us. Every moment we get older and are tired enough in the evening to fall asleep and die a small death. All we can do then is toss and turn in bed, and our mind is dreamy and foggy. Every day can be regarded as a whole lifespan, since we can only live one day at a time; the past is gone and the future may or may not come; only this rebirth, this day, this moment, is important.
As you learn to leave alone the activity of unconsciously trying to be the mindbody that you think that you are - the mindbody that this "you" is currently flowing through - and you learn to move as this one that you truly are - this "you" of you; the very heart of existence - steadily, consciously and momentarily, the continuity of the ever deepening of this innermost as it keeps on entering its manifestation, through this mindbody that you find yourself flowing through, allows you to simply bubble in the sheer joy, pleasure, peace, delightfulness and stillness that this "you" of you is.
There are patterns which emerge in one’s life, circling and returning anew, an endless variation on a theme. So musicians say the greatest sonatas are composed; whether or not it is true, I do not know, but of a surety I have seen it emerge in the tapestry of my life.
A child is born on that day, and at that hour when the celestial rays are in mathematical harmony with his individual Karma. His horoscope is a challenging portrait, revealing his unalterable past and its probable future result. But the natal chart can be rightly interpreted only by men of intuitive wisdom - These are few.
Our power over matter has become rather godlike, indeed. If our understanding of reality and ourselves does not correspond, we will surely make this world a hell. It is too cowardly to blame it on God, Buddha, Brahma, the Tao, the Random Universe, or whatever else. And it is a poor gamble to bank on nothingness - "what does it matter? - in hope of automatic anaesthesia beyond individual or planetary death. However difficult it may seem, we must each take responsibility, for our own absolute, examine what we think it is, how we came to that perspective, if it withstands critical analysis, and how it affects our actions. So we are vitally concerned to undertake the struggle for this Everest peak of this essence of True Eloquence.
Though we can't always see it at the time,
if we look upon events with some perspective,
we see things always happen for our best interests.
We are always being guided in a way
better than we know ourselves.
Swami Satchidananda
I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.
The evolution from human to divine consciousness involves healing duality and its legacy of karma and disease at the cellular and atomic levels.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
How about the complex of affinities that bring you to a bank just as a robber comes in? Are you responsible for this situation? Lots of incidents led up to it, and once their results are in train, you might have no control. There is such a thing as world karma. I as the world am responsible, but there might be no way for me as an individual to help once the crisis has become acute.
My actions are my only true belongings.
I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.
Coincidences occur where life & destiny (karma) intersect. Caryn Colgan
We may think of peace as the absence of war, that if the great powers would reduce their weapons arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we will see our own minds - our own prejudices, fears, and ignorance.
Unless you see your nature, you shouldn't go around criticizing the goodness of others. There's no advantage in deceiving yourself. Good and bad are distinct. Cause and effect are clear. But fools don't believe and fall straight into a hell of endless darkness without even knowing it. What keeps them from believing is the heaviness of their karma. They're like blind people who don't believe there's such a thing as light. Even if you explain it to them, they still don't believe, because they're blind. How can they possibly distinguish light?
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