Karma Is! [Part 2]

There are four major points to remember about Karma:

1. It is not exclusively the bringer of disappointments, pain or death. Though it operates in a way that our intellect cannot perceive fully, karma is neutral. It is even-handed. It is only our societal bias that gives it a color.

Backpack For Toddler

Karma is why some win at the lottery. It is why others fall in love. It is why we get the promotion that we've worked hard to get or the *lucky break* that, from a near-sighted perspective, we think will solve many of our problems.

2. Once two persons meet, their vigor feeds off each other and as long as neither acts as a circuit breaker by reacting non-mechanically, their karmic destiny will be played out.

3. The culminating occasion of any karmic situation is orchestrated according to the law of attraction and repulsion, as is encoded in our magnetic field, in our vigor field, which works exactly as the magnetic poles of one, two, or a multitude of magnets all brought together for one karmic intervention, scheduled at a designated place, at a specific time and driven by one participant's energy.

4. There is no such thing as any one having ever been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The string of anodyne miniature moments that located the sports car driver in front of the old man's house were set in petition by the cosmic plan, not by Lady luck or coincidence.

Whether they are ours, our friends' or strangers', from an individual's perspective, life's events, taken in isolation, appear as moments that can be reduced to stories by ourselves, by our friends or by the media.

All we have to ask is, "What's happened?" and we have all the facts neatly arranged in chronological order.

If we are addicted to watching other people's karmic events in full descriptive color, news programs that run 24-7-365 give us the fixes that retort our craving. If not for this addiction, why would we watch strangers' glory moments and, mostly it seems, their moments of sheer agony and despair?

This is how karma works: someone's loss is our gain. A heavenly occasion for us may mean that, for man else, they go through hell.

Regardless of the estimate of participants in a karmic culminating moment, known or unknown to us or to each other - the karma of each participant being different from ours - they will be affected in varying degrees.

This is descriptive in the following humorous tale. "There was once a man who was having a guided tour of heaven. All things appeared as he had startling until he noticed a man, a very old one with a long white beard. The visitor found it odd that there should be a gorgeous young woman seated on the old man's lap.

So the visitor asked the angel, "What's the meaning of this?" And the angel answered, "For the old man? It's paradise. For the woman - it's pure hell."

Admittedly, though calibrated exactly to supply us with the challenge we need to grow beyond the trenches of our relieve zones, not all situations that come our way are karmically induced as a result of anyone we have done, either in this life or in previous ones. There is no way of telling what events stem from which, nor should it matter. What is ... Is, and needs to be addressed in as much a spiritual manner as possible.

I have come to perceive that doing life, driven only by our intellect, is as helpful to us as driving at night in a car that without headlights.

Unlike the fly's eyes that are six times more sensitive than ours and can detect ultraviolet frequencies in the light spectrum that is indiscernible to us, our eyes are a function of the limitations of our human body and our largely untapped intellect. They enable us only to perceive what is directly in our line of vision. Like the most basic Gen 1 Sci-Fi robots, we can see only a few meters ahead. However, unlike robots, we don't regularly scan and gawk all that is there. Most of the time, unless we are complicated in a research, creating something that requires our undivided attention or we are in love, we merely notice at what is directly in front of us.

We lack omniscience. We cannot see one miniature ahead of where we are. As such, we can but have a miniature understanding of the metaphysical laws that govern the cosmos.

We are saddened by the news that it was a baby's fate to die from cot-death or that of a toddler to be mowed down by a drunk driver who ploughed through the fence of the garden where this child was playing. Beyond a humane emotional response, and for practical reasons, we need to accept that such tragedies happen for a reason, however nebulous to us. The calculate is that of karma needing amendment.

We can be as sentimental as we wish for as long as we wish, but we must not forget that a child's soul is, in fact, quite an ancient soul which has a purpose to fulfill in this lifetime. If this means being incarnated in a singular baby with a preordained short life, so be it.

As callous as it may seem, I am coming to accept that such a child's karmic purpose in this lifetime is to give the ones who are grieving the pre-destined wake-up they need in order to tend their spiritual selves. Which is not necessarily the response generated by a personal loss of this magnitude. Often, in fact, deep grief drives us further into our mechanical selves and makes up even more dependent on emotional crutches.

What? lesson not learned? Like at school, we will be given someone else opportunity to learn what we must learn, either in this lifetime or in the next or in the ones after that.

Once our karmic rendez-vous is locked into our vigor field and our nemesis is set on course, not unlike a 'sleeper' spy, nothing can forestall our destiny from happening - neither how 'good' we may have been, nor any geographical distance, however great. Though we know such things happen all of the time, here is a sample confirmation of what I am talking about.

Heads up: format, frames and pictures have been edited out of the following section for the purpose of this ezine article.

Crash bus had been overtaking: The tour bus that crashed in Egypt killing six Australians overtook a second bus just before it rolled, the operator of the tour said today.

Witnesses have stated that the driver had not been speeding, that he had been driving well up to that fateful occasion and that there was no explanation for his decision to overtake at that specific moment. The bus driver survived, but he has to process his role in this tragedy. Here again the bus is only the instrument.

Lawyer shot down aiding woman: a 'Good' Samaritan shot dead after going to help a woman in distress in Melbourne this morning was a 43-year-old solicitor.

The unnamed lawyer was one of two men who went to the aid of the woman who was struggling with a man near a taxi on the projection of Flinders Lane and William Street, in Melbourne's Cbd, about 8.15am.

In all, three population were shot before the gunman fled. The solicitor was shot in the chest at point-blank range and died at the scene an hour later, despite the efforts of paramedics.

The other man who attempted to intervene, a 30-year-old, is in a critical condition in hospital after surgery. The woman, 24, is in a serious but carport condition in the intensive care ward of Royal Melbourne Hospital. Police said this afternoon they had identified a man of interest believed to be the gunman.

The gunman was on the run this morning after shooting three population on the projection of Flinders Lane and William Street, killing the man and wounding a woman and a man. The gunman fled on foot after the 8.15 a.m. Shooting and police later found a handgun at a colse to building site, which was believed to be that used in the incident.

As heavily-armed police searched for the shooter, aged in his late 20s or early 30s, office workers were told to stay put and not panic. Witnesses and police said the gunman appeared to be complicated in a violent domestic dispute with a woman in a taxi and when two men intervened, he shot all three down.**

This sad story appeared on the front page of my local newspaper, The Courier-Mail, on the 18th of June, 2007, at the time I was writing this file. Like that of most, upon hearing the news that such a nice man had been blasted in the chest at point blank range in such singular circumstances, my first plan was how unfair. Moriya, however, was quick to point out that this death, like all other deaths, particularly violent ones, happen so that the survivors have a opportunity to redirect/amend their lives by looking inward.

Their karmic mission is to refrain from knee-jerk responses intended to pacify their ego-persona, either by seeking 'vengeance' as opposed to justice through the Courts or revenge beyond the Courts; either by indulging in endless grief; or by becoming agora-phobic or bitter or nuts or anyone - further starving their soul and adding more negative entries to their vigor field. If this happens then, truly, it can be said that that person's death will have been in vain.

If we remember that our souls are ancient and that they have not all the time been incarnated in such healthy and honest ego-personae as ourselves, then a swift death, here and now, can be attributed to amended karma. After all, one of our past incarnations might have been strung up on a medieval torture rack and pulled apart until death ensued. Or in more modern times, s/he might have died a slow painful death in a hospital bed or left bleeding to death in a back lane. In this lifetime, however, as in the case of the Good Samaritan in Melbourne, it was estimated that a quick, painless death was the just recompense for something beyond our understanding.

Spiritualists say that the world, as we know it, is only a manifestation of what is organised in the cosmos. They say that the real world is the cosmic world because it is from there that come, magnetised to us, all the impulses - the miniature ones and the weighty ones, the good ones and painful ones - that shape the daily lives of every one in our global communities and have done so since the Big Bang.

"All the world's a stage," Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It.
"And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts."

What if, in a previous lifetime, the lawyer shot in the Melbourne incident, had killed man with a sword, with a gun, with an anvil? Why not accept the possibility that this *someone*, in the current time- warp mirror-reality, turned out to be the gunman towards whom he was inexorably magnetised, through the catalytic vigor of the woman in distress on that Melbourne road corner?

A role reversal if you will: a tragedy played out according to the Cosmic plan, but from a cosmic perspective who is the real hero? Who is the real villain? It is not for us to know. From a spiritual perspective, any judgement passed by anyone in our world is purely arbitrary.

All we need to accept is that through the events interwoven in the huge tapestry that is our soul's life, karma is the unerring Great Adjustor. What we sow is what we reap. That is the certainty. What is totally uncertain is when and how often and how, in the millennia, our soul's incarnation will reap *our* harvest.

"Pashoot meod," says Moriya in Hebrew. Very simple. Moriya said to me one day that the world that, according to the Christian calendar, is a combine of thousand years old is in fact nothing more than a perpetual masked ball where everybody's true identity is inexpressive by their ego-personae, our ego-personae. And although there have all the time been councils and tribunals set up to punish wrong-doers and criminals, when these miscreants reincarnate under a different mask, they can no longer be identified as such and they pass as innocent and pure entities. Having said that, we can, here and now, recognize evil-doers in two ways. either they are seen to repeat their evil deeds in a robotic way or they cut their lives for the benefit of others.

If our world is only a mirror and we are only reflections of the real images, we need to turn the mirror colse to to look at events in reverse.

There are three more points I would like to make most respectfully, as I continue the deconstruction of the karma of The Good Samaritan in the news item.

1. Because it is a karmic impulse that cost the lawyer his life, not the gun, and not his encounter with the killer, the energetic baggage he will bring into his next incarnation will have been amended most positively. This man died while aiding someone, in this case the woman who, incidentally was the karmically appointed catalyst. If it hadn't been for her proximity on that pinpoint-specific space on the road corner, this singular drama, with these specific participants would never have happened.

2. The impulse to be at the appointed time, at the appointed place to participate in one specific event, even if only as an eyewitness, is hardwired in our aura. It cannot be resisted. When destiny summons us, we go where we need to go.

With the precision of homing pigeons, all four participants in the shoot-out came from wherever they were, moments before, following their own impulse to come together, on a combine of quadrate meters, right at the projection of Flinders Lane and William Street, while every person else of the 3,850,000 population in Melbourne were off-stage.

3. "The other man who attempted to intervene," shot three times in the upper body, was revealed later as a Dutch backpacker who just happened to be there, in downtown Melbourne. He survived.

In all likelihood, only a few persons, not necessarily the ones closest to both these men 'knew' them as they assuredly were in 'this' lifetime at that singular point in time, and probably no one has a clue as to what these men were like in their previous lifetimes - as is regularly the case for each one of us.

Thus, the ideas is that when in the eye of the storm, the more spiritually evolved the victim - we do not mean, here, do-gooders or religious zealots - the lesser the vigor invested in the incident/accident, which explains why some population stare death in the face but walk away against seemingly impossible odds.

Moriya explained, "C.C., let's say, it is your karma to one day get lost in the desert, Ok? So, it's not going to be a nice experience. Maybe you suffer from dehydration. Maybe you come over reptiles and maybe you even get bitten. You get sunburnt. Maybe you also come over thieves. Interestingly, they only want your camera and your wallet. Sure, you're unhappy and sure you're frightened, but when it's all over, you agree that the taste could have been much worse at every turn. So, although you got lost in the desert, you got rescued. You didn't die there and assuredly anyone has happened to you will come to be an anecdote to share with friends or to write about in a book. Look, put plainly," she adds patiently, "a karmic situation that turns out to be less serious than otherwise startling is like slipping in a mud puddle and falling on your buttocks instead of cracking your head open on the pavement." and emotional grazes or either we die on the spot, no one knows what is in store for us ... further up the track ... In the next moment.

To revisit some of the main points made earlier in this file, Moriya sent me someone else humorous piece to deconstruct from a karmic perspective - a part of my homework on that singular day.

"A young man who had to go away on international company wrote his girlfriend love letters every day. He wanted to do it the romantic way, via the post, not email. After the 200th letter, his girlfriend got engaged to the mailman."

Deconstruction: The culminating occasion is set in petition when the mailman became mediator in the middle of the girl and her boyfriend. Then the boyfriend, through his letters, becomes the mediator in the middle of his girlfriend and the mailman. The boyfriend and the mailman have swapped roles, but the three participants are the same. Karma changed their position.

In one of her emails from Jerusalem, Moriya, who translates her thoughts directly from Hebrew, gave me an analogy to construe the plan that karmic events are assuredly 'God sent' opportunities for us to move on.

"Cc, let's imagine that our life is a very long road with many refilling opportunities along the way," she wrote. "Tov, (Ok in Hebrew) you have a car and your car will work only when you put fuel into her, right? Now, suppose you just fill the tank and drive a long length until you run out of fuel. You wouldn't say: Wait, wait, I need to find the same gas hub where I last filled the tank, would you? What you would do is be thankful for the fist hub along your way, fill up and drive on. Our capability to get vigor from any gas hub along the way is very liberating and is critical to our survival, yes?

The first hub symbolizes our starting point in life. From there the sky is the only limit. However, population forget how to use their spiritual wings or maybe that they have wings at all - they rule in the state of chrysalis without ever evolving into a butterfly.

You see, population function in the same way as the car and its fuel. We eat and our body changes our food into energy. We also absorb vigor from plants, from the air (prana), from other population and also from objects. Of course, we also have some karma to edit and some karma to live out. All this is energy. It's very freeing and very functional that we can and, in fact, are startling to refuel along the way, again and again.

Cc, there comes a time when population who have worked or lived together run out of fuel. They are meant to separate. They seldom do so voluntarily, preferring to return to what is energetically familiar over and over again regardless of either or not this vigor is healthy for them and regardless of how much travelling they could have done, if free to move.

What I'm saying is that there comes a time when we need to be separated, otherwise we live under the same regime of repetitions as older students being made to do again and again the same lessons that they were doing in early years. When, energetically, we refuse to budge, we are made to isolate and move on by a karmic event, an incident our ego-persona interprets as a nuisance, a setback, or even a tragedy.

It is a very good opportunity to evolve and advance without being connected to the familiar gas hub forever. But although population know all that and know that all of us will die one day, most live in denial and cling to emotional crutches and bodily crutches and are too afraid to even look for a new gas hub up ahead. After all, isn't there all the time someone else hub up the road?"

Karmically, either we survive a mishap unscathed or with only miniature bumps and emotional grazes or either we die on the spot, no one knows what is in store for us further up the track ... In the next moment.

Michael Reardon was one of the world's foremost free solo climbers, a rare and highly risky extreme sport sport that entails climbing sheer cliffs, some 900 feet high, with only the gripping power of finger tips and rubber-tipped soft shoes - without any protection equipment whatsoever.

"On July 13, 20007, Michael was standing below a climb he had just completed. The photographer, Damon Corso, was about 30ft away taking pictures of him. He was about 10ft (5 meters) above the sea and he and had his hands out, celebrating, to say he had completed the climb of his life. But then a rogue wave just came in. The wave hit him on the knees and he lost his balance and slipped on the algae. He was shouting for help but there was nothing Damon could do."

Interestingly, Michael's personal saying was, "Climbing may be hard but it's easier than growing up."

When a karmic incident comes crashing down on us, it is very suitable to ask Why is this happening to me? or Why is this happening to us, as a community or even as a country.

Spoiler: It is appropriate, provided the tone is firm and inquisitive for, indeed, it is critical to try and get as close as potential to a spiritual answer.

Every mainstream religion reminds us about the consequences of our actions. Ultimately, though celebrated with different words and through different rites, I do believe that, once pared down and free of fanaticism, each of the mainstream religions share tasteless spiritual beliefs.

In spite of this, I will risk saying that the most catalysts of wars of religions, past and present, aside from masking fear and greed, have been waged because of semantics.

On paper, all this makes a lot of sense. However, internalizing *all this* until it becomes a part of my core understanding of the meaning of life and death does not come without effort. And so, as I learn more, I custom a shift of perceived values, slowly, slowly, one present-moment at a time. Daily I custom the acceptance of everyone, without exception. No matter how hard and against the grain.

The good news is that I do not have to deal with anyone's opinions or religious views and, in fact, I do not have to Do much at all, least of all talk. All I need to do is simply accept them. But like anyone connected to this topic, acceptance has got to be genuine - from the heart, not merely from the head, not from the lips.

Giving of self 'is' what unconditional love and universal love are about. It is not about sending feel-good vibes to whoever we are simply attracted to or comfortable with at the time of our choosing. It is not about being kind to the ones we like and love and being indifferent to others. That would be way too easy and hardly the stuff of spiritual evolution.

It is only the skin that seals us up along with a cultural perception of the private that give us the illusion of our uniqueness which, in turn, creates and maintains disunion and isolation.

Basically, I'm getting to think that we are about as unique as any cookie can be unique on its baking tray, once the cookie-cutter has done its thing. And this introduces someone else key concept, that of disunion or rather, that of Non-Separation.

© by C.C. Saint-Clair, 2008

Karma Is! [Part 2]