Karma Consciousness

In my book, Wake Up! Awakening through Reflection: A 10-Day Life Lessons Workshop, I present a “Karmic Cause and Effect Analysis” for identifying the life lessons you came here to learn. I offer guidance for applying those lessons to your life today by intentionally creating meaningful experiences that incorporate them. Upon mastering those lessons, you can consciously evolve by progressing to more advanced lessons. This is how we create with purpose and evolve with intention! In this way, you are intentionally creating and consciously evolving while discovering the true meaning of life and fulfilling your soul’s mission.

This Karmic Cause and Effect Analysis will be applied to your life’s most memorable experiences so you can uncover the lessons hidden within them. What you’ll discover is that, until you learn and apply the lessons, they will continue to show up for you as stagnant patterns within similar experiences repeating themselves in slightly different ways. You simply identify the causes that led to the experiences and then reflect upon the effects they had on yourself and others. You will clearly see the lessons your experiences are trying to teach you by applying the process. In the 10-day workshop, there are 10 different life themes presented to encourage you to explore the different phases and expressions of your life and who and how you were being and experiencing at the time.

While we do not want to dwell on the past, and we most certainly want to live in the present moment and look toward a brighter future, the past may hold the keys to our greater happiness here and now. Sometimes it’s better to open up an old wound if it was never fully healed. We can treat it with the proper cleansing so that it can heal perfectly. Then we can just forget about it and move forward unscarred by the past. We can consciously evolve, and that’s what we’re here to do—evolve toward a higher consciousness where we can unleash our highest potential!

Karma Consciousness: Guidelines for the Cause and Effect Reflection Process

Before engaging in the process of applying a Karmic Cause and Effect Analysis to our experiences, it is important to understand how this will help us evolve into a more enlightened state of being. At first, this whole practice of reflecting appears to be a trip into the past which some may feel is opening up old wounds or digging through old storage that has already been boxed up. By looking through old storage, oftentimes, people find real gems that they wish to save and cherish realizing that it has significant benefit for them now and in the future.

So instead of being a rehashing of past events, it is both a healing and a treasure hunt. It allows us to move forward free of scars and, at the same time, discover the precious gems that were hidden in storage all along! By bringing our consciousness into these past events, we are bringing them into the light and out of the darkness. In Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now, he quotes St. Paul as saying, “Everything is shown by being exposed to the light, and whatever is exposed to the light itself becomes light.” From this, we can see that just shining a light on important events in our past, in essence “reflecting” upon them, we are one step closer to enlightenment as we learn to transmute the energy of our “past-consciousness.”

The gems within these reflections are the lessons and that’s what we are really in search of. By understanding the cause-and-effect relationships within these experiences from the past, we can identify the lessons we have come here to learn. We can stand outside of ourselves and witness the events in a more objective way by applying a contemplative analysis to them. This is an excellent way to develop our ability to be a witness to our behavior in the present as well. By witnessing our thoughts, words, and actions, we can monitor them more closely and thereby separate virtuous from non-virtuous ones. Now we are getting somewhere! This is how we become more enlightened in the present by highlighting the past! If we can uncover the motivation behind our actions in the past, distinguishing virtuous from non-virtuous intention and attaching these to positive and/or negative outcomes, we can attain the highest benefit from this karmic cause-and-effect practice.

Karma has been described as a Sanskrit term meaning “action.” Through the actions that we perform, we produce effects which bring us either happiness or suffering. The effects of positive actions bring us happiness and the effects of negative actions cause us suffering. So what we are seeking to identify here is the relationship between our actions, or causes, and the resulting positive or negative outcomes, or effects. Then we can apply this “cause and effect” understanding to the habitual patterns of our life today, thereby mastering the lessons we have learned!

As divine and creative beings, we have the ability to manifest our experiences and direct and control them with the power of our thoughts and intentions. This becomes especially important when, through cause-and-effect, we identify our lessons based on the outcomes of our actions. Our perception of actions as either virtuous or non-virtuous are often based upon the conditions of our programming. What we believe is right or wrong, considerate or rude, helpful or harmful, stems from the consciousness we have developed during this lifetime and past lifetimes. Even during this lifetime, we go through phases where at one stage, we think and act one way and then later, we have a completely different perspective about what is right and wrong and may think and act altogether differently! Either way, we can always transform our consciousness by bringing it into the light and reflecting upon it. We can intentionally purify it and start to mold it by defining it with established moral and ethical values that will benefit our “karma” in this lifetime and the next.

Let’s take a look at Robert Thurman’s book Jewel Tree of Tibet and see what he has to say about “The Practice of Mind Reform,” because that’s what we’re really talking about here. By reforming our mind, we are demonstrating an effort to consciously evolve. This evolution of consciousness motivates us to create only the best experiences by using our highest thoughts and applying our best behaviors. In the chapter “Mind Reform,” here are a few of the suggestions Robert offers:

• Be consistent, carefully mindful, and impartial
• Use force (of intention) to abandon addictions and develop virtues
• Overcome excuses for self-preoccupation
• Don’t rely on extraneous coincidences
• Change your attitude but remain natural in behavior
• Don’t expect rewards
• Don’t spoil practices with selfish motivations
• Be critical of yourself, and don’t stubbornly hold grudges
• Don’t tease people maliciously
• Don’t seek happiness through others’ suffering

It becomes increasingly apparent that we must take full advantage of this precious lifetime by applying mindfulness and practicing virtue in all our thoughts, words and actions. We can start by understanding our tendencies, personality characteristics and motivations better through this process of “Reflection.” Getting to know ourselves in this way will help us avoid those behaviors that do not represent the highest virtues and develop those that do.

We can see how the Karmic Cause and Effect Analysis shines a light upon the past, bringing it out of the darkness, and how that alone begins to transmute its energy from negative to positive. We also understand that lying hidden amongst our experiences are precious gems. These jewels are the valuable lessons that upon being learned, lead to our soul’s evolution. With that being our highest purpose in this lifetime, we can see that it is well worth the time and effort to engage in reflection to find them. I admire you for seeking to live your life in a more enlightened way and am proud of you for being open to this process of reflection.

My book Wake Up! Awakening through Reflection: A 10-Day Life Lessons Workshop features modules for each day that include the Karmic Cause and Effect Analysis, Self-Exploration Questionnaires, Practical Spirituality: Daily Practices for Spiritual Growth, The Spiritual Essence: Spiritual Wisdom for Personal Development, Dynamic Movement Therapy, Breathing Practices, Meditation, and Journaling.