Karmic Path

If you do what you've always done, you'll always get the same results. This is a conversation about karma and karmic path. We all face difficulty and challenges in our lives and we all deal with it in different ways. But is everything in our life already pre-determined or can we change our path? Right now some of us may feel like "why do bad things always happen to me?" We may constantly feel like we're losing battle after battle and facing hardship after hardship. Karma is the belief that our actions determine our reaction. Things that we put into the world, in this life or past lives, always have a reaction.

Spiritual people understand karma like a train. It's a train that we set in motion, sometimes over many life times, and so we set this train with our actions and thoughts. We push this train and we direct it. How ever strong we put it in motion, it'll go in that direction. Now, if we want to change this path we find ourselves in, we need to put in a stronger opposite amount of force to impact that train. We can do this by responding to life and situations in a positive, proactive thought and conscious decision. We have the freedom and the choices to do the right thing and treat people kindly. This alone cannot change our entire karma, but it is a good way to help put in motion a change. We must be willing to do it fro our heart and receive nothing in return. Now if we don't give enough energy and time and patience to change our karma and to allow positive and light cultivation, we're going to allow that karma right back into our lives and fall into old habits.

If we have a karmic tendency to attract negative people into our lives and commit negative actions, we will need to put the opposite amount of energy to change our karmic direction. Every time we find ourselves in a situation, if we keep going back to the same people, the same solutions and actions, we're going to end up in the same spot. Find people who help feed you positivity. They uplift you. Find people who want to see you succeed and make better choices for yourself. They can help you change your karmic direction. There's a quote that says, "Your sick mind is not going to get you out of what put you there in the first place."

Now what about past mistakes? We can't go back and change them, so how do we fix our karma. Karma isn't about going back and changing things that have happened. It's about learning from them. Seeing how it affected others and caused them hurt or pain. Karma teaches us that we can't go back and change what we did or what we said to someone. We can't go back and change a decision. But we can take accountability. We can make better choices. We can work on our patience. We can choose to take the path that causes less harm to people. Changing our future is possible and it starts with what we can do to change right now, today. And just because we apologize for our wrong doing or for hurting others, it does not mean we change our karma. It does not mean things will suddenly be ok. Karma teaches us that what we did, we have to take accountability for it. We can't ask for forgiveness and all is forgiven. But in the process, we should reflect on who we are and what we have done in our past. We cannot change our reflection in the mirror but we can change the way we see and view ourselves. Now, this sounds all fine and dandy in words. So, how do we forgive ourselves to help impact our karma. Lots of times when we haven't forgiven ourselves we still have the same mindset, the same attitudes towards life and people. And so we become trapped in our own victimization and the inability to move forward. We once again blame others. We torture ourselves, our kids, and people around us. So, start with making peace, you do that by accepting everything that has happened and no longer allowing it to control how you see the world, how you live your life, and strip the past away of its power and grip over you. The past does not belong in the present, so stop giving it power.

This brings us to my next point. Lesson your burden. Do not carry with you so much guilt and self-victimization. This leads to self sabotage and destruction. Everyday, what you want to do is burn less and less fuel into your fire. Take away all the ego, the anger, expectations, frustration, and just all the negativity little by little. Realize that you're not living anyone else's expectation. You are not anyone's failure or success. You get to claim your life as yours and start by stripping away the negativity. It helps burn out the motion of your already set karmic path. Shed that and view the past as something that is unchanging. View life as a possibility everyday to change how you want tomorrow to be. When you can forgive the things that you have done and the things that others have done to you, you'll be content with what the present is. Forgiving it doesn't mean forgetting about it. It just means you no longer allow it to fester and infest your mind. Your karma isn't experienced by anyone else but you.

We see difficulty and challenges in two ways. One is a negative way. A problematic way. We succumb to being a victim which is the easy way. The other way is seeing difficulty and challenges as a way to improve our life and our mind or the opportunity way. We start to bring understanding of how challenging things can help make us better people. Remember, karma connects us to every single person we meet, even the people we pass by at the grocery store. We accept our mistakes and also learn and move forward with them. We don't leave behind our mistakes, because we'll repeat the same things if we do. Moving with it allows us to set a new karmic path for us and it's not an easy thing to come to. When facing challenging times or doubt and struggle, we can do what we have always done. Quit. Complain. Cheat. Put others down. Or, we can take the hard path and go through it. Change our mindset, change how we see through it, and we change our karma.

But what about things that happen to us out of our control? Like a sickness? When we are go through something like a terminal illness, chronic illness, an accident, trauma... we get angry. It's ok. No one gets to tell you how you should feel. It's a natural reaction to bad things that happen to us. But what does anger really do for us if we hold onto it? We are rightful to experience it and show it, but to hold on to it? It creates negativity, negative thoughts, which most often lead to negative actions and then negative karma. We get angry that we have cancer. As you should because cancer is an evil. Angry that we lost someone we love. Angry that we got into a horrible accident and lose our ability to walk. Anger is a natural reaction to things that cause us fear. We're afraid to die. We're afraid that from an accident, we'll have no money to pay the bills. We're afraid to leave behind our partner or our family. Holding on to the anger for long periods of time effects no one but ourselves. It effects our mindset..the way we see and view life. Then what happens is you carry this anger, you hurt others, you're bitter, and you lose sight of the wonderful life that came before you anger or your fear. You then create again the same karmic path from perhaps many life times ago. You get to view this moment in your life as a chance to change the way you see life, that's something most people will never get to. You have an option to view your sickness as purposeful, as one of the greatest lessons in life that anyone will experience. Because if we don't believe that, if we don't find a lesson from any of this, life just isn't worth living. This can be one of the most powerful moments you've ever felt, mentally and spiritually. Then, offer that to the people you love. Give out that energy. Radiate positivity and hope. Use your voice. Believe it or not, you can heal a lot of people through your worst moments if you make it your best moments. That is how we can overcome our karmic path.

Every single person we meet or have a relationship with is part of our karma somehow, someway or another. But they are also on their own karmic path. You know, sometimes it's hard to understand why we may lose a child or a spouse. We have to remember that they were on their own journey as well, whatever that journey may be. And if we can remember to appreciate every day for what it is and to make the best of things despite our situations in life. We may never know why someone loses their life to an illness or in a tragic situation... We'll never know why a parent loses their child, for what evil reason? We will lose our mind trying to understand the universe in justifying that. The best we can do is to live and go on with our experiences. To take away something that isn't just pain from their loss. This puts healing into our karmic path and through the loss of our loved ones we are able to heal and appreciate life in a way that we were not able to before.

-tfl Hmong Shaman