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Karma and breaking the Karmic cycle

Have been tempted to pen this follow-up blog to the one I wrote about Inner Engineering a few weeks back. So here I am succumbing to that temptation.....

Every person (and all living things really) comes into this world with four essential ingredients,
a) Body,
b) Mind,
c) Emotions, and
d) Life Energy.

We originate from an infinite energy source and revert back to it once our time is done here in this life. Now Karma, as we loosely refer to it, according to the learned and enlightened Masters is nothing but memory that we carry into this being or life. Yes. I know the word Karma is used by us in day to day vernacular with many connotations and often negatively. We use it to explain away our misery and suffering while forgetting about it in good times!!!

The Karma or Memory is "written" into each of the four ingredients mentioned above of our being, viz., Body, Mind, Emotions and Life energy. Thus, how we act or react with our body, mind, emotions and the unseen life energy is related to the Memory we have carried into this life. With the recent large and sweeping discoveries and insights in the IT, Genetics and Bio-tech fields, we can now believe that memory can be written into not only genes but into signals which are nothing but energy.

In his book, Many Lives, Many Masters, Dr. Weiss wonders how memory of past lives may have found its way into current life when there was no apparent genetic thread that connected that person with his/her past life. If one thinks in terms of "memory" being carried or coded into the life energy dimension then the unbroken chain or thread is not difficult to understand. Dr. Weiss also goes on to say that scars from injuries sustained in previous birth are apparent on the body in a latter birth even when there is no clear genetic continuity! Would this be body-level memory carried / coded into the life energy?

Back to Karma or Memory. Let us use the simplest example of our body. The body simply refuses to bend or move in certain ways and often we coax it, bearing the pain or its resistance. Similarly, your tongue has memory for the food it likes or doesn't as are your ears to certain sounds. As we train our bodies to break free of its "Memory" through training (Yoga or asanas, typically), we start to feel flexible and free. We are slowly but with time and training able to make our bodies do what we want it to do. And there is a feeling of liberation when we get to that point. We see this with the great athletes and wonder how they could do the nearly impossible movements.

From the scientific world, there are some alloys (Nickel-Titanium based) that "remember" their shape. For e.g., if we heat this material to say 500 deg C and bend it in a certain way and cool it down and straighten it when it is back at room temperature. If you take this material back to 500 deg C, it will come back to the bent shape by itself, meaning it "remembers" its shape at that temperature!! Scientists are trying to use these "smart" materials for several applications.

Now imagine for a moment that you could do the same to your mind..... As with the body, if you can coax your mind to go beyond its "Memory" and think flexibly and as you would want it to. What is the power you could unleash, knowing an average person utilises just 12% of one's power of the mind or brain.

Most importantly, what if you could do so with your emotions? Not only flexibility but also feeling free to act out our emotion in the way we choose than to be a slave to the in-built memory handed down to us from all our past existences and even our ancestors. Wouldn't that launch us into another trajectory that liberates us greatly? Am not even speaking of enlightenment yet. Just an ability to be, act or react in the way we choose and when we choose. We could still be passionate, alert, strongly action-oriented but do it freely, by choice and after unlocking so much more of our abilities.

At this point, am not even going to hazard a guess what will happen with us if we are able to un-tether our life energy 'cos I have no clue.

The point is simple. Do we stop with Yoga or asanas that will free us from our Body level Karma or Memory or do we push the envelope a little more and do the same for our minds and a li'l more and un-tether (note am saying un-tether and not rid of) our emotions from its memory. The memory is still there but only at an arm's length for you to dip in as needed.......

Think about it!!

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