“Happiness is not something ready made. It is comes from your own actions.” -Dalai Lama

Hello fellow meditators! Welcome to August…and welcome to KARMA! Each week this month we will explore another dimension of our BEING. The flow this month is karma – dharma – mantra – tantra.

DHARMA represents our purpose in life – the reason for our existence.

MANTRA represents our connection to spirit and the tools we use to connect us to the present moment.

TANTRA represents the awakening to one-ness through our senses as we move through the world.

And we’ll go deep on each of these each week…but this week…it’s all KARMA. Karma represents our choices…the ones we celebrate…the ones we regret…the conditional and unconditional ones…the knee-jerk ones and the purposeful ones…the decisions that keep us up at night and those that allow us to rest our head on the pillow. Karma can be translated as action and is the culmination of all the actions we have taken through out our lives.

In the teachings of Vedanta, this includes the actions we’ve taken in past lives as well. Whether you believe in re-incarnation or not, doesn’t make karma real or not real – karma just is. And since we are living in this life right now, focusing on karma for a week will allow us to see all the actions we are taking right now – all the choices we make in each moment. Simply by placing our witnessing awareness on every interaction, email, text, phone call, and conversation…even the behaviors we exhibit to ourselves when we are alone allows us to view the consequences of our actions. It is in the reflecting on the many plates we are spinning…the juggling…on the decisions we made yesterday, this morning, this afternoon, and this evening…the call we chose not to make…the words we let slip out of our mouths…the chore we did or didn’t do…the food, location, and company we chose for each meal…the tone of our voice as we reacted to hearing unexpected information…the article we read…the video we watched…even the clothes we decided to wear today…and by observing who we show up as in each moment, that we can make more conscious choices. In the Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Deepak Chopra shared the three ways we have of processing our karma.

1) We can pay our karmic debt as most people do…what we sow is what we reap.
2) We can transmute our karma…make lemonade out of lemons. Learn from our choices and make better ones that serve ourselves and others.
3) We can transcend our karma by meditating…bathing our mind in stillness and silence connecting to the timeless space between our thoughts…and in the process wash away the stains of the past.

Transmuting our karma allows us to step into our truth – altering the trajectory of misguided words and actions so we can make right those “wrong” decisions…and make better, loving, and more purposeful choices…the next time. We are never damned by the choices we’ve made if we are willing to look at them honestly and own them…take responsibility for our thoughts, our words, and our actions and commit to make better ones.

Don Miguel Ruiz teaches the agreement to ALWAYS DO OUR BEST. If we are willing to make this powerful agreement with ourselves, then there will be fewer opportunities to regret our choices and more opportunities to make evolutionary ones.

This week, let’s observe our thoughts, words, and deeds and upon deeper reflection, let’s awaken our best version of ourselves. Join me today on Hay House Radio and I’ll see you in the gap! Peace. -davidji

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