Karma and Reincarnation
How much more wonderful would this world be if everyone acted "as if" Karma were true. Seems to me we would be a lot closer to Heaven on Earth.
I take the position that I will be held responsible for every decision, every action I take ... if not in this life then in the next (or the life after the next). When I act this way, then I do my best to clear my conscience and I walk with a lightness and a freedom of spirit that is quite intoxicating.... quite Joyous. I tend to be a "peas first" kind of guy. If I have some dues to pay or some less than desirable activity to perform, then I often try to get the unpleasantness out of the way so I can delight in what follows next.
The 12 Step program includes:
- Make a searching and fearless moral inventory
- Admit to myself, my God, and another human being, the exact nature of my wrongs.
- Became willing to have God remove all defects of character
- Humbly ask God to remove all defects of character
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continue to take personal inventory and when I was wrong, promptly admitted it
Note that, rather than requiring adherence to a specific definition of God, 12 Step practitioners talk about a God of their personal understanding. ie. God is as I understand God to be.
The idea of reincarnation has also been quite useful to me. For me, reincarnation is like believing in eternal life. My body wears out but my Spirit lives on. If I don't learn my lesson(s) this time then I get to come around again and again! Being a "peas first" kind of guy, I like to work my lessons early.
I remember so well, on my 40th birthday, sitting on the couch in our recreation room. Our circumstances were at an all-time low. I was so downtrodden that I couldn't sleep at night. More accurately, I didn't want to go to bed because I didn't want the day to end ... I had somehow made it through the day but I had no idea how I would get through tomorrow. I was sitting there in quiet desperation thinking about the fact that I was through an estimated 1/2 of my life and it was making no sense to me to invest anymore in my abilities because my life was (statistically) almost over (at the time, the expected age of a male was about 74 yrs).
I was sitting there pondering my dilemma, a question occurred to me: "What if I were going to live longer than the average 74 yrs.? What if I lived, in one form or another, forever?" In an instant, I somehow changed my belief in how long I was going to live. I started to make meaningful investments in my professional training. It wasn't easy. It certainly wasn't pretty. But I did extremely well at my new career for many years thereafter.
If nothing else, the concept of reincarnation, helped me to regain personal motivation to carry on and fight the good fight.
Thank you God for empowering concepts.
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