So today I want to talk about how do we recognize karmic relationships.
A relationship with parents is always karmic.
With your kids,
The kids you have or that you adopt,
Always karmic.
With siblings,
It's usually karmic.
All second chakra relationships,
Our second chakra is kind of right below our belly.
All second chakra relationships are to some extent karmic.
So that's parents,
Romantic partners,
Siblings.
Your first love is always karmic.
It's usually connected to some past experience you had.
And a karmic relationship sometimes looks like this.
You don't understand why you want to be with this person,
But you want to be with this person and you feel chemistry right away.
And it's very hard to let go.
And it's irrational.
Like you,
Maybe you've seen them twice.
You've,
You've seen them three times and you feel,
This is what love feels like.
This is the love of my life.
I am sure that this is what love feels like.
This is what love is supposed to be like.
A non-karmic relationship is when you get to know someone,
You respect them,
You respect the qualities they have,
You know why you want to be with them.
Normal love.
Karmic love is like I have no idea but I want to be with this person.
It doesn't make any logical sense and I don't even understand why I'm attracted to this person but I'm attracted to this person.
That is something from a past life.
Another karmic relationship is just the opposite.
Right away you kind of hate the person.
You have a lot of negative emotions toward that person.
There's a lot of different scenarios of how.
Karmic relationships form,
And I just want you to be able to recognize it.
If right away you see someone and you feel like you owe me,
You don't know why this person owes you something,
But you feel like you owe me,
You need to do me favors,
That's often karmic.
Or it's karmic when you meet someone and you just irrationally want to do a lot,
A lot,
A lot for that person.
You feel guilt,
You feel pity,
You feel like I need to support this person,
I need to do everything for this person,
And you barely even know them.
There's always a certain element of passion,
Positive or negative.
One of my favorite teachings from Buddhism is that if you feel a lot of passion,
Run in the other direction.
This is very different from mainstream American culture.
Mainstream American culture is all about that crazy love,
That crazy stupid love,
That being infatuated.
And we treat it as if it's the best thing in the world.
In reality,
It's like your mind is on drugs.
You're not thinking straight.
It's taking away from your other relationships and from your work and from your health.
One of my favorite phrases and ideas is that any relationship that doesn't start and end with love and respect becomes disruptive.
It becomes disruptive to your life.
And let's say it didn't start with love and respect and let's say it didn't even end with love and respect and it's over.
You can send the love and respect there now and that unties the karmic knot and that will be good for you so that you don't have to keep meeting this person over and over again.
Meeting them until you realize that they are free.
And until you realize that you can see them as a whole person outside of you and send them respect for whoever they are.
And of course,
Still build very good boundaries.
Carver Relationships is like Groundhog Day.
So in this movie,
Bill Murray wakes up every morning and every morning he relives the same day over and over again until he figures out certain things.
One of my favorite professors of Buddhism,
Bob Thurman,
Says that it's the best movie about Buddhism that he's seen.
In your life,
The same situations,
The same patterns,
The same dynamics come up again and again.
Until one,
We find a way to forgive or we have compassion.
Or we actually experience every emotion fully.
Let's say you have a really bad breakup.
And you just like numb yourself,
Substance abuse,
You never acknowledge it,
You never feel it.
You will have another bad breakup either later in this life or in a different life.
So that life gives you the opportunity to feel what you never felt.
You're still going to have to come in contact with that emotion,
But the degree of severity tends to go up because like life wants you to feel it.
So basically the universe wants us to experience a lot of different emotions,
Including emotions of heartbreak,
Of grief.
Um.
.
.
The trick here is don't treat it too seriously.
Don't treat it like the end of the world.
Be serious in how kind you are to yourself and how compassionate you are to others,
But know that,
Like Shakespeare said,
Life is a theater.
Life is a theater to get you to experience certain emotions and you will experience them,
Experience them with acceptance,
Supporting yourself along the way.
So certain karmic relationships will keep happening over and over again until we find our self-worth or we learn how to protect our boundaries or we find our strength or we find a way to be honest with ourselves about what we like and what we don't like and our values and we don't let anyone trample on them.
There are a lot of different scenarios as to why you might have a karmic relationship,
But I want to boil it down to just the main strands.
It's often about forgiveness.
It's often about acceptance,
Accepting a person just as they are?
It's about regaining your freedom.
If you're really trying to control someone,
The extent to which you try to control them is to the extent to which you are not free.
There are only two main lessons of all karmic relationships.
The first is to accept another person unconditionally and let them be who they are and let them be free.
The second is to love yourself unconditionally and let go of what doesn't work for you.
So for all karmic relationships in your life.
That is the solution.
Sometimes when you have the exchange that you need.
The relationship then ends.
And that's okay because there's always so much waiting for us in the future.
I hope that you thrive in your relationships.
I hope that you let those relationships teach you acceptance,
Letting go of grudges,
Protecting your boundaries,
Finding your happiness,
Your honesty.
And then the relationship did its job.
