It is our destiny to go beyond karma by being the receptacle for presence....
Eckhart Tolle
I appreciate Eckhart Tolle's take on karma and karmic accumulation. It seems to blend in with the understanding I have been gaining about it. Karma, according to him, is the unconscious conditioning that runs your life. ...Karmic meaning unconscious patterns that you usually identify with and that take you over completely.
What is unconscious conditioning and where does it come from?
Environment
Well, we are obviously conditioned by our environments and how we grew up, right? We are conditioned to perceive, believe, receive and deceive by our parents who were conditioned by the way they grew up, by the communities we are born into with their histories, traditions, cultures and by geography ( what part of the globe we ended up on) . We are conditioned by our social systems, our religions, and our educational institutions. We are conditioned by the people around us: what they say to us, what they do to us etc. We are conditioned by the external events we encounter along the way in this lifetime.
What about this notion that karma is also carried over from our ancestors or our own previous lives?
Ancestors
Hmm! We are probably aware to some extent at least of the genetic loads we carry from our ancestors. I. for example, come from a long line of Celts...I therefore carry the genetic transcription on my DNA that makes my eyes blue. I have inherited my grandfather's and my father's heart condition, the Dupuytren's gene that many of my ancestors have had. I also inherited certain traits stereotypically known to be a part of my Celtic ancestry. I carry a foot tapping love for certain music in me, a sense of humour, a tendency to procrastinate, the love of words (there is a long line of writers in that ancestry) and a bit of a temper ( which I have learned to diminish greatly with my practice lol). Why wouldn't I then carry some of their memories? Like the fear of going hungry, a fear of being marginalized and persecuted...and a certain resentment towards authority. I will likely carry all the "wrong-doings" of my ancestors which in their traditions would have been called "sins", as well. What have my ancestors done in Ireland or here based on their fear reactions? What part did my ancestors have to play in the persecution of others like our First nations people when they settled here? That is all in me...among a million other things I inherited. We do inherit a lot of conditioning/karma from our ancestors whether we like to believe we do or not!
Past Lives?
Whether you believe in reincarnation or not, Tolle reminds us that reincarnation is simply about being incarnated again and again back into the world of form. Sure that can mean from one physical body to the next but we are also constantly reincarnating into the world of form when we slip back into this conscious identification with unconsciousness so many times a day in this lifetime...when we slip out of the presence we are and back into the "me" of the form world as we tend to do so often. I also believe I was born into the life situation I was born into for a reason...something before this lifetime set the conditions for my experience here. So regardless of the truth of reincarnation, some of the conditioning in this being that I am , I believe, was set before I even took my first breath.
What we do with the Conditioning and Reactivity = Karma
So, there is so much conditioning inside us. Throughout this mental and emotional conditioning, we collect and store things in a "This is great! I want more of this!" pile and the " That was terrible! I never want to experience that again!" pile. Because of the what, who, where, when, why, and how of this life time (and others) we are conditioned to think a certain way, to believe certain things, to view the world and ourselves a certain way and therefore to act and react a certain way. We have habit tendencies and patterns. We become that person that likes this or likes that; that feels this way or that way; that is prone to this or that tendency or that acts in a certain way. Our conditioning becomes who we think we are. That makes sense right? If I have somehow determined through my conditioning that people could not be trusted, I will perceive untrustworthiness in others, I may habitually withdraw from contact with others, I may live in fear and act out in fear (developing a pattern of attacking others before they attack me). This may lead to life events where I am alone and isolated a lot...lonely...and I may become ill mentally or physically because of all this anger and fear I am unconsciously holding onto. This is my karma playing out.
Inside, not Outside
The thing to know though is that karma is not coming from outside...it is inside. It is not the external events that are karmic in nature, it is how we react to these karmic events that lead to the lives we are living. The responsibility for it is not "out there" either. It is in me. That also means the only way I will understand it enough to free myself of it...is if I take responsibility for it and go inward to look deeply into my habit tendencies, patterns, stored stuff ( which are my samskaras). I have to bring this conditioning from unconsciousness into consciousness so it can be experienced and released.
Presence
This must be done in presence Tolle reminds us. Release of karma is equivalent to the release of identification with "little me" and our dramas. It comes with accepting what is as it is in this moment without the habitual tendency driving us into the future or back into the past. We need to be accepting and embracing the here and now so we do not react and slip back into old habit tendencies when these samskaras remerge. We need to be conscious. Awareness is everything and awareness can only be present.
The only thing that can free you is the arising of presence.
All is well.
Eckhart Tolle( May, 2023) What is Karma Yoga? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3YRKMB-TIg
Eckhart Tolle ( Jan, 2023) You Can Go Beyond Karma. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgSPEkD16ss
Eckhart Tolle ( 2022) Inviting Presence and Inviting Good Karma. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHXiiJpSvZ4
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