You can't escape from a prison until you recognize you are in one. People who have chosen to live within the limits of their old beliefs continue to have the same experiences. It takes effort and commitment to break old patterns.
Bob Proctor
What shapes our volition(will and intention) and therefore our karma (how we approach Life and how Life approaches us)? I believe the key factor that determines how we live is our belief.
Belief?
Our ideologies, our conditioning, our views all stem from core belief's. What we have learned and stored in our psyches to create this idea of "me", can often be traced back to a few core beliefs. These beliefs are often stored so deeply into our subconscious we may not even be consciously aware they are there, yet they form the foundation for most of our samskaras, our habit tendencies, our dislikes and likes, our volition, our response or reaction to life circumstances and our karma.
Identification
The thing that makes these beliefs so tenacious and powerful is our identification with their message. For example, if I, for whatever reason have come to believe that I was "bad" and deserving of punishment as a child, I will likely identify as a "bad person" as an adult. It will become who I am at the deepest "personal" level. The habit tendency to get lost in destructive thinking and acting may become strong as I live out a self fulfilling prophecy from within. A "bad person" is who I will become in my psyche's view of self. I will feel, think and act as a "bad person". Life will then continue to provide evidence that I am a "bad person" : being told such by different people, labelled as such by society, punished as such etc... Depending on how deeply conditioned this idea is, even if I clean up my exterior self ...the self I show to others...inside, I will still feel and think like a "bad person". I may truly believe that I do not deserve other people's trust or confidence, that I am going to hurt etc. I may punish myself with self destructive behaviours. Regardless, I will endure the karmic consequence of suffering.
Separate Individual?
Now, this core belief that I am a "bad person" stems from an even bigger and more deeply ingrained belief that "I am a person".
Huh?
This collectively ingrained belief that we are separate individuals is the source of our volition, according to Sadhguru in, Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny.
...it is your identification with your individuality that determines your volition....If you were not identified with this sense of separateness, you would not be accumulating karma. Page 31
Why is that belief such a problem for us? Well as long as we see ourselves as seperate little entities we engage with the world selectively rather than exclusively. Instead of embracing all that is, as it is, we select what and whom we let into our experience and what we don't. We get consumed by likes and dislikes. It is the identification with our desires that cause our problems with karma. We are either in hot pursuit of them or denying them.
The problem is that people have forgotten how to be inclusively involved with life. Since there involvement is selective, they fall into the trap of entanglement. They either engage with life selectively, on the basis of their likes or dislikes, or opt for life-sapping philosophies of denial or detachment. In both cases, karma only multiplies. Page 33
(Sadhguru has a lot to say about the way we "misconstrued" the idea of desirelessness....thinking it means to renounce all desire which he says is impossible to do as a human, without accumulating even more karma.)
The thing is, in regard to belief, is that we are not what we think we are. We are so much more. We do not have to suffer the karmic consequences of getting tangled up in these limiting beliefs that keep us from knowing who we are. We have a choice. We can become more aware of the mess we have inside us and see how it is effecting us karmically. Karma is our doing! We can examine what types of beliefs we are storing and we can do our best to dismantle them as we release our samskaras and open up fully to Life. With conscious awareness we can be free of suffering.
your karma cannot turn into suffering without your cooperation. Once you are aware, there is an end to suffering page 42
All is well!
Sadhguru ( 2021) Karma: a Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny. New York: Harmony Books
No comments:
Post a Comment