Karma
Dear Friends of Ancient Healing,The newsletter this month is going to begin the New Year with a lesson on the subject of karma. As you know from past newsletters, Zeffi had a retreat in Kerala, India last October that was about exploring and discovering the karma that we pay spiritually while in this body as well as the emotional issues that we are here to understand and accept. It was about learning how we can clear all of the karma of the Body, Mind, and Spirit that is holding us back and not allowing us to move forward, and how to clear our fears, low self-esteem, obstacles, illusions, and our ego.
The definition of karma according to Lama Surya Das, who is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers, and a well known author is stated as: "Karma" is an ancient Sanskrit word that means "causation, cause and effect, conditioning, or action and reaction." In Tibetan, the word for karma is leh, which literally means action. In ancient Pali, the language of the earliest Buddhist texts, the word for karma is kamma, which means "deeds." I define karma as reaction, or conditioning. The idea is that there are no accidents, that everything happens for a reason, even if that reason is not immediately perceptible. All major spiritual traditions rest on the understanding that the universe has a moral dimension and some sense of virtue and evil. The law of karma teaches us that we create virtue or evil, and that we can and do direct our own lives and outcomes—consciously, unconsciously, or, as is usually the case, semiconsciously.
Karma, in other words, is not mere luck. It is a mistake to imagine that one's karma is somehow fated, scripted, or predestined; that we have a fixed future, or that we should feel helpless in the face of karma, somehow imprisoned or victimized by it. "Buddha's teaching is that you are your own master," the Dalai Lama has said. "Everything depends on yourself. This means that pleasure and pain arise from virtuous and nonvirtuous actions which come not from outside but from within yourself."
Zeffi believes and teaches that unconditional love for yourself and others will help to clear your karma. That we all have grown up with expectations of ourselves, either self-imposed or imposed on us by others in our lives, parents, siblings, friends, co-workers and the list can be seemingly endless at times. These expectations can lead to all kinds of issues such as illness, disease, anxiety, depression, unfulfilling relationships, well you get the idea, this list also can seem endless at times. In addition, even the inability to fulfill our own expectations that we dearly desire in our lives can and will be affected.
With giving, receiving, and accepting unconditional love we can shift how we feel, shift the karma we believe that we were born with and were destined to live with. To give and receive unconditional love from the outside world is to see ourselves being reborn again, with no expectations and in this process the clearing of your karma.
Below is the meditation that Zeffi suggests you do on a daily basis throughout the month of January. For this affirmation to be the most effective, Zeffi recommends that you set the timer on your clock to assist you, as you are to meditate a minute for each year of your age. Start your meditation by grounding yourself and then say the affirmation below 108 times. Continue to meditate for the time remaining. Remember to write down the small miracles that make changes in your life. Write down what you have experienced or things that you observed.
Suggested Meditation
- Make yourself comfortable in a place where you will not be disturbed during your meditation.
- Wear comfortable clothes. Place your feet flat on the floor and do not cross your legs or arms.
- You may want to play some soothing music to help you relax during your meditation.
- Close your eyes and focus on your breathing.
- Take twenty deep breaths while visualizing above your head a bright white light that goes from the top of your head and runs down through your spine, down through your tail bone and out of your tail bone into the earth beneath you.
- Imagine the light traveling down; down through the earth until it reaches the center where the white light becomes the fire at the center and becomes an anchor, anchoring you to Mother Earth keeping you grounded, safe, and secure within yourself.