Ask IKYA – What Is Karma?

In this series, individuals from around the globe ask questions to the spiritual teacher IKYA. IKYA answers the questions from the perspective of a true spiritual teacher and an awakened consciousness. We created this series to assist you in your personal spiritual awakening, which is, in turn, your most important contribution to the global awakening. With love, growth, and healing from all of us.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Alejandro from Chile and I've heard to talk a lot about karma and the many opinions about it.

I'd like to know what is the vision of IKAYA about karma?

Karma is a word that many of you have heard and a concept many spiritual seekers relate to without really understanding what it is.

In the West,

Because of our religions and belief systems,

We tend to think that karma is a different version of sin.

That it's something that you can accumulate,

Something you can get as a punishment for not being a good person.

And this is the way most people think of karma,

That you can actually create it and you will have to pay it back.

People talk about good karma and bad karma.

This is actually a misunderstanding about what karma truly is.

And I will try to explain this to you in a very simple way.

The way I describe it is that karma is simply the distance between what you believe and what is.

Now what does that mean?

You,

As an individual,

Will always live and think and feel based on your current understanding of reality.

And that is never correct.

Life,

Reality in essence,

Is truth.

The way we observe it,

The way we experience it,

Will always be the result of our own consciousness,

Our own mind,

Our own level of evolution.

So,

If we think in a linear way and try to relate to the whole journey that you make as soul,

I will remind you that this is a model because the human mind is linear and this is a non-linear concept.

But just think of it as your journey having a beginning and an end,

Which is enlightenment.

When you start,

When you begin your journey as soul,

Your consciousness is at its very beginning and your karma is at its maximum because the distance between your understanding and reality is at its biggest.

Every single experience you have,

Every incarnation,

Every part of the journey has one purpose.

It is to adjust you to what is and bring you closer to reality so that you can live it.

And therefore,

You can never create karma.

You can only work it out.

Because as you grow,

As you move forward in your own journey,

There will be less left of that journey.

And that whole journey is your karma in expression.

You are not working out all your karma at the same time.

If you can understand that as soul,

We need to experience every single aspect of ourselves,

Every single aspect of the universe of existence in all its facets,

Colors,

Variations.

We're studying billions of different angles and principles at the same time.

But we're not necessarily actively studying everything at the same time.

So in a specific lifetime,

You may have specific tasks,

Specific journeys,

Specific studies,

And that will be your karma.

And therefore,

You will be in different levels of evolution in regard to the different spiritual principles that you are studying.

In one spiritual principle,

You might have gained a more advanced understanding through your lifetimes.

And in other aspects,

You might be at the very beginning.

And this is why in your life,

In your consciousness,

Sometimes you can see that I really get the hang of this.

I might be on top of this situation.

I might have the insight.

I might be able to interact with life from a higher consciousness.

And yet,

The next moment you fall flat on your face and behave like an animal.

This is part of the journey.

It's because you're in many different lines of evolution at the same time.

Now,

We often talk about karma as resistance to reality.

And that resistance is actually your reaction to what part of that principle you have started to notice.

You cannot have a reaction to something without being aware of it.

So as your consciousness expands,

You will notice more.

You will interact with more of life.

So when you expand from here to there,

Because you've had an insight,

At the same time,

More of how life actually works will be presented to you.

And based on your current understanding and knowledge,

You will experience a resistance because you will be living and acting and thinking and feeling based on your current understanding.

And yet,

You have been lifted to a higher level where things work differently.

That difference is what we call the field of resistance,

Which is the active karma that you're dealing with because your life will then be about the adjustments and you getting climatized to that new spiritual level or environment.

And this is why in our lives we can go through different stages.

Suddenly,

Things happen.

You know,

We think that our life is functioning at least somewhat,

And then something happens.

You can move into a field where all of a sudden everything keeps happening.

It's because you have expanded your awareness,

And our life is showing you that it's more advanced.

You're being lifted to the next level,

To the next class,

With different rules,

Different laws of nature,

And you will act based upon your current understanding,

And life will show you,

No,

This is not how it works.

And you will,

Therefore,

Experience your own resistance.

And that is the active karma.

And by interacting with it,

You will gradually find out how things work in this new environment.

It's just like,

You know,

When we move to a new country,

For instance,

Or a new city,

Things might work differently from what we're used to.

But that new country or that new city will not adjust to us.

We have to embrace that culture.

We have to change.

You know,

We have to become more like them,

While still staying true to who we are.

And that is the balance we're all trying to find in our journeys.

It's using that karma to both adjust to the universe,

But at the same time becoming more true to who we are.

Often,

You know,

When we move to a bigger city or a bigger place or a new country,

We learn more about ourselves in the process.

We might become more of a full human being,

Discover talents,

Discover like what we enjoy in life that we might not even been aware of in the city or the town that we came from.

It's like that.

Karma does not represent punishment.

It simply represents what we have not yet learned and how we keep tripping over our own feet as a result because we've not gone into the swing of things.

It's a one-way adjustment.

When we think that,

You know,

Life is punishing us,

We're not seeing the opportunities that life is presenting because it's always about the opportunities,

Always seeing how life can become richer,

How you can become a more full,

Present individual,

How you can understand more about your journey and become more aware of existence.

When we focus on our suffering,

We think that we're being punished.

But once we start waking up and we relate to the journey and we can see that,

Oh,

This is happening over and over.

Every time I learn something,

A new door opens and I will have to confront my own resistance again.

And then I learn,

Then I grow,

Then I master it,

And then I move on.

I think it's important that we learn to shift the way we think of karma as a concept because many of you have misunderstood it.

It is the journey in itself.

It is the environment.

It's the whole landscape.

And by relating to karma,

It's simply the distance between what you currently believe and what is.

There is no such thing as good karma or bad karma,

And you can also understand that you can't possibly create it.

You can't make it because everything you ever do will give you more experience,

And that will make you grow.

Even,

You know,

In your own life,

When you go through hardships,

You do realize that that's what made you grow the most.

And that is the purpose of our journeys.

So it's not about punishment.

It's about embracing the opportunities instead of resisting them.

And the more mature spiritual seeker or spiritual explorer will recognize when he or she is in resistance and say,

Okay,

What is it life is trying to show me now?

You know,

Where's the door?

Where's the opportunity?

And you will go for it.

You will see your assistance and your pain as an indication that you're onto something interesting and exciting that will make you grow and heal,

Give you new insights,

And give you access to new levels of existence.

So understanding karma this way and letting go of the more primitive,

Religious way of thinking about this will change how you see your whole journey.

There is no such thing as punishment in the universe.

There is no such thing as good or bad.

It's physics.

It's math.

I always say that the only two things in life you truly need to learn is what brings you growth and healing and what blocks you from it.

Whenever you grow,

It doesn't matter how you did it or what happened to assist you in achieving just that.

And the same thing when something is blocking you,

It's blocking you.

It doesn't matter if it works for everybody else because all our journeys are unique.

Your karma is unique to you.

And therefore,

In these times we have to be free.

We have to experiment.

We have to explore.

Because what will make you grow and heal might be very different from what will make the person next to you heal and grow.

In modern spirituality we have to grow out of these one-size-fits-all belief systems and embrace that we are all on different journeys.

And therefore we need to understand the essence and the spiritual principles and apply them to our own journey.

Karma is one of those basic principles that we need to understand in order to be fully present to our own journey and to track our own growth.

Because you can fully learn to understand when you're growing and when you're healing,

Not just in the moment,

But also throughout your journey.

And you can learn to make your choices based on what promotes your growth the most and also choose to let go of whatever stops you from it,

No matter what it is,

No matter if it works for everybody else.

And that is the intelligent way to manage your karmic journey.

Karma is essentially all the potentials,

All the knowledge,

All of you that you've not yet discovered because you misunderstand too much.

The journey is about releasing and letting go of all these misunderstandings so that you can embrace truth,

Reality,

Life,

And yourself for what you truly are and for what life truly is.