Whilst at a dinner party, an acquaintance of ours confided that she was in the midst of a major relationship meltdown that was so harrowing that, for sure, it had to be due to bad karma.
She asked what to do about it.
I didn't reply as the question was not directed to me and I have long made it a personal principle to not jump off my stool, eager to soothe our friends' woes by guiding them to an understanding of 'why' things happen as they do.
Attempts to connect karma, soul, heart-energy and energy field to heartache, grief, illness, setbacks as well as to 'lucky' breaks, good news and momentary lulls in our lives just don't work.
Although the deconstruction of a situation from a spiritual angle is meant to explain differently what needs to be understood - as well as empower - it usually falls on fallow ground and annoys more than placates.
What glimmer of understanding might be cast along with a necessary shift of perception from within are mostly overtly or covertly dismissed as drivel leading to what is unattainable and I understand why it is so.
It is far easier to cling to the notion of random bad luck punctuated by occasional 'deserved' breaks than to accept we have been given the tool of free will and are meant to use it.
Though our inherited karma compounded by the karma we have created all by ourselves in this lifetimehave us positioned over a blueprint of our life as it will unfold, we do have the means to alter this blueprint to a degree.
We do have the power to influence outcomes for the better and, of course, for the worse.
We have in us the power to heal or at least improve the quality of all the relationships we have with others as well as the power to capsize them by defaulting to the thoughts and behaviors that come naturally to us from the low end of our ego.
We have the ability to keep ourselves healthier as well as the ability to invite chronic or debilitating illnesses into our body by defaulting to impulses that are triggered in the low end of our ego - the end we embrace each time we shrug and say, "There's nothing I can do about it.
This is who I am.
This is what I need.
It is my right to expect this and to demand that - and if you loved me - or cared for me - or respected me - you would understand that.
" The subtext being, "You have to indulge me.
" Be that as it may, Karma is encoded in our energy field a.
k.
a.
our aura.
Karma is neither good nor bad - it just is.
If the word 'karma' seems too exotic, it can be called 'tests' or 'challenges' or 'rewards' or 'breakthroughs' or 'great news' or 'what a great surprise!' Karma doesn't mind what we call it, as long as we give more than a passing nod to the notion that, indeed, ALL happens for a reason.
Whilst it comes to challenges that push our buttons, test our understanding and our generosity of spirit, we tackle the heavens with a flurry of rhetorical questions: 'Why is this happening to ME! What have I ever done to deserve THIS?' Conversely, we never ask 'Why ME? while our body keeps performing well, day after day, in spite of all we put it through.
We seldom ask earnestly, 'What have I done to deserve this?' when a momentary burst of happiness flashes through our day.
Basically, bitter or sweet, all our moments only amount to titbits that manifest in our days for reasons we will never know.
That much will always be true.
BUT because, good or bad, they are sent to us for a reason - that much will also always be true - what we need to do is accept the unpleasant moments just as easily as we accept the lovely breakthroughs, the nice surprises and the warm happy moments that just happen to come our way.
Regardless of their metaphoric size and color, ALL moments, every situation, happen to us for a reason and the reason simply is that we need to ACTIVELY, energetically, accept the challenging moments for what they are i.
e.
tests/challenges of our spiritual mettle.
The painful part - or should I say the mature reaction - is to actively accept the bitter as the sweet, knowing that we have been instrumental [through our words, our actions and our emotional energy] in having these incidents pop up hard and sharp on what would otherwise have remained the faint sort of blueprint imprinted over this, our life, as a karmic tattoo.
In short, just as the architect defines the house of our dreams, we are the ones who choose the furniture, where to put it and how we live inside the walls of this once dreamed home.
As a good friend of mine likes to remind me, it is a mistake to think that our purpose in this lifetime is simply to strive as hard as we can to feel 'free' and 'happy' by hook or by crook, regardless of the fallout.
In fact, wouldn't it be a great waste of evolutionary engineering if the 4.
55 billion years of cosmic and planetary shifts, cataclysmic climate changes, the evolution of fauna, flora and humans alike if, from era to era, the human race was simply intended to generate contentment out of materialism while expressing its longing for a loftier connection to the soul by dotting 'spired' edifices and spire-like architecture all over the planet? How could the millennia of human-made turmoil have been made possible only to make mankind 'happy' in a perpetual Garden of Eden gone wrong but surrounded by all we need for our physical comfort? Like, why would cosmic energy/gods have created a planetary environment in which beings of light [not apes] would develop a skeleton, be given a soul, acquire karma and lack for nothing as long as they maintained a close link to their soul? After all, if our early ancestors had water and sun and wind and fire, the ability to shelter from the elements and a myriad of animals whose intended purpose was to sustain them - as well as the built-in ability to love and plenty of people to love - what could they possibly have lacked back then? What are 'we' lacking now?