Karma

 “All that we are is the result of what we have thought: all that we are is founded on our thoughts and formed of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain pursues him, as the wheel of the wagon follows the hoof of the ox that draws it. All that we are is the result of what we have thought: all that we are is founded on our thoughts and formed of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness pursues him like his own shadow that never leaves him.” – Dhammapada- Dhammapada is the best known and most widely esteemed text in the Pali Tipitaka, the sacred scriptures of Theravada Buddhism.

A way of alleviating my sense of needing to defend myself or have some kind of revenge without me actually being responsible, is to have a sense of karma and wish it.  Trouble is, it always comes back in some form, so I am pretty careful.

Some say Karma is a predestined destiny.  Many religions do not believe in this, but I do.  I was once told that, when you have done that ONE thing you were meant to do, no matter how inconsequential it seems to you, and you do not know what it is, then you are done down here on earth.  I love that theory too.  

“Karma” comes from Hinduism.  Some say Karma is a manifestation of something happening in a past life and it is reincarnated into our Present.  It is best remembered that Karma manifests both positive and negative.  It, also, is that Karma can manifest from something in your past ad/or present.  Karma is from the realms of cause and effect, action and reaction, sequence and consequence.  Whatever has happened in this past, or ancient other-life pasts, will reincarnate in our today, in some way.  It is the ultimate justice of either negative or positive.

Karma is not permanent.  It asks us to deal with whatever the them is that occurs in our life and then it will be appeased.  Learn the lesson.  Once that particular lesson is learned then it will extinguish.  It behooves us to find our own personal way of dealing with the Karma that may show up in our lives.  It is important to know that our free will can change karma.  Karma is not set in stone, as far as relieving it, if it is negative or positive.  We live, we are human, we will have frailties and learning to deal with. 

No matter how much we may wish it, we cannot enact Karma in any other’s life/lives.  To think such is to think we are above ourselves and the very thought of trying to act out Karma in someone else’s life will bring more Karma to our own Self.  It behooves us to be cognizant of every thought we have, what we say and how we say it, what we think and how we change our thinking.  We have free will of choice to either change to meet each new moment so that our heart and mind and soul adjusts our karma.  Doing good with the idea that it will change your Karma is not authentic.  You have to live out and work through incidents of karma that belongs to only you and belongs to something done in an earlier time.  This is controversial, of course, but I have a sense that when something positive or negative whinges into our life, seemingly unbidden, there is something to be done to keep it or fix it.  It is said that who and what we are, at the very core of Self, determines the outer life we live through. 

The Medicine Elders speak of this type of ideology.  I tell it as I understand it:  Medicine People speak of Karma ( of course not using that term)  by teaching us that there is Justice that began in the beginnings and that there is repayment for both negative and positive actions.  (Karma is action.)  Creator is the judge and energy began with Creator as he created Mother Earth and All Things.    There are natural and universal moral laws in place since the beginning.  No action ever takes place outside the knowing of Creator.  Creator feels our energy, every living thing’s energy.  There is Divine Justice.  We are made to follow the Divine Harmony of taking care of Mother Earth and each other.  If we harm any, so shall we be harmed. 

Our loneliness and sense of separateness come from energy we have put out that separates us from the Divine.  For peace, joy, fulfillment, and wholeness, we need to reconnect with the energy we were created with. This, alone will change our negative Karma.   Do no harm.  Love One Another as I have loved you!

Carol Desjarlais 7.20.20

Emotional Energy

I think that we are not in control of when an emotion shows up.  It happens in a split second at the sight, smell, touch, sound, and/or taste.  We cannot fake our emotions.  And sometimes an emotion shows up no matter how we try to control it.  I do not think we have a choice in the degree of an emotional affect.  It is after those few seconds of recognition of an emotion that we have choice.  A strong emotion is harder to hide as there seems to be an automatic response.  

It is hard to hide what we feel.  I spent a childhood plastering a smile on my face.  Then, it continued up through to my adulthood.  It came back to bite me when I left the kid’s dad and my step-sister said, “But you always had a smile on your face.”  We were not close.  She did not know me well enough to know what I had gone through in my life.  Many of our facial gestures are not bidden.  The mouth might smile but the eyes might not match that smile.  A voice can change tone and velocity.  Our breathing changes.  Our eyebrows might rise or flinch crooked.  Our eyes flicker.  Our mouth twitches.  Fear is one emotion very difficult to hide. And we are so used to answering, “I am fine!” when everything about our aura sends out signals that we are not.

Denial, withdrawal, self-isolating, and refusing to answer our phone, are all signs that we are not fine yet we will answer the phone in a phony voice trying to bely it all.  It might work for a while.  Some get calm and quiet under stress; some get shut down.  Some get fidgety (bouncing their legs while sitting), With me, silence means trouble, best to let me be quiet and figure whatever it is out that is bothering me.  Some pace.  Some flex their fingers.  Some rub their hands together.  Some overeat, some under-eat.   Some get almost manic in their way of trying to distract themselves from authentic feelings they feel might not be acceptable or accepted.  

There are myriads of underlying emotions that we have not really labeled, but the major feelings we express (anger is the easiest alternative response) but the negative emotions we respond to will have something to do with the following:

We feel guilty, shameful, bad.  We feel criticized, judged, insulted, devalued, disrespected, distrusted, and all the other ‘dis’ sensed triggers.  We feel silly, stupid, ridiculous.  We feel invisible, ignored, undeserving, defective, incompetent, behind.   We feel rejected, attacked, taken advantage of, betrayed.  We feel rejected.  We feel weak, vulnerable, helpless, defenseless.  We feel misunderstood.  We feel lacking courage or resilience or unworthy.  We feel unlovable, un-cared for.  We feel like a loser.  We feel that we are NOT Enough.   All of these feelings lay in our heart and soul for being triggered and then there is an emotional response.  Most of our reason for hiding feelings is that it compounds all of the feelings above.  Somehow it feels like giving up some of our power and we respond, risking the reaction of others that we are “too sensitive”.  Sometimes we are codependent and too attached to other’s feelings rather than authenticate our own.  

I used to say I could not cry.  I couldn’t.  The only way I could cry was to watch a really sad movie (think “Beaches”).  I felt too vulnerable and weak to cry when I should have.  It gave off that I was a really strong person.  I wasn’t.  I was too weak to cry.  Stoicism is not strength many times.     It leaves others not supporting us when we need it most, for instance, and that is the saddest thing ever in that we cut ourselves off from those who would be our cheerleaders, our compassion.  

Self-soothing is good, to a point, but it still blocks us from receiving what we may have given to others and have refused to give ourselves.  We need to hold our emotional ground and be honest enough to say it the way it is, rather than how someone else might prefer.  Others cannot make us feel anything we do not want to feel.  The double-edged sword in our emotional lives.  I wish you authentic.  I wish us all to be honest enough, caring enough, to accept each other’s emotional life. 

I encourage you to watch Brene’ Brown’s Ted Talk on Vulnerability.  She says it wonderfully and best.

Carol Desjarlais 7.19.20

Checking Out

How often do we hide our emotions, or attempt to do so, with a smile or with pushing emotions to the back and trying to portray a calm or happiness that we do not feel, right from our bones?  But, do we really put on a great facade or does it show in posture, in physical appearance, in dullness of eyes, in our voice?  I believe we attempt to ease chaos, worry, stress, for short periods of time, to get relief.  We have to know was disassociation is and how dangerous, psychologically, it can be.  There is a difference between consciously choosing to numb ourselves and when the numbing happens unbidden. 

Sometimes your psyche just needs a reprieve and will detach, I think.  Each of us handles stress in different ways.  Physical distress is harder to take a break from.  Neuropathy is one of the scourges of aging for some.  Nerve pain of any kind can send you into hyper-conscious awareness that is focused on where the pain is.  I have tried self-talk to my feet on up to my thighs to try to talk it in to giving in.  Doesn’t work and it is hard to escape from that painful fact.  I have learned how to stop scrolling webs of thoughts that are negative or rooted in one of the many fears one can have, the worries, the shame, the guilt, of things so far back in the past one would wonder why there is such sharp focus on those things.  I break out of that unwanted space of jangling thoughts by doing something Present.  Emotionally, I find, as I age, it is harder to break out of ‘a mood’.  While once, a bad hair day could set the day off on the wrong foot, now it can be something even more self-focused like dropping something, tripping, a day where one ought to go back to bed and try again.  It is part of our culture, I think, to be spiritually dissociative.  We tend, I think, to get focused on day to day life and solving all the little piling-up things in my day.  I try to take breaks to do something that fills my soul, find me a space and time to check into something on a spiritual level.  I think spirituality is like a muscle that needs to be exercised.  I am sure we all struggle with such.

Things we can do to stay more authentically Present is to move to something that spurs your senses; for instance, aroma therapy (even baking you might do to send comforting aromas to surround you).  Do something that uses your fingers and hands – work with something that has you feel with your fingertips, hands, feet.  Going barefoot is awesome for reconnecting us back to Mother Earth. Play some music that has you focusing on harmonies and words.  Pop a peppermint or highly flavored (something) crunchy food into your mouth.  Engage your senses.

To connect to being Present, you should take notice of your own breathing.  When you are disconnected, you will probably notice you shallow breathe.  Then take some deep breaths that will bring you back to being Present.  

Some people keep stones in their pockets to rub when they need calming, but it also brings one back to being Present.  Some have lucky charms.  Some have a ting, etc.  Whatever it takes, when you realize you are not connected to the Present in a positive way, 

Do you ever, for brief moments, check out of reality to ease emotional chaos that threatens?  How do we take the negative disassociation and replace it with the good dissociation?  

©Carol Desjarlais 7.18.20