Karmic Debt (Sutras on Longing - Vol 10)

it’s the feeling that something remains undone.

Traditions call it “karmic debt”

we could use that term too…

But people just steal these well-intentioned words and use them shore up their egos - by hating themselves and enjoying the feeling of guilt.

Let’s say it again, it’s not about you.

If you are dwelling in guilt, you are working on a “me project”.  You are making a stronger sense of “me” that doesn’t help you be any happier, and it doesn’t help you serve others.

This may be radical, the notion that you shaming, blaming, or criticizing yourself is not somehow helping others.

Perhaps you were told often enough “to say you’re sorry!” or “you should be ashamed of yourself” that you finally internalized this sentiment.  Perhaps you finally came to believe that somehow by inflicting pain on your own heart, you can save the hearts of others from pain.

But it just doesn’t work that way!

If you don’t heal from the shame that constantly bears you down, you can co-opt any truth into ego-buliding.

But we’re not here to talk about healing. 

We’re not?

No.  Because healing only goes so far.  Healing, by itself, is the same dead-end as any other “Me”-centric aims.

It’s not that if you focus on your self, God or someone is frowning at you.

and it’s also not that this type of healing is useless.

It’s just that eventually you’ll notice that there’s always something else to heal from.

The healing trap is only a trap because we think that one day we can actually, finally be healed.

Upon realizing that the ultimate and final healing is likely not coming, Some of us reconcile our disappointment by saying that “the destination is not important, it’s only the journey that matters”

and this is comforting…. but to some of us, it also feels like giving up.

It’s a subtle self-trick, this one that says, I can’t control anything else, like whether “I finally heal” - but I can control whether I think about the journey, or the destination.

But if we’re honest, we are not in control of our minds either.

We want to think we are in control of our minds, because we need at least one thing that’s not totally random in the world.

If we look at how often our minds fail to act in accord with our long-term wishes, or in alignment with what we know to be true or ethical, if we asses how often the mind can stay on the object of our choice, rather than fluttering off to something else on it’s own, we will realize that the mind is even LESS consistent than something like “healing”.

We like to think that inner things are controllable, even though outer things prove themselves to be fickle and effervescent.  Because we have evidence?  Not really, just because it’s more comfortable (i.e. less terrifying).

Great, well now that you know it’s all hopeless, have a nice day!

Just kidding.  There is hope, it’s just not in any of the places that we usually look for it.  And it has to do with this “karmic debt” thing.

The hope is the nature of your mind.

The nature of your mind is plastic

It is a receiver and projector of impressions

If you meditate on where exactly sensation stops, and perception starts

Things get weird real quick.

because you may find that “you” and the “world” 

Lack distinct boundaries.

And the nature of mind is all wrapped up in this love and compassion business.

Specifically, it is formed of its own habitual tendencies.

Bottom line.  Your own happiness really only comes from the happiness you give away to others.

There’s a type of agency here.  Just not the usual control we all long for.

It’s not that we “give up control” in some sort of haphazard way of life where we don’t care who we hurt, or what the consequences of our actions are.

No. 

We realize that we never made ourselves happy by trying to make ourselves happy

When happiness came, it seemed to come randomly.

We cannot try ourselves into a better condition

But we can, at this time, to the best of our ability, choose to love.  

We can’t even know for sure that we’ll be able to choose it tomorrow, or in an hour.  We can only know whether or not we are choosing it right now.  

You have that much control, and not a single drop more.

And because the nature of mind is that it is cumulative, habitual, reflective,

If we choose to love in this now.  We must receive the ripples of that love flowing back to us.

Truly, no goodness ever goes unrewarded.  We cannot control how exactly things will manifest or reflect back upon us, but we can know this - that feeling ourselves alive as love is the only true cause for feeling ourselves alive as love. 

And this is all the reward we actually need.

We just long to be ourselves.  Our blissfully loving selves.  But in the search for this “self” we get all caught up into trying to reify it into something conveniently solid, comfortingly controllable.

And the world turns dark and uncaring.

And the more of this we have habitually indulged in, the more we will feel weighed down.

Maybe not all the time.  Sometimes we’ll feel joyful.

But when the joy wears off, some nagging uncertainty creeps back in.  Some incompleteness.

this is the somatic manifestation of your ‘karmic debt’.

this debt is nothing other than the years or millennia that you have deprived yourself of the nourishment of being who you are, and doing what you were always meant to do.

It is a debt you can pay in a single instant.  The moment that you are alive as your true nature, you are liberated from all bonds, contract, and interest.  

Karmic debt is a hole with no bottom, but there are infinite resources available.  YOU are an infinite resource.

You cannot hold on to what you really are with the containers you build in your mind.  You have to let go of being small like that.

When you feel into the hearts of all other beings, you are as wide as the universe itself.  At that moment, all deficiencies are filled.  You will not be able to open like this “in the future” any more than you’ve ever done it in the past.  But you can do it right now.  Lets do it.  right now.