What can we do with karma
Karma is quite a popular word nowadays. People use it all the time, sometimes not really understanding the true meaning behind it. So it’s just a new habit to say, “hey, do not spoil the karma!”.
Anyway for us as a spiritual practitioners this topic is very important in the first place because karma is not something abstract, something that lives on its own aside from us. In fact, we are karma ourselves. Let’s look deeper into karma.
Word “karma”, that is sanskrit term, derives from the root kṛ कृ [“to do”] and means “deed”, “action”, “work”. Originally karma denoted any action, for example, in the ritual. And that’s why in Vedic texts there is a part called Karma-kanda, ritualistic part. Later karma as a deed became related with a result of that deed. The action, deed and the result are totally related — as a cause and consequence — and this is how people started calling action and result of the action as one — “karma”. Probably we will see this result only in the future, but its seed is planted in the moment of action. And it’s the reason why yoga-practitioner should be fully aware of every moment of life. Indeed, we are forming ourselves every second! And it is really hard to be fully conscious of every moment. But it’s our daily yogic routine, our conscious choice, what we spend our energy on and how we excel the way we are.
There is also another karma, the past karma that already exists in our life. Putting it in a simple way, we have some karma from our previous lives and some from this life. It is a huge number of karmic seeds, sanskaras (imprints of acts and reactions) and vasanas (inclinations). This forms our character, our personality. And until after we don’t know the real self (our true nature), we think that our personality is who we are. Let’s not forget we bring karmic baggage to our yoga practice too, and karma is the reason it’s so hard for us to change.
The question arises “What can we do if the karmic baggage is too heavy?”
Let’s approach karma from the energy perspective. Our qualities, bad and good, our patterns of behaviour and our reactions — these all are the fixed forms of our energy. It’s like a firm structure of our personality. The nature of karma is to fix energy in unmovable form, to make it make stagnant, rigid, unchangeable. Karma as the fixed patterns of character blocks free circulation of prana and this is also the reason of our imperfect state (of mind, speech, vision, body, etc.).
In first place we need to look at karma as an energy structure, the energy pattern that is fixed in time and space but understand that the nature of energy is motion and modification. When we shift our point of view to such a perspective, we simply allow ourselves to change in the future, change our own behavior, patterns. This is where the change starts. In order to change we should identify our karmic structures, therefore it is important to observe. But you don’t need to figure out all karma at once, start with something you understand — for example your reactions, patterns of perception.
Secondarily, we need more energy to “repair” our blocked energy, and not just more of it but also energy of higher quality than we usually have. When we do our sadhana (daily practice) and dedicate ourselves to Guru, God, or Goddess, the pure and perfect energy comes to us, fills us. This is not only about techniques or hours of daily practice, but also about our inner bhava (state, feelings) and self-sacrifice which is a result of our Bhakti and Guru-seva. This pure supreme energy, Shakti, is the key to changing our karma. That’s the idea. Because we are limited in our mind and energy we are not able to change fully or move strong construction of our karma, especially arising from the many previous lives.
And though we try to work with karma, another important question to answer is “Why we don’t change?”. Because of Ego. Karma is related to Ego, this is another secret of understanding karma. Karma, as a deed, plants a karmic seed — bad or good karmic result — only if that action is performed from the Ego-state. Trying to solve some karmic situation from Ego-state we often complicate it all. That’s life. And that’s why we need superconsciousness to gradually overcome our Ego.
Finally, for yogin there is a wonderful possibility to live life without gaining new karma of any kind. All yogin needs is to be Vairagi, the person who is detached and don’t assume the results of actions (acting not from Ego). Of course, it’s a deep inner work, the state of Vairagya comes gradually as well as understanding of our attachments. But this is the chance not to gain new karma and this is the way to liberation.
