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| Writer's questions - on 31st October .... |
Writer Friend: ‘Why aren’t you blogging – are you too busy?’
Me: ‘Mmmm - too busy dealing with karma’.
Writer Friend: ‘What exactly is karma?.Me: ‘To be truthful I'm not sure – maybe the time has come to find out’.
Once upon a time I went on the shamanic journey. I was told I was a portal for the family karma. I didn’t know what that meant
except that it sounded right and it didn’t sound good.
So - ignore stuff at one's peril?
It seems now, the time has come to get deadly serious about this topic - and I’m turning to a podcast by Tibetan
Buddhist teacher Reggie Ray to find out what karma is.
Reggie Ray goes as far as to say that to
understand the purpose of sitting with the breath - to fully understand the
purpose and the process of breath work in the body - we need to understand the
principle of karma.
So – what is it?
Karma, apparently, is the second noble
truth. It refers to the structures and processes by which we create
suffering for ourselves and others.
Reggie Ray says there are two types.
1: The karma of result.
Stuff that arises internally and
externally that relates to conditions of an earlier life or to conditions
previously in this life.
2. The karma of cause
When we react in a self-serving or
ego-directed fashion - when we do not meet our life directly – but seek
to slide off to the side and manipulate or ignore – we create more karma
towards the future that is later going to arise as the karma of result.
The body is a neutral experiencer.
Reggie Ray goes on to explain that the
basis of the second noble truth, the cause of our suffering, is that we
approach our experience with what is called thirst. By thirsting in relation to
our experience we create karma, a thirst that is ingrown, self-absorbed, and
solipsistic. We yearn to be something definite and continuous. We have built a
concept of self that we thirst to perpetuate, augment, aggrandise – our
ego-self accepts and rejects experience according to this concept. However, the
body is a much more neutral experiencer. Things that arise are known initially
by the body directly in an unmediated and unfiltered way.
What happens when our body knows the other is lying?
Healers know all this I suppose. I
have become very fond, for example, of Amatsu – and I’m guessing this is very
probably the territory of Amatsu?
Anyway - Reggie Ray goes on to tell us
that our body reads a situation in a very objective and unsentimental fashion –
for example our ego self may want to believe the other while our body knows
they are lying - we may find out later what the body knows through dreams,
flashes of insight, Illness, tension
In fact, he explains, it’s only because
the body knows first that we can react with an attitude of passion, aggression
or ignorance towards the experience.
In fact, he explains, the natural state is
the energy of experience. The ego mind is constantly reacting to domesticate
that primordial experience.
