The Dharma of Karma

From The Yoga of Wealth, © Copyright 2000, revised © Copyright 2009, Durga Ma. All rights reserved.

The relative existence of life in this world as we generally know it, is a play of effects determined by previous actions. It is a world of duality, cause and effect.

At a personal level, this play of effects is generated by the choices we have made in the past. We are drawn to act in ways determined by the script created by those choices, and the wheel continues to turn. We are in the grip of our karma.

In a collective sense, each person’s script affects everyone else’s. We find ourselves in circumstances and situations that appear to be brought about by the actions of others and over which we experience having no control. So whose karma is it — yours or someone else’s? Well, it’s both. It’s amazing how our scripts intertwine and provide circumstances in which everyone’s individual karma plays out. Our own lives, as well as everyone else’s, seem predetermined. And we feel helpless.

What we do is causative, whether it is done in the physical, emotional, or mental realm, whether it is in alignment with the Divine (“good” karma) or opposed to it (“bad” karma), and whether we are conscious of it or not. As long as we experience ourselves as the doers of actions, we experience the effects. In the relative world, what goes around, comes around. Complete freedom is our situation in the Absolute and reflects in our lives as personal karma is neutralized.

Neutralizing Karma

The key to neutralizing our karma is in the word itself. The Sanskrit word, karma, means action, and more specifically, action as.....causative. The root of the word karma (kri) means “to do.” We accumulate karmic burden because we believe ourselves to be the doers of action. When we realize through direct experience* that all action occurs in nature, and that what we really are is not nature, it becomes apparent that we are not doing anything; what happens through us is without karmic burden. This awareness is self-perpetuating and eventually leads to freedom, liberation. The trick is not to miss it when it’s right in front of us.....

I have had many students experience this awareness through meditation: “Wow! My body was just moving. I had nothing to do with it. It just took off on its own!” They were excited and inspired.....

.....Through direct experience and realization of Truth, our personal karma can be neutralized.....Until that time, we can try to understand the principle of karma, cause and effect, and make choices and act from our knowledge of universal Divine Law (dharma), live in alignment with it, and set the stage for overcoming our karma through God-realization. So long as we live outside of this God-realized state, the wheel of karma continues to turn and we are either blown around like a leaf in the wind, or we learn how to navigate and apply universal Divine Law in our lives.

.....You are a Divine One who is one with God, you always have been and always will be, whether you experience this or not. It is the purpose of our lives to experience and know this until it becomes our constant Reality, until we are God-realized ..... only then are we outside the influence and domination of our karma.

Namaste (I bow to the Divine One that you really are),

Durga Ma

* See the article, Enlightenment, by Durga Ma