Paying Off Karmic Debt

      Debt is not just financial, it can also be karmic. “Karma refers to the energy created as a result of your actions and relationships during your current and past lives. Karmic debt means that something negative happened in the past that must be addressed in the present or the future before you can continue to enjoy your life fully.”  Not quite. Not all karma is formed from negative circumstances. Some of us experience good karma. I like this definition better: “It is said that all the action-reaction-responses that we experience in life are from the force our karmic debt accumulations (karma quotient). These are said to include the results of all activities that one does in any state, whether in knowledge, ignorance, or by chance, accident or otherwise. In other words all work, activity or energy debts are karmic (action) debts. This necessarily means that to balance out the accumulations of action-reaction, the individual consciousness needs to 'reincarnate' since the results of the actions cannot balance out in one lifetime.”

      Lately I have been doing an accounting of my karmic debts. For about a year I have been experiencing tough losses due to actions such as abandonment, rejection, and death. My accumulation of karmic debt is reaching critical mass. There have been too many good-byes and not enough hellos. To be fair, I have had my share of good karma too, but it has been fleeting. How much karmic debt does it take before I can file for karmic bankruptcy?

     Maybe I should just take out a karmic loan. If I do this, I wonder what will be asked for collateral. Can I borrow on past good karma to lessen the negative karma debt I am experiencing now?  Will doing an act of repentance absolve me or will I carry this forward to future lifetimes? God (sorry, Buddhists don’t believe in God), I hope I do not have to experience this year again in this or another lifetime, otherwise I am converting to Rastafarianism. Some powerful ganja would at least temporary obliterate some of these intrusive memories, plus I kind of like Reggae music.

     

     

          When karmic debt incurred by others toward me comes due, it would be my preference not to have it paid in installments. Call me avaricious, but I am uninterested in codependently waiting for others to partially comprehend their karmic lessons. I want the debt to be paid in full to eliminate further temptation for me to exact payback (ex-Catholics see this as divine justice) which would then create another round of karmic debt.

      

       Please pass the ganja, my head is hurting from thinking about all this karmic debt.

      

      

My Vocational Apocalypse

 Everyone has a bad day at work once in a while. Mine has been going on for years. Political correctness, protecting one’s turf, and appearing indispensable when nothing of real value is being produced, are the top skills most admired in my workplace.  

      Because I work in government, the incompetent people in power hire their friends or their friend’s friends. No matter whom they employ, the despots at the top won’t hire anyone who they perceive will threaten their deluded veracity or impeach their thin veneer of credibility. Amazingly, in my workplace if one gets demoted from management your pay grade does not decrease. Thus, one is behaviorally rewarded for ineptitude. Where is Sarah Palin and the rest of the Tea Party when you need them?

  

What is the solution for the depressing tie that binds? The creative use of imagination. We are all told to fear. Fear economic disaster, fear never again working, fear being impoverished, and fear the unknown. Fear keeps up hypnotized to the paralyzing acclimation to crazy workplaces, dysfunctional management, and job dissatisfaction. Years ago I lost everything in a divorce that spiritually, emotionally, and financially left me bankrupt. Along with my marriage, I lost my house, my way of being, and hope. But I am still here. How was I able to rise above devastation? Through having faith in my ability to imagine and create something from nothing.

 We are rarely told to have faith. Faith in taking a risk, faith in believing one can create a better destiny, faith that life can renew itself with more fulfillment. In the death knell that is being sounded at my work, I am reminded the universe is moving me toward syntropy-‘the tendency towards energy concentration, order, organization and life.’ I am on the road to find out.              

Skeleton Woman

   Right now I am rereading Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ classic book, “Women Who Runs with the Wolves”. Originally it was published in 1992, quickly becoming a best seller. For years I have considered this a reference book, reading it in different developmental stages of my adult life. The stories Ms. Pinkola Estes chose for this book, as well as her interpretations, are absolutely brilliant. Even after twenty-two years, its sage wisdom is the source of never ending inspiration.

     My personal favorite chapter is, “When the Heart is a Lonely Hunter”. This chapter is about love, intimacy, and the foibles of overcoming roadblocks to the union we are all seeking. Ms. Estes tells the story of Skeleton Woman, an Inuit woman who defied her father and was thrown into the ocean where she became a skeleton at the bottom of the ocean. Though most fishermen avoided the haunted inlet where Skeleton Woman was in repose, one uninformed fisherman fished the bay and accidentally brought Skeleton Woman from her watery grave. What ensued was a snagged skeleton appearing to chase the poor fisherman across the inlet. After being chased by this bony nightmare, he dove into his hut with her caught in his fishing line. Eventually his fears of the Skeleton Woman dissipated and he untangled her. Calmed by his own empathy, he fell fast asleep. In his sleep he cried a tear that hydrated her. As he slept she took out his heart, drummed up a new fleshy body with it, and returned it to him repurposed. They awoke intertwined in the morning, lovers who overcame their personal injuries, fears, doubts, apprehensions, and reality.

     Her analysis of this tale is spellbinding. She dissects each nuance rendering heartfelt sage wisdom. One of my favorite quotes is when the fisherman looks upon Skeleton Woman with compassion instead of fear. Ms. Pinkola Estes’ interpretation is: “For the naïve and wounded, the miracle of the psyche’s ways is that even if you are halfhearted, irreverent, didn’t mean to, didn’t really hope to, don’t want to, feel unworthy to, aren’t ready for it, you will accidentally stumble upon treasure anyway. Then it your soul’s work to not overlook up has been brought up, to recognize treasure as treasure no matter how unusual  its form, and to consider carefully what to do next.”

     How often do we stumble upon treasure and throw it away? How many of us have felt the cruel sting of not being enough or being too much? How many of us even feel treasured? This is thought provoking stuff.

     My other favorite quote concerns the addiction to perfectionism in relationships. Even when we and our significant other are ‘perfect’, life is not. “If lovers insist on a life force gaiety, perpetual pleasuramas, and other forms of deadening intensity, if they insist on sexual ‘Donner and Blitz thunder and lightning, or a torrent of the delectable and no strife at all, there goes the Life/Death/Life nature right over the cliff, drowned in the seas again.” Further, “The desire to force love to live on in its most positive form only is what causes love ultimately to fall over dead, and for good.”

     This particular story is an amazing illustration of how much impatience we have with the process of forming a bond with another human. “Our own secret hunger to be loved is the not-beautiful. Our disuse and misuse of love is the not-beautiful. Our dereliction in loyalty and devotion is unlovely, our sense of soul-separateness is homely, our psychological warts, inadequacies, misunderstandings, and infantile fantasies are the not-beautiful.” For the fisherman to see past the bony scary Skeleton Woman and untangle her while feeling empathy is where the connection of love begins.

     “Three things differentiate living from the soul versus living from ego only. They are: the ability to sense and learn new ways, the tenacity to ride a rough road, and the patience to learn deep love over time.” Thank you, Ms.Pinkola Estes for telling the story of our lives.