Karma Isn’t What We Think It Is – What Is it?

Article Highlights:

• What’s karma, really?
• Religious hangover
• Easy way to resolve it

You can read about my newest session here. Or scroll to the end of this article for a brief description of all the sessions I offer.

What is karma? We bandy the word about all the time, and if we stop to really hear what we’re saying we might notice it often has a tone of justice, judgment, retribution, repayment. I think it might be time to question that. What IS karma?

Do we even know what we’re talking about? Or have old programs and ideas, borrowed from here and there over time, created a less conscious glop of beliefs that we are parroting in an uninformed way?

When we say karma sometimes we are joking or using it in a light context. Good parking karma, for instance. But when we use it in a more serious or real application it’s often in the context of energy causing us problems in the present that comes from wrong-doing in the past. Karmic debt. A preposterous idea, if you ask me.

God=Love and when has the loving god ever worked in terms of debt and punishment? Never. That idea comes right out of the human minds of every ashram we’ve know. It comes through a system of caste and prejudice. And it also has roots in every monastery, nunnery, and punitive hell-fire and punishment religious system we’ve experienced through time. Including now. And it’s wrong. It carries the wrong tone and emphasis.

I always had an unusual inner spiritual life, but my outer expression was religious when younger. In the early 1980’s, however – having recently left my childhood religion and set foot on a spiritual-not-religious path – I asked Wisdom, “What is this karma thing I keep reading about?” A simple answer was given.

Karma is unresolved intensities of feelings and experiences.

It’s instructive just how simple that answer is. One way to recognize the truth of core spiritual principles is to look for simplicity. Complexity is the tendency of human minds. Rules, punishments, long philosophical arguments about definition – these are the human ideas grafted onto core Wisdom. In this instance, we have judgment and punishment grafted onto the core principle of karma.

Later, I asked for more about karma and was given the following:

Karma involves unresolved intensities moving toward balance.

Another simple concept was added to my understanding. At the basis of things is the fact that life is always moving toward balance. Whether at the most cosmic and purely energetic level or at the level of human behavior. That’s the nature of all creation. So karma is about coming into balance. It’s not about punishment, it’s about balance.

Some years later I asked Wisdom to elaborate on karma a bit. Though the reply contained a few added words, the answer was still simple.

Karma is impressions of experience that did not process freely.

To the first two ideas, is added the thought that karma is unprocessed impressions of experience. One’s own impressions or the impressions of others. Very interesting. Karma isn’t the acts or the experiences themselves… but the impressions one carries forward regarding an experience, event or act… those carried on in a way that prevented things from processing freely.

Game changer. Really. Don’t you think? What it points to is that one might experience something truly intense but what makes it karmic is that it didn’t process freely. Not that it happened, but that it didn’t process freely. It points to healing in way we can all immediately recognized in the workings of our own lives.

Intense experiences happen in the flow of life’s river. And the river flows on carrying that experience downstream. Perceptions of that experience are things we pluck out of the river to carry with us instead of letting them go on downstream freely. They can become burdensome and heavy in our backpacks, interfering with life. But in the river they flow beyond us.

One of the first things to note here is that karma isn’t weights and measures. It’s not wrong-doing and right-setting. Not punishment and justice. It’s just unprocessed energy… specifically unprocessed impressions of what something was or should have been. And it’s showing up for resolution, to bring balance. Things we chose to pluck out of the river to keep in our possession. That’s what karma is and how its accumulated.

So when we think, “wow, that person (or I) must have really done something bad because look at what’s happening now as karmic repayment,” we are grafting old religious ideas onto a more pure spiritual energetic principle.

We would be a lot more accurate (to say nothing of compassionate) to say “There is something trying to come back to balance.” Or, “That looks like an opportunity to process something intense so it can freely flow now. We could send a prayer into that, or a kind word.

It completely removes those old religious hangovers about deserving what is happening. It frees us from feeling we did something wrong, or that someone else must have. It frees us from the hopeless task of repairing a past that is gone. We can just let the held energy begin to move, the energy that lingered for lack of free processing. It can complete now.

Most important, it frees us from the story. The story isn’t the problem. It’s my lingering perceptions about the story. And they are causing energy to be held up rather than processing freely. I can pinpoint and understand those perceptions and let them flow, process and release.

I can process them now so they become part of the river’s flow or I can pluck them up and carry them forward. Becoming aware of them and releasing them to the river is what lets them complete and not become karmic.

Instead of saying, “I’m trying to resolve karma for something I did or was done to me in this or a past life,” we can simplify this greatly. We can say, “I’m facing an opportunity to come back into balance by letting past impressions now process freely.”

An interesting question we seldom ask during any difficulty (intensity) we are currently experiencing is, “How am I creating karma right now?” We could also ask, “How do I avoid creating karmic residue from this challenging experience?” The answer is simple: 1) I can recognize my perceptions of the experience as perceptions only. And 2) I can let them, or help them, process freely and remain in the flow. How? Energy work, ceremony, self-inquiry are all means. But here’s a great tip: forgiveness is one of the easiest ways.

I could add to my own musing here, of course, but yours will be more important to your own understanding of karma in your life. So I’ll just leave you with the simple basics.

Karma is unresolved intensities of feelings and experiences.
Karma involves unresolved intensities moving toward balance.
Karma is impressions of experience that did not process freely.

I’m sending you much love today,
~ X💚Mayet