Wanting To Be a Karma Yogi

 My Life is my message.

Ghandi

Do you want to be a karma yogi?

I want to make my life my message, regardless of what I accomplish or achieve. Like Ghandi, I want to follow the path of Karma Yoga. 

Karma yoga, according to the yogapedia  is the path of  action, or selfless service toward others. Again we get into this "self-less" conundrum. Ram Dass, in the below linked video, tells us that Karma yoga is doing what you do for others with the intention of doing it for self. It is we who benefit when we help others...but then again..."other" and self do not really exist. 

He also reminds us that we are all just beings in different costumes...sometimes we see ourselves as the apparent "doer" and other times the "apparent" receiver of the doing but we are truly neither of these. We are not what we do, the jobs we have, the roles we play. We are not the actors doing the action or those receiving the action. We can simply witness and observe the action getting done without attempting to own any of it because we are not that. We are the beings, beyond the doing.

Some people would look at Mother Teresa, Dass explains, and see that what she was doing was good and noble.  She, on the other hand, would see it differently...just as something that served her and her "dharma" . Mother Teresa was simply administering to her beloved Christ through the distressing form of the  leopards and that served her.  

We would benefit by approaching our "doing" without attachment to outcome...understanding that Life is the process, not the product. Karma yoga  isn't about the action getting done...it is simply the doing, the serving with "being" in mind. Ram Dass   reminds us that we serve others in order to serve self and  by serving self we serve others. We do so without expecting or needing to get it done.  Each step of this action, in the here and now, is the karma.

Reminded of these words and am not sure who they were from:

It is not what you do that matters but how much of you is in the doing.

We can live this moment fully with all of it present. 

How about a place quiet inside where you can look at it all and say, "yes......there is suffering and there is joy. My dharma is to do this. I am doing it. I am at peace with the universe. It is what it is.  It includes horror and beauty and it is all unfolding and I am part of it.  I am part of it, like the winds, the mountains and the rivers. I am a part of it. And I am at peace."

 And the actions, and every action that catches you is another action to awaken and see how it caught you and to bring you back into a center. Then you are a karma yogi. Then you a karma yogi.  And when a karma yogi, a real yogi meets another yogi it is only itself meeting itself through all the different forms of the dance, of the dialogue between two parts of itself...  

Ram Dass

All is well

Ram Dass/Be Here and Now Network (n.d.) Ram Dass: Getting Free With Karma Yoga,Part 1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEHx5B0fuPc

Yogapedia ( Aug, 2020) What is Karma Yoga? https://www.yogapedia.com/definition/5020/karma-yoga