Clearing Karma for Ourselves and Our Communities

There are many of us, when we face a difficult time, difficult events or some kind of hardship, when we see the lesson in what is happening, we wonder why haven’t I gone past this place in my own understanding or why haven’t I moved beyond this kind of experience? And I’ve told you how we get that experience when we are aware so that we can be conscious of the change in our karma, conscious of the change in how things are cleared or purified. Knowing this, we also need to know that this particular time in the present is a time when there is great opportunity to clear the karma of so much in front of every one of us, not just in our personal lives, but in the lives of the communities in which we live, and then the nation in which we live. We see injustice or hurt or suffering, and indeed the suffering is going to increase. Yet, we have this awareness, we have this knowledge of what we know to be born out of compassion, out of love and truth, and we are so pained by our inability to bring this about, not only in our own lives, but in the lives of people around us and people that we see.

This great opportunity for us in part is a matter of bearing witness and enduring the helplessness and the weakness that we may feel. Knowing that our strength comes from a different part of ourselves, and a different kind of process within ourselves. So that the things that we encounter day to day are magnified in their importance because we carry this other awareness. We carry this awareness of a belief that we know things should be better or we know things should be different, and that somehow in that knowing, we believe things will change. But just as we have this awareness of our karma, just as we have this awareness of human patterns, and human desires, human expectations—just as we have all of those things, we have to realize that there are those people that have none of those things. And that their lives are very superficial in the sense that almost 100% of what they process internally comes from their external lives. There’s very little processing of their internal life—their thoughts, their attitudes, their anger, their anxiety or fear. And so, just as we see these opportunities in a karmic sense in the world, the greater opportunity now for people of a spiritual orientation is this inner world where our thoughts and our concerns, the things that we love, these are forming the patterns that become a karmic process for us. And paying attention to our own karma, so to speak, our own ability to create karma, our ability to release or cleanse karma is so amplified and so intense in our experience. Our inner condition influences so much of our own response to the world when the greater response that’s needed is to those parts of our interior selves that need care, that need to be acknowledged as important, that need to be nurtured because they’re very tender processes, very tender feelings that properly nurtured, they grow into a different kind of strength. Not the kind of strength that the world recognizes, but the kind of strength that endures whatever the world offers.

There will be a period when the intensity of what is being offered to us as human beings by the material forces and the mindset of those with a material orientation, when what is being offered to us will be even more disgusting or distasteful. Do not be deceived into thinking that there is no hope. And do not be deceived into thinking that your faith is not functioning or that grace or forgiveness are no longer necessary. They will be necessary, and that grace and forgiveness is just as much a part of every one of us as it is for those we see committing trespass against their neighbors.

There’s a selfishness that can be fed in human beings. And one of the characteristics of the selfishness is that our anger or our directing of attitude or inflicting pain on others become so intense that it fuels a fire that burns, and by continuing to be angry, by doing angry things, or doing things out of anxiety, we feed that fire. And what quenches that fire is never another form of fire, never another form of anger or violence. Violence cannot drive out the violence that we see committed in the world. We have to be aware that even though people claim no responsibility for the impact of their words or claim no responsibility for the fear that they instill in others, this is a special kind of karmic patterning. Though not physical, it’s so deeply embedded in the being, that to cleanse this karma takes what feels like lifetimes of time, lifetimes of penance, lifetimes of turning back to God, and then living through that same process with awareness, just as I spoke of earlier.

It is easy to lose heart, not just with the difficulties we have individually. Don’t let yourself be unguarded, especially against those things that don’t reach the physical level. Be guarded against words. Be guarded against attitudes. Be guarded against any kind of act that is cruel or thoughtless. And especially be guarded against these within yourselves, within ourselves. For these very small things cut just as deep a groove in our souls as some actions that we consider to be greater. They are like little lies in the sense that they misrepresent what we believe and understand to be our true spiritual condition. So, we have the truth of yourselves, the truth of our falling short, the truth of our mistakes, but in those events, our awareness gives us the opportunity to acknowledge these, to ask for forgiveness or strength, whatever is needed, and to move through those hurts into a place of healing and into a place of wholeness.

It is true that you have been given special information; that you have a special knowledge of God, of the process that is God in relationship. The meaning and process of loving and being true, these are not small things. They find their way through to all of the ways that we live, all of the ways that impact our attitude and the ways that we impact others. There is a very strong link between our acts of kindness, not just to others, but toward ourselves, a very strong link to the elimination of karmic patterns that have held us back individually and as communities. We enter the world as individuals, but we also enter as members of a cohort who share a responsibility for the commonwealth of the world. It is natural in our care for that commonwealth that we seek to have communities of justice or communities of care for land and animals and people. So, we live in these multiple dimensions of this world, the multiple aspects of what it means to be a human and have a human existence concurrent with our spiritual existence in other realms.

The content of our lives, the themes of the events, the feelings that recur over and over inside of us that are triggered by external events in the world, all of these themes, some of which emerge from what is below our level of awareness that enter into our realm of awareness, becoming conscious of this process is so important to our sense of purpose and our destiny in this world. Understanding the link of how things begin or emerge from us, how they enter into our internal experience, and how they become manifest in our external world are all important lessons in awareness as we process and work through our karma. As you can imagine, we feel like our individual ability to process this karma is greater than our ability to process it in community or in our cohort. But there is so much about our spiritual lives that can only be lived out and processed in relationship, and it is up to us, how those relationships form, how they dissolve, how they reform and connect again in our future. Remember, the inner connectedness of our existence, the same life force and energy that connects every human being with every other human being, this life energy never stops. It never grows tired. It’s there as a gift for us. It is part of the grace of our lives.

And then there is forgiveness. In the most difficult and heinous crimes that we see enacted, the suffering of individuals beyond what we can understand, we understand the need for grace. We understand the need for forgiveness. We understand that these things are in our power to forgive and bring forgiveness. They’re in our power to be changed by compassion and kindness. We have the ability to implement all of the change necessary for love to become more relevant than hate or greed or self-importance. It’s always there within our grasp, ready for us to step into the power with awareness on how it should be used.

And so be it.