Shackles or Bangles?

 So to the true yogi, there is only one life.Yesterday you may be dressed in one way, and today you may be dressed in another.  Life, however, stays unchanged. 

Sadhguru, page 79-80 

I so want to understand karma and what is happening in my puny little version of Life. Sometimes I want to understand it because I see myself as a Yogi on a Soul and Self seeking mission.  Understanding karma, then, will help to liberate me from me, so I can help liberate the world. Other times I want to understand it because I see myself as a little self who is suffering and I want to get beyond it.  I feel, in this 'selfish' case, that understanding karma will help "me" to fix all that is broken in "me" and around "me" so it doesn't suck quite so much for this "me". Sigh.  There I am with these great leaps forward into Self and there I am with all the slipping backward into self...as the soul sits back and watches. For now...my quest to understand karma better is based on  motivation belonging to all parts of this "I am". 

Dressed in Shackles or Bangles?

I had somewhat of a vision or idea pop up in my head while I was meditating this morning. ( It was obviously not the greatest and deepest of practices...my mind was busy lol).I was thinking about  karma in terms of how it relates to self-deprecation/ the trampling down and the beating up of the little me. We are to get rid of the "me" in order to be free of karma but yet we have to be careful how we treat this "me" or we will create even more karma.  So in this vision I see two wrists...one dirty and bloody in rusty heavy shackles and one clean and perfect with beautiful golden bangles on it. 

WTFork crazy lady?

 I see certain things as I look deeply into this. It goes a little like this ( Brace yourself.  This is going to be a long one.): 

The Bloody Wrists and Rusty Shackles of the Suffering Loop

 We may be dressed in shackles if we are imprisoned by a suffering mind set. If, for whatever reason I find my 'self' surrounded constantly by hardship, poverty, illness, and mostly the past or present external conditioning  implying "my" unworthiness and my deservedness of such suffering, I may have stored or be storing huge amounts of memory. I may have stored it all under a big file that says, "Core Beliefs".  A "this is what I deserve.  I am not worthy of more",  may be my biggest core belief.  Most of these core beliefs are stored in the subconscious away from our conscious awareness. They constantly get triggered by circumstances in the outside world without us knowing why. With triggering of this belief, I may begin beating the "me" up on a regular basis ...talking down to it, leading to karmic effects. These karmic effects, in a sense, would be the unconscious seeking to fulfill a "self fulfilling prophecy".  "This is what I deserve, so this is what I will seek to get." (Even if it is unconscious compulsion...and most karma is generated by the unconscious).What I think will be 'negative' and deprecating; what I say to self will impact or reflect what I say to others; and what I 'do" for others will have a negative impact.  I may act or speak  too aggressively to compensate for my own lack of perceived power or I may be too passive, not offering others enough. This will accumulate 'negative' karma. It will affect my thinking and feeling, obviously.  Negative thoughts and low spectrum emotions lead to experiences of  anger, blame, judgment, anxiety, fear, insecurity, hopelessness, and despair. There I am chained to some dungeon wall, liking that which may make it better and disliking that which might make it worse as I look out there  for ways to ease this suffering. I find myself struggling, striving, grabbing, clinging, and pushing away. 

Obviously...this is accumulating negative karma. I am not alone in doing this am I? Many of us go through Life as I observe myself doing. That karmic effect is visible in the lives we are living. The more we think and feel like this...the more "depressed" and "fearful" and/or "angry" we become as an effect. In self-deprecation, energy is affected in an obvious way as well.  We feel low, down, depressed, stuck in mud, spinning tires ...getting nowhere...exhausted etc. This affects the physical body as well as the mind, leading to dis-ease. We will notice, then, that what is happening around us seems to be getting more and more negative. We do not have the energy to do anything about it, it seems. Life for a sick body and sick mind is not easy.  One can not work enough to maintain a stable income, for example.  That adds to the negative experience of external circumstances and then to more karmic accumulation and effect. We act out. Others react to our words and behaviours...we see that as more validation for our unworthiness...we react, in turn, with even more negativity. Relationships break down, leading to a strengthening of the belief, more isolation and more of these negative emotions...more karmic accumulation and effect. It is a vicious cycle. I often long to be the wrist with the golden bangles.

Where did the loop begin?

It is not clear where the karmic cycle of suffering begins to the untrained eye, is it?  Did it begin with the external events...the past history, the life circumstances the person was born into? Did it begin in the body...something genetic or biological? Did it begin with the behavioural choices made by the individual self or Soul even ( before incarnation)?  Did it begin with the others involved in the person's story...saying or doing the things they did? Did it begin in the five senses of the person receiving the data or the intellectual mind that interprets that data? It looks like just one big continuous loop  of perpetuating causes and effects when one looks at someone caught up in suffering.  So, though we have a choice and it is our responsibility to change our karmic trajectory, it makes it hard to understand what part of the cycle we need to work on first. We can be so entangled in it we cannot see the way out of karma and suffering. But we likely want out, if that is the case. How do we remove these rusty shackles? It is not about fixing one part of the cycle.  It is about letting go of all of it. We are told enlightenment, which involves letting go of the "me",  is the way to go. 

So why are we not all all seeking enlightenment? 

Seeing Bangles Instead of Shackles

Some days, some lives,  we are dressed in the bangles of "me" satisfaction. Not everyone tramples down the self....some revere it, at least part of the time. Though I think self-deprecation and this feeling of "not being enough" is more than prevalent in the human mind, and though I see so many people around me suffering becasue of it, I do know there are some people out there who are happily entrenched into what seems like a wonderfully fulfilling and blessed period of their life or lifetimes...where all ( or most ) of "me's" needs, wants and wishes are being met. It seems that karma is on their side, like they are not accumulating any karma as they go about focusing on "me" and satisfactorily getting what it needs. Why would anyone want to let go of that? Though the effort required  for "me" to feel good seems  less in comparison to what is required of the shackle wearing friend, the bangle wearer is still struggling and striving, grabbing, clinging, and pushing away. They are still selectively choosing what they will take in from life and what they won't. They are still serving the me. They don't want to be enlightened, to give up this happy satisfied me because they don't want things to change. They don't see themselves as imprisoned but Soul knows they are. 

The human equation was always meant to be like this: to move from being to doing to having. This means we were never meant to act in order to be fulfilled. Fulfillment was seen as an inner condition. It could not be pursued externally. ...For most people, however, this simple equation is reversed.  ...They act in order to have; they have in order to be. page 81-82

Even for the person who suffers a lot...there may be moments when things seem to work out for whatever reason...something gives somewhere along the negative cause and effect circle and some light shines in. The shackles, though they may never appear to be golden bangles, seem a little less oppressive. When that happens the person may be more inclined to believe that all their hard work of struggling, straining, reaching, clinging and pushing away...was the cause of this light coming in. They  may be more apt to keep repeating that compulsive mental, physical and energetic action which they erroneously believe was ending their suffering but  which in truth  is producing the negative karma. 

Both Imprisoned

Regardless, if we are dressed in  shackles or  bangles...the thing is both are signs of our karmic imprisonment. Both the shackle and the bangle represent the karmic loop that hold us down.  One may seem more attractive than the other but both are tethered to this idea of a "me" that  creates karma. One is a suffering "me" and one is a " material -world- satisfied -for- now -me" but both are "all about me".  Both are accumulating karma.  The only real way to be free of the karmic loop is to break the cycle...open the shackle, cut open the bangle, and let the  "me" clatter down onto the floor.  Until we are ready to raise the Self with Soul...to be who we really are beneath this idea of self we adhere to, and serve...we are not really free. 

The karmic trap is always in the choosing.  Choice is the  great human gift: freedom is the great human possibility. However, instead of choosing inclusively, most humans choose selectively. Most choose on the basis of compulsive likes and dislikes, on the basis of attraction and aversion. But when your involvement is absolute-that is, inclusive- you are not operating out of past memory. That means there is no compulsion, no consequence, no entanglement, no choice, no friend, no foe .pg 80

That might not make a lick of sense right now to anyone, including me lol but that is what came out.

All is well. 

Sadhguru ( 2021) Karma: A Yogi's Guide to Crafting Your Destiny.  New York: Harmony Books