Episode Transcript
We Americans enjoy a wonderful and powerful way of life, but internally and in relationships we may wish for better. Join me as we look beneath the surface and gain insights to transform every aspect of your life. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and this is the Spiritual American. Hello everyone and welcome to the Spiritual American. My name is Dr. Anne O'Hare, and I'm your host. Today we're gonna return to karma. It's gonna be a short discussion. We talked about a lot of different aspects of karma. Actually, we started with the red pill of karma. We continued with Karma 2.0, then we talked about finishing Karma. Today we're gonna talk about elevated karma. Interesting. So I'll give a little review before we get started of the different aspects that we talked about already. So what does karma mean? Karma just means action. The word karma means action. So very simple. And we've heard like, you know, the physical, you did this and you're gonna get this back, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. We've discussed several times over in the podcast episodes and also in the Raja Yoga Foundation course, which you'll find in the playlist that karma is deeper than just actions. It's also about thoughts and feelings and attitudes and the way you are being and your intentions while you're living your life. That affects what comes back to you or your circumstances. You're also affecting others or you're creating environment for others also. So in the first episode of Karma, we talked about the red pill, which is to take a hundred percent responsibility for your life. That's the first thing. Second thing is to take responsibility for your feelings. The third thing was finishing karma, which is learning how to take responsibility for my feelings and change my behavior such that I'm not bringing the old stuff forward anymore. That's finishing karma and you know it's finished. When the situation changes, my mind gets quiet and I'm actually able to create a new habit or create a new behavior that's more in alignment with where, who I am, who I wanna be, and what I think about myself and what I think is right. So today we're gonna talk about the nuts and bolts of actions. That there's different types of karma. There's positive karma, negative karma, neutral karma, and elevated karma. We're gonna go through those briefly. Why is it important to understand karma? You know, our environment is so important. We have ourselves and we have our thoughts, but our environment is very, very important and our environment is created and impacted by our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Like I said, our attitudes, the way I live, the way I think it's affecting me all the time. So it would make sense to understand how this all works so that I can have a choice in the matter. Sometimes we talk about karma and say that karma is a law, but it's a machinery. It's like the law of gravity. It operates all the time. Like if you, if I drop something on the floor, I wouldn't say, oh, gravity is evil because it took my, took the thing to the floor. Sometimes we think of karma as something like a punishment. It's not a punishment. Whatever energy I'm generating, that's the environment that I'm creating and that's what's gonna give me back what I gave. So let's talk about this positive karma. Positive karma is very simple. It's a karma that it's an action that. Has an, has a needed or positive impact. So somebody falls down and I take their arm and I help them up. Positive karma. I take care of myself every day. I feed my body good food. I exercise, I, you know, take care of my health. I take care of my family, I take care of my bills and so forth. Those are all positive actions. You could also say positive karma could also be charity. Things like that where you give money or you give your time to help someone who has a physical, there's some kind of physical deficit that you're trying to make up for that's positive karma. So it's kind of, that's kind of makes sense. Negative karma is the opposite. That's the kind of actions that cause sorrow. So we don't wanna cause sorrow. And it's subtle because we could be doing negative karma in our own mind. One of the most interesting examples of this is for me, before I started this Raj Yoga practice, I was one of those people who didn't take care of myself. Like I would be taking care of everybody else. Sound familiar? Especially the women, right? Sound familiar? I'm constantly thinking about everybody else, but I'm not thinking about myself. And one day it occurred to me. I'm taking care of everybody else and I'm not taking care of myself. How is that good karma? And I was like, wait a minute. It's not good karma. It's like if you're entrusted with an animal, let's say you're supposed to take care of somebody's dog for a week, and then you don't feed the dog. It's not good karma. You're supposed to take care of the thing that you're supposed to take care of, right? So we have a body and a mind and a feelings and a human being to be taken care of. I heard this on a talk show recently. Somebody said, it's like we got assigned a human being to take care of. Kind of like that. So when I'm not taking care of myself, that's also negative karma. If I'm angry, if I am acting out, if I am being selfish or insensitive, that's also bad karma. But again, bad meaning creates sorrow. Not bad. Like I am bad because there's reasons that we do everything right? Like we were talking about this, the other episode where you don't, don't judge yourself just on actions. It's good to understand the different kinds of actions and the impact that they have, but don't judge yourself just based on actions, because all the actions and attitudes come from somewhere and we can figure it out and change it, and that's part of the process. So then we have neutral karma, and in this case, an ordinary life. I would say neutral karma would be like driving my car, washing the dishes. Brushing my teeth. You could call that self-care. You could call it positive or you could call it neutral. Like, okay, I am getting dressed. Like it's not positive or negative, it's just like daily life kind of activity. Part of this is just what we do. There's no positive or negative charge to it, but then elevated karma. So what's elevated karma? Before I mentioned the positive karma of charity. Maybe charity could be seen as positive karma, but would that be seen as elevated karma? So I'm gonna make the distinction here that elevated karma is whatever actions I'm doing when I am soul conscious, when my awareness is that I am a soul. And my nature is peace, so nothing stops. I'm still here, the body is still here. The actions are still happening, but subtly, internally, my awareness is you could say elevated, you could say pure. You could say subtle, soul conscious. I'm aware that I am a soul. When I have this awareness, the mind is quiet. Actions can still happen. There's not a lot of thinking going on. There's not a lot of emotions going on. There's purity of energy, there's purity of heart, there's purity of, let's say, feelings in that moment. And so in that moment of soul consciousness, whatever actions are done, are elevated actions because they're not generated from those lower energies. They're not being generated from ordinary body conscious contexts. Like all those things we were talking about before, the conditionings of life. Whether it's gender, culture, politics, education, no education, age, illness, profession, specialties. Whatever comes with this life that I have is all little identifiers that I have inside myself, but I don't have to identify with any of them. And in those moments when I'm not identifying with any of them. I know that I'm a soul. Any action that's done in that awareness is elevated karma because it brings with it a vibration of the soul, vibration of the essence of being, of consciousness. How can I practice this? In meditation, we're practicing that. I'm a soul. My nature is peace. We're trying to start creating experiences. I'm a soul. My nature is peace, and in that peace I'm connecting. I am so my identity, soul, not any of those other identifiers and peace. So I'm having that experience in Raja Yoga meditation, the object, or in spirituality even the object is to increase the amount of that experience or increase the frequency and increase the duration of those experiences. It's funny, maybe in the past we would've thought that meditation is about sitting for hours and hours and hours. And maybe that's good, but I'm gonna say that we still have to live. We still have to do actions. We still have to be out there in life. But is it possible to change my awareness, my fundamental awareness of who I am while I'm doing the dishes? In Raja Yoga we also say to be in remembrance of God. So the other aspect of elevated karma is to be in remembrance of God. God as the Supreme Soul In other episodes we talked about who God is. God is the soul, is a soul like me, supreme soul, living in absolute bliss and peace. God is the ocean of peace, the ocean of love, the ocean of happiness, the ocean of wisdom, the ocean of purity. You could also call Him the source, like people say the source, but the ocean, meaning unlimited, unlimited, silent, peaceful soul. When I'm in that awareness myself, I'm a soul and God's a soul, so I'm in that soul conscious awareness and I'm remembering God. That aspect, that consciousness, any action done in that awareness is elevated karma. Interesting, isn't it? I'm not saying which actions are elevated, it's the consciousness that makes them elevated. When we're looking at positive and negative karma, we're looking at the result. Did that action create happiness? Did that action create sorrow? Did that action not do anything? Those are the. Positive, negative and neutral, but an elevated karma. It's your being. That's that's making it good. You, the elevated being, make it elevated. So let's practice just for a minute. Let's do a short meditation on this and try to bring our awareness into that soul conscious stage. So sitting quietly. Bringing my attention to the center of the forehead, let the body completely relax, and I say to myself, I am a soul. My attention goes to the center of the forehead. The sparkling star is there. I'm looking at the star, I the soul, am gently sparkling, suspended, and feeling very peaceful, very gentle. Absolutely still sparkling star, and as I'm in this awareness, I gently remember, open myself up to feeling the presence of the Supreme Soul. Another point of light, gentle and powerful. This is the most essenceful connection, the most elevated connection. I the soul and the supreme soul, and as I remain in this awareness, I understand that any action through my body while I'm in this awareness is elevated action. I'm bringing soul conscious vibrations into the environment. Those vibrations are supportive and powerful and cooperative with others, cooperative with this body. Cooperative with me. And just gently let yourself feel this peace for another few moments. And now prepare to return. Bring your awareness back into your body. Take a deep breath and exhale. Bring your energy up into your face, like forward into your face. Returning to waking awareness. Move your hands and feet a little bit. And we are back. So the essence of this practice is soul conscious awareness. I'm going to be doing a series of guided meditations coming up soon and recommend if you enjoy the guided meditation to try to have some experiences. There'll be quite a few coming over the next several weeks. So we'll be looking forward to that. So I'll leave it there. Remember, our slogan is Heal, Empower and Serve. And until next time, take care.
