We solidify
our habitual ways of dealing with the world outside ourselves. What do I mean when I say ‘we solidify’ given
that I am already speaking of habit which can be described as a solidified
behavior? In order to answer that I need
first to make it clear that my experience tells me that everything is one to
the point where our inner being manifests in our outer being – even to the
point where our inner personality will often manifest through our physical
body. This is the reason that the
apostles, when they saw a man blind from birth, asked Jesus if his blindness
was from his sin or a sin of his parents.
Behind that statement is the assumption that the sin, certainly not a corporeal
event only, could and would manifest in the physical. There is also the assumption that things from
our past lives can cause physical limitations in the present.
My purpose
here is not to get into a debate as to the veracity of reincarnation but rather
to use that example in order to clarify an idea – it being that non-physical attitudes,
events, etc. can cause changes and conditions in the physical.
This is true
even in the way that we perceive ourselves.
In the act of self-perception, that which we perceive, even though it is
us, is, by the very act of perceiving, outside of the one doing the
perceiving. How we view ourselves,
(which is never perfectly accurate), causes changes within us, often giving
rise to new and marginally independent internal constructs, patterns of
behavior or, more importantly, thought which is a nice way of saying that they
take on a life of their own. These will often be ways of dealing with the world
that are less than optimum behaviors. These
behaviors that we take on can, and often do, become habitual because they
satisfy a particular ongoing need of the ego.
When you fill
a particular need in this manner with anything but a perfect God solution, when
the solution comes from within your own ego, it is, by its very nature flawed
to one degree or another, often very flawed.
You make compromises within yourself to build a given defense and, as a
result, somewhere else within you there is a crack that forms in your internal egoic
structure. That crack can manifest in
your behavior, in changes to your physical body, into changes that you may
carry over from a past life where the manifestation may be congenital. But most importantly that crack can manifest
in the very structure of the personality that you view as the core of who you
are.
This is one
example of how karma can play out. It is
karma in the sense that karma is not necessarily a static thing but a dynamic
response on the part of the universe to a constantly changing and adapting creation
of ours. We tend to use the word karma
to cover different kinds of punishment for many types of ‘negative’ behavior
and that is certainly one form that it takes, especially when our thoughts,
words and actions give birth to the law of unintended consequences, (many of these
consequences we label as negative karma with cause).
In another sense we might think of our personalities, those strengths
and weaknesses that we see as integral parts of ‘who we think we are’, as the
stuff of the universe that fills those vacuums that we create. In that case our outer personalities are in a
constant loop as we continually adjust who we are which, in turn, causes us to
continually adjust how we see ourselves, (albeit never very clearly), which
causes us to adjust who we are, etc..
We need to interrupt this negative,
self-sustaining loop within ourselves.
We need to create new thought forms for ourselves that reflect a
different interior paradigm. This is a
kind of ‘fake it until you make it’ approach.
It takes changing our momentums.
Much of what we think of as the contours of our personalities are
actually momentums that we carry that have solidified into personality traits
that have come to determine our behavior.
We have more
control or authority over all of this than we think. But if we are unaware of the fact that we
have that control we will not, of course, exercise that control. Even when we are aware and take an active role
in changing our paradigm, we will find that we are working against established patterns
that have a great deal of momentum. That can be very challenging and very
difficult.
