At a recent satsang I was asked if spiritual Awakening eliminates karma. This was not something I had been asked before, so was immediately interested in what my response would be. My mind immediately went into “I don’t know” mode, but soon something similar to the following came out of my mouth:
Karma is part of the personal story, the duality script you have been programmed to believe. Even though the “like begets like” concept of it does appear to manifest in our human experience, my feeling is that it does so to support our expansion of consciousness, not just to “give us that same experience” or “pay us back” for a previous deed we once did.” In my experience of facilitating “past life work” as a hypnotherapist, and the “emotional clearing work” I do today, many of my clients seem to be going through in the present life similar scenarios to what happened to them in past lives. But the purpose of this is not just for having the experience, nor receiving a well deserved consequence. It is always an opportunity to close the door on this part of our past so it will no longer be necessary to go through anything like it again. How do we do this?
By responding with love to every challenging situation, instead of with fear, anger, or another unloving reaction to what has been presented. Welcoming and appreciating whatever we are experiencing is how we end karma. Repeating a negative response instead of offering love just means we are not fully mature in our ability to love unconditionally. Until we are, we will not be our loving True Self in every situation, and the uncomfortable repetitions will continue to reoccur until this level of personal development has been attained.
Our past attitudes will continue to create our future until we have fully released our negative, self-serving reactions. As long as our ego-mind still contains those seeds of memory which perpetuate these ongoing challenges, we will be tested, until we respond to every challenge with love. And each time we do, we are one step closer to living in the world as our loving True Self. Its like taking a test to see if we really understand the lesson or if we are just parroting the same old answer we once believed to be Truth, even when it wasn’t.
Karma provides us with an opportunity to shift our way of being from harboring the shadow of darkness to fully living as light. Every time we bring love to a challenging situation we are actively releasing personal karma from our future. Once Awakened, the love we feel within and radiate to the world is fully present to assist in the cancellation of impersonal karma as well.