Chapter Eleven

KARMA

"Joan, where are you? Come set the table for supper."

Jerked out of my reveries by mother’s voice, scenes of myself as a young maiden riding beside my brave, honorable knight under a canopy of heavily leafed branches of giant oak trees slowly faded. I often visited these particular scenarios. The chivalrous days of King Arthur intrigued me. I preferred my colorful, romantic interludes to the dull, day-by-day routines of a teenage girl in a small, isolated mill town. My own vivid and real-to-me daydreams fulfilled me more than those wonderful tales in books or anything going on in my mundane everyday moments. Other times I saw myself in the role of a male warrior. This puzzled me as I liked being a girl.

More than twenty-five years passed before I discovered my daydreams to be memories and select pieces of recall of other lifetimes. In some I had been male, but my present reality encased me in a female body. My recall could not have been too accurate as my inventive mind always portrayed me as a desirable, brave, beautiful young woman whom I fancifully chose to envision.

And so it is with karma. Before incarnating we write the script, direct the play and are one of the actors, only our plays often include painful dramatizations. It is rare that our physical appearance is the epitome of either beauty or handsomeness. We often are the opposite of being young, rich, healthy, happy, in love and loved.

Under karmic processing, we painfully enter Earth’s vibrations through the birth canal, and our incarnations vary. Before the restrictions of karma, our lives had been long, we remained in faster vibrations, were more ethereal, and not of this world, but as we were drawn more into the slower frequencies, we forgot and exhibited cruelty and greed towards others, destroyed and murdered and our lifetimes shortened.

We lost sight of our goals and our resonance faltered. We died as a result of wars, murder, disease and accidents, including attacks from carnivorous animals. Some Lemurians and outcast Atlanteans reverted to primitive lives in caves. When we had fallen nearly to the level of animals, there was little need to review or heal the events of prior incarnations as we had little conscious awareness.

We continue today to script lifetimes immersed in the most primitive, at one end of the scale to the most civilized cultures as the other extreme. However, that is not to say that being civilized automatically encompasses the fullness of love and compassion.

As our Earthly sagas of many differing variations continue, our personal energies begin to resonate to the different facets of Love and fear. Guidance from our higher consciousness subtly stimulates us to desire, understand and practice Love, which resonate in faster vibrations.

As we become wiser and more knowledgeable, the time we spend in between incarnations lengthens in order to more adequately review and script plots that will heal disabling emotions that limit us in our search for enlightenment (lighten up through knowledge). When our hearts awaken and we become more perceptive, we analyze our lives and write our next scenarios with new roles. Soap operas, although over-dramatized, are reenactments of human dramas, and we are the original producers of those plays.

We also make agreements with others who are incarnating at the same time to become co-actors in our dramas by sharing events. We may be attempting to neutralize past emotions or offering episodes that act as catalysts to help each of us attain new avenues of release and growth. These agreements cover mutual cooperation and exchange to overcome and counterbalance residual emotions in both actors during the pending incarnation.

Like soap operas, our emotions and ensuing actions may negate our goals, even to the point of making our emotions more destructive and bitter or may accomplish them. Reactions may tie us together in multiple-relationship incarnations through several lifetimes. Strong emotions such as hate, guilt, fear, revenge, power, purpose and love may yoke us together, lifetime after lifetime.

In any lifetime we may program an ordeal that will propel us into knowing forgiveness, thereby alleviating further like karma. Likewise, we collectively can process actions and forgiveness without invoking any preprogrammed catalyst. We may evolve enough to forgive self and other participants to such an extent that we never play that tragedy again, which also extinguishes a karmic lesson. We may, at any time, through understanding, acceptance and forgiveness ameliorate any patterns. This also brakes or stops the necessity of further exposure to that class of karmic experience.

When we evolve sufficiently to understand the benefits to be gained through our karmic exposures, we may outline our participation and select the catalysts that propel us towards the insight that we seek. These invisible guidelines shape events that transpire according to our prerequisites.

If one opportunity is missed, another appears until, consciously or unconsciously, we step onto the path that leads us into our designed evolution. If during a particular situation we develop a bias that we didn’t expect, it is possible to script a new scene to balance this prejudice in such a manner that it may be transmuted into broader viewpoints.

We may ask the question, "Even if we preprogrammed our own adventures, utilizing our free will prior to rebirth, doesn’t that contradict our free will when making choices during the ensuing lifetime?"

The purpose of pre-scripting variables is to assure us that we will gain first-hand knowledge. Our God-Self stimulates our choices towards fulfilling the plots that are beneficial in living out destructive and less negative emotions in such ways that they slowly fade away. Thus more loving ones can fill the vacuum.

Knowledge on any level is spiritual enlightenment. Knowledge can be gleaned by various methods and we use free will in selecting events with all of the attendant actions and reactions, even to meeting others who are not involved in any prior karmic agreements. They may lead us into new beginnings.

It is this guidance from our higher consciousness that encourages or discourages certain courses of actions. Sometimes we call it our conscience. When we are young, once away from our parents’ control we feel and test out our power as we confidently and vigorously stride through each day. As we eagerly enter our more mature years, life seems to knock us about a bit. Our self-imposed responsibilities become burdens, and we begin to search for more purpose in our lives.

Perhaps we have been unable to find our perfect mate, or relationship, or we lost it. It is most difficult when we are in our twenties and thirties to realize that the Love that we seek is on all levels, not just romantic or familial fulfillment.

Each episode may be viewed differently, depending entirely upon our perspective. For example, in a store we may be without sufficient funds to pay for our purchases. In such an instance:

a. We may steal what we need;

b. We may feel a victim and a failure;

c. We may be unconcerned and simply remove the items we can’t afford to buy and continue on;

d. Someone who is on the end of the line may feel compassion and offer to pay the difference;

e. Those waiting may feel insulted to be standing near a poverty-stricken person; or

f. We may feel complete indifference to the situation.

Some of us schedule intense situations that are beyond our scope to complete for we did not realize that we were not ready. The force and depth of the drama crushes us so that we lose sight of our objectives and instead become overwhelmed in negative emotions of failure. In other instances we may have the capability to complete the scenes, but in not realizing how fierce they would become, we scramble, utilizing all of our Spirit and energies to complete the dramatizations.

In this generation we may feel that it is our last opportunity to catch up for what we chose to neglect in other lifetimes, and we pre-selected four or five heavy, difficult karmas to complete or overcome. As an example, we may script in one life span the exhausting burden of caring for sick parents, unrequited romantic love, the agonies and bitterness of divorce, single parenting, death of a beloved spouse, and sickly children. It takes an unbelievably strong will and strength of purpose not to succumb and sink into a morass of self-pity and defeat.

When individuals tell me of life experiences so overwhelming that they are brought to their knees, I say, "My, you were truly ambitious when you plotted the course for this lifetime."

When sailing our boats through such stormy seas, we have available to us, through concentrated efforts to open the channel to our Minds, our higher consciousness, which in my instance I did through constant prayer, self-help books, positive thinking and my Bible. My unshakeable faith in God saw me through every deep plunge in those tumultuous years. When brought to my knees, someone or something flowed into my life to help me see it through. Doors opened and gradually I explored new perspectives and philosophies regarding God, religion and life in general. Throughout these years I have had my most poignant religious experiences.

During my mid-thirties my household was in shreds, my marriage on the rocks with two small children to support and a demanding job. I scrambled, agonized and endeavored through each miserable hour. Daily emotional challenges sent me searching into metaphysical information as the cold atmosphere of fundamental Christianity could not sustain me. My vision of God was warm and loving, not one that stood far and apart, loving me one moment and damning me in the next.

A dear friend of mine passed over due to cancer, and his wife, not knowing how to cope, deadened her anguish and grief in alcohol. Unable to face his friend’s death, my husband, in his distress, failed to appear at the funeral. I had taken the two young children of this devastated household under my wing, and together with my own young children, attempted to assuage their grief and bewilderment as to why they no longer had their beloved daddy.

After the funeral and returning the children to their home filled with other friends sharing in alcoholic escape, I put my own children to bed and sat in my kitchen reflecting on the events of the preceding hours. This day had been a culmination of many prior miserable days. Trapped, I felt broken, totally drained, undergoing the blackest day of my life, even worse than when my parents had passed. Crushed, experiencing a dark night of the soul, depleted of all energy, I wondered what the future might hold for my deceased friend’s two little girls. I fought anger and bitterness within myself over my husband’s seemingly irresponsible escapades, and generally considered the futility of life.

Despairing, feeling like Job, with tears streaming down my cheeks I collapsed, crying aloud, "My God, I can’t go on! I don’t have the strength. I give up. Help me, oh my God, help me!"

For the first time I understood why people can reach a moment when suicide appears to be the only way out. Even for the sake of my children, I could not raise myself………helpless, devoid of all emotions…………a nonentity. I stared, unseeing into the darkness outside of my windows. A subtle, light gray mist drew my attention. It rose from the floor, filling the room, surrounding me, and totally blanketing me. I sat quietly in that protective fog and let it envelope me, grateful for its loving isolation.

Time stopped. I know not how long I sat enfolded in Love, but eventually I began to revive, ease out of my apathy and self-pity, and once again take heart. What had transpired? Had I been swathed in the ethers of loving Spirit to comfort me? Was it my deceased friend showing his gratitude for my support? Perhaps my guardian angel was refilling my empty cup? Whatever it was, it replenished me and answered my cry. I have had other sorrowful moments, but none of such total surrender as that one.

I wonder if this is what the Bible means when it says that God is the potter, we are the clay, and in order to be molded, we must surrender our all, our will. How sad that we must program into our lives such hard knocks before we allow our God-Self to guide us. I know that this entire tragedy, which extended over two years, was a karmic production that we all agreed to share.

It is not important that I know the good or bad that each received during the performance, but to recognize the value that I gained. I shall never forget that wonderful cocoon of Love. And it is available to each of us.

It is possible to live out all the events and occurrences that we pre-select; then analyze, understand and accept them; recognize the gains; and appreciate in what manner the actions of the players did strengthen or weaken us. We do not play out these scenes to judge our fellow players for we do not know the truth of them. If we wish to expand our own horizons, we sincerely search ourselves. We only look at another’s involvement to determine our own reactions to people, situations and emotions. We apply the various energies of Love as our guidelines and goals.

As this process progresses, that which is no longer needed peels off, thin layer by thin layer like the skins of an onion. It is not that the karmic event is overcome. It simply is no longer needed as a teaching tool. If that which is no longer needed is painful, when it fades away then it follows that our lives have to get better.

Past information has indicated that karma is binding, based on physical actions described in catchy clichés such as "an eye for an eye" and "a tooth for a tooth." It may be more correct to say that residual emotions resulting from our interactions are what block us from releasing. Emotions tie us together until they are forgiven and neutralized, at least on the part of one actor.

If we are able to forgive self and the other, we thereby release, although it has to be more than just a verbal acknowledgement. It has to come from deep within us, from our hearts. If the other actor in our little drama is still connected to negative emotions, s/he will learn through interactions with others in other dramatizations.

Why did past cultures present the issue of karma as being a result of physical actions such as maiming, murder, abandonment, unfaithfulness, cruelty, and torture? I suggest that until recently having gained more insight into the science of emotions and their effects, the physical world was their only reality, and emotional and mental ruminations were regarded as trivialities. Buddhists and the monks of Tibet, along with many other religious and philosophical schools (including some Christian ideologies), do not delve into emotions as being a primary factor in our spiritual growth. Instead they isolate themselves in their desire to return to their Source, and have developed rites and ceremonies to bring this about. Yet they recognize that they are bound under karma and reincarnation.

If we deny our passion, our intensity and all those features of our nature that contribute to Love and creation, we overlook the very element that propels us to seek our true essence and our ability to manifest.

From the standpoint of metaphysics and not politics, in 1966 our little circle of seekers asked our unseen avenue of information the question as to why the Dalai Lama and his monks were forced out of Tibet? The answer was that they were extremely developed in the healing arts, and the time had come for them to mingle with the masses, use their talents to help others and spread their knowledge. This they did when forced out of seclusion. Look at the wonderful influence of the Dalai Lama today and the cooperation between the religious schools of East and West!

Negative actions with accompanying strong emotions continue to tie us with others in different lifetimes until our negative emotions gradually lessen and are replaced with forms of Love such as compassion, understanding, empathy, sympathy and a healthy, respectful love for self. Self-help books flood the market furnishing us with guidelines and instructions. Emotions that contribute to our physical actions and reactions are an underlying basis on which we make decisions concerning future patterns.

There may be a lifetime when we participate in dramatic situations where, although there are no strong karmic ties to each other, we are actors in a group-karma. Sometimes global interactions can involve us because we are part of a planetary cleansing and awakening. It can be an international contribution of such magnitude that what all of us do have far-reaching effects such as in World War II. I quote from Manna:

Question: What is the explanation of the events encompassing the deaths of six million Jews and others in Europe during World War II? Did these individuals all choose that experience and if so, why?

Answer: These individuals all chose the experience and so did all souls choose the experience who were incarnated at this time on your planet. The reason for this choice was a larger, overall group-consciousness decision from a high understanding of the process of elevating consciousness; that by demonstrating the darkest possible revelation from the unconsciousness, from the darkest place within the Soul, the lesson could be learned once and for all of the potential for destruction of the Soul. In so doing and the lesson being learned, ultimately there would be greater and unlimited freedom to move from this depth of darkness and ignorance, leaving it behind forever, and being free again to look for the higher elevations of God-self.

Within the soul growth throughout all of the eons and eons of time, a multitude of incarnations on your planet, there have been measurable points that stopped completely all consciousness, all time, all movement for a length of time long enough to bring all who witnessed the event to a new level of understanding of their own darkness, their own deprivation, and their greatest fears. In so doing the whole of mass consciousness was elevated by choice. The event of the Jews was not just an event of the Jews and their choice. It was an event of all humanity. It was the choice of all human beings to interact for the completion of this self-awareness as all of humanity became for a moment stopped in time, its own mirror to reflect itself back to itself in monumental dark sincerity.

It was not only the Jews and Nazis who agreed. It was all of humanity who were in bodies at the time on planet Earth who agreed to this experience.

Another interesting aspect is that genetics also is a major factor as our bodies must be created in such a way as to allow the karma to correctly play itself out. Genetic defects have deep and often traumatic effects that give us an opportunity to reap the maximum benefits from first-hand knowledge if we so choose. Physical defects often affect an entire family and relatives, plus close associates.

A wonderful delving into such a lifetime is in the book Child of Eternity by Adriane Rocha and Kristi Jarde; the story of an autistic child who eventually is able to communicate with her mother. In such communication she tells how she caused certain things to occur while she was in her mother’s womb, thereby effectuating her autistic condition and fulfilling her purpose.

I highly recommend this book. This child, obviously an Indigo, is a master teacher as she is opening up the world of autism, even leading us into new avenues of approach in the area of debilitating diseases afflicting children from the time of birth.

We can preplan our lives so that if the choices we make while incarnated actually have shaped us into becoming an entirely different individual than we chose to be, a physical condition can develop within our bodies forcing us to change.

This transpired in the case of a dear friend who was perfectly healthy, had a good job as a mid-level manager, having risen aggressively and purposefully through the ranks of the corporate world and had made it by material standards. Deeply involved in metaphysics, she spent most of her off-the-job time as a wonderful spiritual instructor.

Sadly she struggled to demonstrate the metaphysical principles she taught versus her strong and forceful personality honed to a fine point by the competitive business world. She recognized this, but seemed unable to not rise to the challenge in every instance when she encountered resistance. This was not the gentle, loving person that she was within and desired to be without.

For years she agonized while attempting to balance this dichotomy, almost like she had two distinct personalities: an overly aggressive, efficient and controlling individual in the material world and a spiritually gentle, loving, understanding individual when absorbed in a metaphysical environment. She could not seem to merge the two into a balanced personality; she could not synchronize the male/female duality within herself.

In her later years, without warning a brain tumor manifested. Although this tumor was not cancerous, it was invasive and virulent like cancer and usually fatal. She underwent radical surgery, radiation, and for the next eight months reverted almost to an infantile stage emotionally and mentally, becoming a semi-invalid. The surgery damaged her processing abilities, memory and destroyed any social inhibitions. Forcibly retired from her vocation, she underwent a total personality change, struggled to survive a divorce and had to sell her home.

She feels that she preprogrammed this brain tumor as a trigger to propel her in another direction if she was failing in her original script for this lifetime. I concur with her conclusion and I honor her wisdom to seek the truth of her handicap rather than rest in an unproductive attitude of being a victim of circumstances.

Today she is somewhat restricted, but she has become a much softer, loving personality, and is no longer argumentative because she can’t remember, which amuses her.

I quote further from Manna:

Individuals ask, "Who decides and allocates karma and how it is determined what events should transpire to bring balance under karmic law?" The answer is that the individuals themselves do. However it is a complex system of balance and one way to understand it is to liken it to a game in which each Soul willingly enters into play and is given all of the rules prior to engaging in the play. One of the basic rules is that once the game is set in motion, the Soul may not leave. The Soul must stay within the game until at last it is over. The game is over when the last player has earned all of the moves, all of the goals, all of the fulfillment, and all of the understanding required. Only then can any Soul or other player leave.

There comes into play the gifts of free will and choice, and players without knowledge of the other may move at will. In that movement, they may or may not come into conflict or meeting with another or many others. It is a game that from the outer perception and outer parameters (that which keeps the game together) appears to fit within a pattern. From the perception of the players, seemingly there is no pattern.

As to the intervals between lifetimes on Earth, birth and death are simply doorways that lead humans from their physical/material world into a world that does not have the grosser levels of vibration that bring into manifestation the physical aspects of creation. The human consciousness continues, and in this consciousness between death and rebirth, lifetime to lifetime, there is a continuation of learning, reflecting, and understanding. Those who have been awakened enough by their lifetime experiences may consciously choose their next lifetime experiences.

Before this awakening occurs, it is karma that they have created in other lives that draws them back to their rebirth in such a way and under such conditions that their lives will give them the lessons required to further the growth, enlightenment, and illumination of their Souls’ awareness. Souls spend some time between incarnations in a continual process of learning, reflecting, and deciding upon their next life’s experiences.

As the story goes, in the beginning each Soul became individuated from the One, and began in that individuation process the journey throughout repeated lifetimes in physical bodies and repeated lifetimes without bodies, of learning again and coming to know once again the truth of who and what they are. This process is referred to on Earth in many philosophies, religions, and belief systems as self-awareness, God-enlightenment, self-realization, and becoming God.

There are many phrases and names for this process, but eventually by this procedure each Soul awakens to the point where it no longer remains an individual expression of the One. At that point of understanding it joins again in consciousness with the One, the full Creator, the Power of which there is no full description or knowledge.

Cosmic Law applies to all levels of activity that create karma, but in other ways with larger events that involve many more people, and where there is deliberate intention to harm or deceive, then inevitably karma comes because it is involved in the intentions.

Often mistakes in judgment made in one life span due to inexperience, or lack of maturity or wisdom cannot be rectified under karmic conditions until many lifetimes later due to the fact that the Soul is not ready as in the case of the Samarai warrior and tribal leader, described in Personal Karmic Life Experiences. Perhaps the greatest value of learning what the karmic lessons are from other life readings is to enable you to know what it is you are attempting to overcome or develop in the present life.

From Manna:

In order to bring lifetimes into balance, it is advantageous for humanity to be conscious of the karma with which they are dealing. It will give them immediate awareness when they are involved in the energies of Spirit on the physical plane. This is how the balance is accomplished. Humans bring the physical into their spiritual, and as they bring the spiritual into their physical, they should not see them as separate and apart from one another.

They can be creative and open to expressing their Spirit in the physical realms of their lives and be open to expressing the physical within their spiritual.

It is the intention that is behind the action that decides the karma. Therefore to take action out of a non-truth would create karma, which would considerably involve learning truth in any future existence. Any action that is taken from joy, love, consideration, and compassion as the intention will create only love, joy, peace, and compassion, not only in this life, but in any others that may follow.

Souls can be a pupil and teacher, one to the other. It can be difficult because in one part of the lifetime one Soul is the teacher and then it reverses. There is a flip flop back and forth. The truth is no Soul can save another.

To not act in any manner in order to avoid bad karma in and of itself creates bad karma because there is a wasting of opportunities that have been set up as learning tools. A decision to become bogged down in indecision during any given situation is the equivalent of being stagnant, dead.

We cannot be released from Earth's karmic cycles without full knowledge and understanding of the energies created here that all lead to being suffused in Unconditional Love. At this point we, too, become a Christed or Buddhic one, ready for faster vibrations and more advanced agendas. When we accept this basic premise, we find no conflict anywhere for in the acceptance of Oneness we can see perfection in all that there is. Any conflict we perceive on the lower vibrational frequencies is a perception of our human condition.

Within our own levels of comprehension we have substantiated concepts of goodness and evil by creating images and naming them. All of our known religious and philosophical schools have heroes and villains. It is extremely difficult for us to accept and then acknowledge that we are our own heroes and villains, especially when we are in the midst of extremely painful circumstances, and are suffering the impact of others’ viciousness and cruelty.

The Christed ones, such as Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and others knew this, but in order to raise consciousness to a level to accept these extremely enlightened teachings, first we had to be led into believing in good versus evil rather than concepts of total good. We on Earth continually have struggled with Egos and self-centeredness after we lost our spiritual eye. Yet this was purposeful also for although we were 99% spiritual, we felt not the emotions of love and under the dictates of our Egos, we created dramatizations to poignantly reveal all of the aspects of human love latent within our sentient being.

We need not become overly anxious about karma since it is neither bad nor good. It just is!!