Transcending Karma
Karma is no more complicated that cause and effect.
But you see, if you’re all wrapped up in the causes and the effects, you either get dragged down by the ball-and-chain of the past, or uprooted by the ephemerality of the future. In either case, you are dancing with fictions.
The miraculous blessing bestowed by real love is that it immediately halts your seeking. Whenever we’re worried about our past or future lives, whenever we are desperately trying to manage our relationships so that they will somehow work out for the best, we’re all wrapped up in stories and self-concerns, which keep us from the ability to open.
It’s not a bad idea to understand how cause and effect works. I mean, how can you really love someone if everything you do is random, accidental, unskillful? It’s not a matter of “getting into the present moment” where you’re sort of an empty-headed-trance-zombi - how could that be compassionate? How is that an integration or a transcendence? I thought we agreed to stop trying to hide. Sinking into unconsciousness is definitely a form of hiding, no matter whether you call it the “present moment”, or “trans-karma”, or anything else.
But if you take caring as a gateway to presence, you’ve slipped the door-guard of unconsciousness. Somehow there is a “present moment” center of perspective that does not deny the past and future, but includes and transcends them. Somehow you are aware of the impact of your actions, of the deep meaningfulness of your every thought and word, but you are not tied down and concretized by them. Who you are becomes a being of vast awareness, that can somehow sense the most caring way to behave. You are like a master baseball player, who can hit better when he doesn’t analyze it, but lets go and just swings on through.
They say that for one who has opened their heart to its full potential, the workings of karma are revealed all on their own. At that time it’s not a matter of thinking about it, thinking would be like a human devolving to a pre-human species. If you’ve reached the point of embodied loving-kindness, you’re done reaching, you are ready to have something reach through you.
It is said that we must be the eyes and hands of the Divine in this world. Divinity is totally beyond form, because it is the total knowledge of the implicit unity of all things and beings. You and I are not like this. We are not like this and that’s not a problem. Not only is it not a problem, it is in fact ART, it is SEX, it is BEAUTY.
Some of us don’t like so much to hear this next part, but it is only the yearning of divinity to know herself that causes all the pain in the world, and it is this same yearning that causes all the bliss. Somewhere in the very centre of these extremes is a kind of richness. Somewhere in that undefined and undefinable centre-point, is God-AS-Form, dancing with herself as “other”.
It is a paradox.
You have two choices, on being confronted by this paradox. One is to reject it, because it doesn’t quite fit into the logical mind-box that comforts you. The other is to transcend conventional logic, and peer directly into a higher-order of reality.
This is not nearly as mystic-unattainable as it sounds. Some people have had a child. Later, they chalk the ecstasy up to some endorphine-rush made by “nature” to get you to bond with the baby. The mystic knows, though, that this is just a way of “talking yourself down” after seeing God face to face.
The old Book says that no one can see the face of God and live. Meaning that your concepts of yourself have got to perish.
But sometimes we can handle it by just forgetting who we saw, going a little unconscious. We can faint a little bit, and then the radical change doesn’t have to take place. “What happened? Did I black out?”
When a parent first falls in love with their child, they see Reality for a split second. They know that they are not “different beings” with “me” over here, and “them” over there. That’s ME over there! In fact, that being is MORE IMPORTANT than this one I’ve been calling “me” for so long.
This knowing is not very broad, and not necessarily enduring, but it is a taste of the pure nectar of REALITY, which completely goes beyond what one can think oneself into with just the mind.
Love is made of this paradox, but it doesn’t stop at a single glimpse of reality. It keeps growing and taking more and more of Life into it’s care. In any single instant it is like love asks not only “how can I best serve this being in front of me” (Knowing them as my own other face, my very own self arising as “other”), but also, “how can I contribute to the greatest well being for as many of my other selves as possible?”, and even “what is my most authentic gift right now?”
Trying to answer these questions with the rational mind takes so long that by the time the decision is made, it is already the wrong one. it would be like a martial arts master who paused to think about what defense might work in the midst of receiving a barrage of punches and kicks. By the time it’s been thought, it’s no longer appropriate.
Fortunately, the heart can do all these calculations as quantum speed - so long as we have practiced getting out of the way.
It’s not that we forget about karma, cause and effect: “oh, that was a stupid idea believing in that, I was so childish”. More, it is that we have learned enough of it that now the process is one of unlearning. Getting out of love’s way. It’s not a process of adding rules onto oneself
Rules can become like chains, creating a comforting feeling of weight that let’s you know “you” are still there.
Rather than chains, you can practice with the rules to get accustomed to the Reality toward which they point. Once you see that Reality, it’s just a matter of making yourself more and more transparent to it. A child who has internalized the feeling of comfort and security does not need to drag a special blanket around anymore.
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