We are karma, we keep experiencing the same pain by repeating behaviours and looking outside of ourselves for the cause of our strife. It's is in that pain that we have an opportunity to accept the wrong thinking that has created the situation. Change careers, move from one city to the next, leave your partner and find a new one, change religions and yet there we keep coming up against the same challenges within different circumstances, the same relationship pains with different partners, the same business mistakes with new ventures. We blame karma or outside persecutors yet we are the victim, the persecutor and the rescuer. We create the web and only we can untangle it. Untangling the web, the cycle of karma only happens when we use the pain of the situation, the loss, the sadness as a sign.
The sign is telling us to stop, and look for the wrong thinking and assumptions that have led to this situation. We are in the most part reaping the results of the seeds we have sown. More often than not we are mourning the loss of a projection or attachment to the way we wanted things to be or the way we think people should be, behave or think. Instead of seeing the nature of things, people, life as impermanent we hold onto a blink of time and project it for eternity.
By projecting a constant state, an attachment to the way things should be we miss the true nature, beauty and flow of our lives and existence. Self love, true love and acceptance of our own beautiful nature extinguishes the need to project, to attach, to look for ultimatums, constants, security in the impermanent. Wrong thinking has no place to form roots where there is self love and love of our true nature.
The absence of wrong thinking extinguishes the root cause of the karmic cycle and removes the need to learn or experience the same pains and challenges over and over because the lesson is complete. Struggle, pain, loss, remorse, anger and defeat are all saying "stop" be still, be silent - observe and listen.
When you discover your projection, attachment, unfulfilled desire and prejudice... Let it go, bless it as it leaves and then say to yourself with great unconditional love "I am free."
Excellently articulated. Though many of us understand that we ourselves are the causes of suffering, it is not easy to change the recurrent patterns unless we make ourselves hollow and empty everyday through meditation.
This last line, it just nailed it -
"When you discover your projection, attachment, unfulfilled desire and prejudice... Let it go, bless it as it leaves and then say to yourself with great unconditional love "I am free."
Dear Shane, it seems you have summed up the whole philosophy of life in just few words. I had to read 4 times to understand the depth of your thoughts. Socrates said - "unexamined life is not worth living." We are bundle of karmas. What we are today is a result of what we were thinking or doing y'day.
Truly when things are going right. You are not at peace, broken hearts, broken relationships, lost friends....its a time to Stop and think. Think where are you going, what are you doing. Put your mind in order. Be still and listen.
But how can I be sure that I will not again become victim of my new thoughts? What if a person starts spinning wheels again and again with new thoughts and gets entangles in same vicious circle ?