Domesticating my primordial experience

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.

So – my dear Writer Friend I have my answer and now so do you  – I have not been blogging because I have been too busy trying to domesticate my primordial experience.

Listen here to the man himself -12 minutes.