The topic of karma is an important and a frequent one in many spiritual traditions, and for a good reason. As karma has such a major influence on our lives, it is very worth spending time studying it from a practical point of view, within our own day-to-day life. In most spiritual literature, karma is known as the law of action and reaction, or of cause and effect. This means that the actions that we take (or that we don’t take when we should have taken them, such as when not helping those in distress) will have direct consequences on us later on. When the actions that we do are good for ourselves and for our fellow humans, then we can say that we will receive good karma. An opposite to that, bad karma is caused by actions that are done out of lower emotions, such as anger, revenge, malice, fear, or any other egotistic inner state that end results in doing harm to our fellow human beings and to ourselves. It has been said that we reap what we sow – our daily actions are directly related to our future circumstances and situations.

A lot of people have seen for themselves that the law of cause and effect is a very real one, regardless if they look at it from the strictly scientific perspective or also from the spiritual one. We have all observed that when we are mean towards one another, the Karmic Law will hit us with a reaction, just like a boomerang comes back to us when we throw it.

Karma is a complex subject, there are layers and layers to its workings, but the more we study it in our life, the more we get to know it. This is even more so when we do the inner work, because working on the consciousness and on eliminating our egos, we are then at the same time working on releasing karmic bonds.

One of the surest ways to deal with karma is by transcending it, which is done by eliminating the egoic causes that create most of the karma in the first place. Nevertheless, karma should not be looked at as something to be angry at, but rather as a stepping stone to higher and higher levels of consciousness.

A lot of our karma is created in our interaction with people. It is so easy to hurt other people verbally by saying words that are sparked by our subconscious mind, by things such as anger, pride, arrogance etc, and what is worse this has become a normal way of life, and many people don’t even know that they are continuously making new karmic bonds.

When we get angry at someone and express that anger, regardless if verbally or by body language or facial expression, we affect other people, and thus new karmic bonds are created. When we put others down, when we have tendency to manipulate situations, or are mean to other people; when we are double-faced or act with spite, or when we use people for our own selfish purposes, this also forms new karmic bonds.

Sometimes, during the course of our life, we feel repentance for what we did, because we understand that the way we acted was not good. This repentance is the first step towards having the karmic tie released, but we should also ask to be forgiven. We should forgive ourselves and ask forgiveness from a deeper part of the person that we caused harm to. I noticed that this process comes spontaneously to people, which means that their inner Being is showing them the steps to karmic release. I believe that this process has a great effect on easing down our karma, or even removing some of it completely as the karmic cords are released.

The way that this can be done is by firstly feeling a deep repentance for what you’ve done. It is not enough to feel guilt, because the latter can come from the ego, from the subconscious. Often time our conscience tells us that we have done something wrong, but this understanding needs to be deepened by feeling repentance – by understanding the error that we’ve done. This type of understanding is coming from our soul, from our innermost Being. Once we feel that, then we can proceed by visualizing the person whom we’ve done wrong, and mentally asking them and their inner Being for forgiveness. We focus on that person, and we see a spiritual depth inside them, which is their Being, their Higher Self, and we ask them to forgive us for what we’ve done. We ask or say whatever we feel that needs to be said at that moment, but usually after asking them for forgiveness, we also ask the Karmic board for absolution, and finally we forgive ourselves too. We understand the cause of our action, and how the latter was done because our conscious will was smothered by the ego that manifested in that moment, and so we’ve done what we were prompted to do.

It is important to understand that we do not justify our actions and put all the blame on the ego; we are still responsible for what we do. However, we understand that what we’ve done was caused by the ego, and we aim to correct this error so that it doesn’t repeat again. It is important to strive to correct our mistakes, our inner darkness that keeps making us create new karmic bonds, because this is the surest way to having more and more karma cleared up and resolved.

This whole thing is a beautiful process of learning – we are hit by karma, but we learn from it, and eventually we see what is going on, we see through this veil and into the reality of life, in which karma plays a big part. We see the lessons given to us, and we notice a type of a divine light that comes from karmic lessons, provided we do not get lost in karmic circumstances, but instead are open for learning from them.

The aspect of releasing karma through repentance and forgiveness is a wonderful one, very much worth looking into. If we don’t feel a true repentance, we can ask our inner Father, our Being, to enable us to experience it, so that we can proceed to asking for forgiveness. And we can also use the same approach when we are the one that was harmed or wronged; we can try and understand that those emotions that are part of the karmic situations are no longer necessary. We can let them go, see them for what they are, and eliminate them. Then we see those people in our lives that did us harm in a new way, as essences who are also in the same boat as us, who also came to this world to learn and grow through karmic lessons. By seeing them in such a way, and by comprehending the emotions that resented and formed grudges, we can then forgive those people, and thus resolve the karmic ties. We can see that the karmic cords that are connecting us to all those people that hurt us (and also those that we have hurt or wronged) are being cut and dissolved.

This is a process of learning and understanding; it can be done by everyone, especially when we are willing to sacrifice our lower nature (the cause of our karmic situation), so that our weight is lifted up, and so that we can continue further in this Mystery of Life.

HDP, June 2020.