Understanding Karma

Since my early years I have been intent on understanding more deeply the workings of the law of cause and effect. By understanding this complex and subtle law of life, I thought, I will address circumstances, events, relationships and behavior patterns in my current life with greater awareness. Of course, one doesn’t need to see into the distant past to know the issues one must work on. Over the course of many years, I came to see the behavioral patterns I wanted to change and knew that I had carried them with me from the past. But seeing my previous births helped me to understand better the work I have been called to do in this life and helped me see a path forward for the future.

My first premonitions of a previous birth came to me when I was around thirty. A door opened, and that door was not to be shut again. Later, I began having vivid, full-life recollections of a birth just previous to this, and then of one previous to that, and others going back in time several hundred years. This gave me insight into how one life weaves into the next, deepening patterns of behavior until a conscious effort is made to change. I remembered lives where my voice as a woman was muted. My life decisions were made for me, not by me. It was no wonder, then, that in my current life I found myself forming an NGO called the Global Peace Initiative of Women to help raise the voices of women globally. My current life was a culmination of aspirations from the past, bringing to fruition something I could not even imagine during an earlier time.

The law of karma is not a system of punishment and reward but a way the universe seeks to rebalance itself. Actions, words, and even thoughts are energies put forth that reverberate and eventually must be neutralized in some way. Every action causes a reaction, so says the law of physics, and just as there are physical laws that govern the universe, there are also spiritual laws. This law of return could take one lifetime or many.

I came to view death as a passage into another dimension for rest and renewal and a time to set the blueprint for what comes next. No external authority determines our course. We set the course of our journey, often unconsciously, and we can do it more consciously and set our future course in the direction we desire. Our current life is setting the blueprint for the next. And it is far more important to focus on the future than the past: Who do you want to become? What patterns of thinking and behavior do you want to change? Each life offers an opportunity to overcome what we are most unhappy about. We all sail our own ships. We just have to become more conscious of that truth, awaken our will, and make the changes we want. It is our own striving that brings about the results.

The most heart-warming lesson from my experiences is the endurance of love, the love of dear ones we meet again and again, especially the love of our guides and teachers who unceasingly appear to guide us to the higher course. They are there, for everyone.

My story is everyone’s story. We have all had a great variety of experiences. We’ve been rich and poor, different ethnicities and religions, lived in various parts of the world, been male and female, but the real question is what does it all lead to? How do we integrate the past and consciously direct our future? And most importantly, can we spread the love we have received and experienced so that we may be vehicles of upliftment for others?