Good Karma Ends Fear

Om shanti. 

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Many people associate the word karma with fear because karma is generally thought of as something bad. As in your karma is going to get you. I think we have a song like that- Instant Karma is going to get you. One of the musician groups of the seventies and eighties. But as you saw in the words that were played across the screen karma means action. Now fear is the term that is used ambivalently. It is said that a God-fearing man is a good man. Should one fear God? Or perhaps why should you fear God?  I don't think that one can fear someone that you want to be close to.  I think that people want to be close to God. You also see in different situations that people call out to God when they are the most afraid. It is a strange relationship that we have with fear. I think that everybody likes to please someone. You like to please your parents. You like to please your friends.  You like to please your neighbors. You like to please your children. But yet, people-pleasing is considered a serious mental illness. We have an ambivalence with pleasing, an ambivalent relationship with fearing. I think also, an ambivalent relationship with karma. Pleasing people by flattering them would be bad karma. Right? Why would that produce fear? If you want to please people, you'd figure out that the one thing you would have to do, is to please them. So what will they do? They will not be pleased. Then you have to try harder to pleased them. But there is a game going on. And the game is that if I don’t show you that I am pleased with you then you become my prisoner. So that would be bad karma. You can see that it is a little bit complicated. Fear of what? What is it that people are most afraid of? There are many things that people fear.

 

Think about it for a moment what is the thing that you fear the most? Because it is said that whatever it is that you are the most afraid of that will surely happen. So is it a good idea to be afraid of something to that extent that you make it happen? Would that not be bad karma? Do you think?  So you can see is that it’s quite a tricky subject. Good karma is exactly what?  You saw on the screen that you do Karma through your mind. How does karma through your mind work?  Karma through your mind would be a thought. What exactly is a thought and where does it come from? Does a thought enter your mind or does your mind creates a thought? Or does your mind capture a thought, entertain it, savor it, and then act on it.

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What is really going on because the mind is invisible. Everybody has one but no one's ever seen one. Have you ever seen the mind? Sometimes you say I have something on my mind or some people have something in their mind. Some people say I can't get this song out of my mind. You sing songs and it won't go away! But sometimes you are playing it by thoughts. Sometimes your mind is absolutely blank especially when you're taking exams. Is that right? So the mind is such a strange thing but yet it is the seed of so much. In fact we would say that whatever is going on in your mind turns into Karma. A thought is a kind of energy. How does thoughts come? They come sometimes as words, sometimes they are visual, sometimes they have feelings, sometimes it's a hunch, sometimes it's a fantasy. If you want to create something it has to start in the mind. They say wars begin in the minds of men. That it's an emotion, it is a concern that is directed against someone.  Peace and love, harmony, beauty, creativity, magic. The magic of harmonious relationships between people, this also begins in the mind. Creating thoughts is something meditators do. And all of us who are Brahma Kumars and Kumaris are meditators because we are working with the power of thought in order to create a certain sort of karma.

 

So I want to talk you about what is karma. It's very good to know about it so that you can apply that knowledge to make things happen.

 

Sometimes you may say, I feel powerless to get anything to happen, that I want. How does a person become so powerful that their thought becomes a reality?

 

What kind of power? What kind of thought? If you have a negative thought that comes to your mind then there is a war going on inside because it is as if there are two people in there. One of them says 'I want to do this that'. And the other one says, ' don't think that that is a good idea. Better not do that because if you do that there are consequences'. And the other one says 'well I don't care, I'm going to do this because I feel strongly about it'.  Have you experienced this? How many people are there inside your head? What kind of people? These voices, where do they come from? These are in the mind. And sometimes people say that empty mind is the devil's workshop. Have you heard about that? So they want you to keep busy. Yet if the mind is silent, a deep silence in the mind is the seed of extraordinary creations. Like you see this beautiful piece of sculpture beside me. This is a piece of original art and from our sister Impy.  And this started in the mind then it became a reality and then depending on the light its reality is enhanced. Beauty, originality begins in stillness, in silence. When you're meditating you're bringing your mind and what is your mind? Your mind is an extraordinary faculty of your very soul. Everyone is conscious. Everyone is actually consciousness. When consciousness moves that movement is called the mind. The mind is not really a thing.  It’s a movement of consciousness. This is why it is so subtle and this is why no one's has ever seen a mind. A mind is a movement of consciousness carries that carries the essential qualities of the human soul and their opposite.

 

The mind can be beautiful, positive, and perfect. But it can also do the most damaging, the most harmful, and the most devastating thing. What we have is a choice. Whenever a feeling arises within us, where does the feeling come from? Feeling comes from an experience. Your mind reacts and responds.  When you experience something, how do you experience something?  Two ways.  You experience something through your sense perception. You see, you hear, you feel that input through your eyes, and your ears. Your sensitivities immediately impacts the mind and the mind reacts to that depending on its strength. And depending on its quality such will be the reaction. The mind also responds to internal things. Things that arise from your subconscious. Memories, wounds from the ancient past, associations with certain things you perceive externally, trigger ancient feelings. And all of these crowd into the mind creating turbulence. And these come out of your mouth as words, come out of your different body parts as different actions. Everything you say, everything you think, and everything you do creates waves. Those waves go out and they come back to you.

 

There's a law that whatever goes out comes back. There's a very interesting statue I saw, a piece of sculpture in Singapore. There is a picture of a man with a hand so long it creates a huge circle and it comes back and touches him on the shoulder. I thought it was a very good description of karma. Whatever goes around comes around and says 'hey this is the consequence of what you did!' So karma is an extraordinary law that governs action. We human beings we do things and we impact each other mentally in terms of sound, in terms of circumstances. We experience the karma of each other. Imagine if you could hear the thoughts of all the people in Manila! That would be very noisy, probably very disturbing! Imagine if you could hear the thoughts of angels, that would be very sweet, harmonious. Imagine if you can hear the thoughts of the animals in the natural world when they're under threat. How different those thoughts are when the habitat is understood.

 

At this time there's so many of us. So many humans and we have a hard time being in harmony with each other. We have a hard time understanding each other, having a hard time filling each other and so we react to each other and that makes it more difficult. So there is fear. Fear of what someone might think. Fear of what might happen to me. We are very worried about our security. A few days ago I was asked to talk about human security. This is the big thing. The big thing on the agenda of the United Nations at this time. People are afraid for their security.  Economic security,  security of shelter, security of food, security of health, security of my relatives; are they safe as they go to and from their homes. Some people even feel that it is dangerous where they live.
 

Where does fear come from? From negative karma. Negative karma means action that is done in the mind, through the mouth, through the hands, and other parts of the body which arises out of negative emotion, passion. Negative emotion means anger, violence. Negative emotion means I'm going to take what's yours! Greed. Negative emotions means I want to make sure that I look better than you so I'm going to make you look bad. Negative emotion, negative karma. When we do negative karma, it comes back, taps us on the shoulder. We are afraid of that tap.  Now, we don't know how much pure karma we have done. How much negative karma we have done. Do you know?

 

There is a practice that we meditators are taught which I will tell you about. I'm going to tell you some secrets. Is it okay? Yes? So, one secret, is that if you concede defeat in any argument; you can’t see defeat. You accept defeat in any argument, then there will be harmony.  

 

Why would we not want to concede defeat? Because we are afraid that it is not good to not win! When we don't want to concede defeat, our relationships are broken because of some point we want to prove them wrong. One secret says that if something is true, it will prove itself.  You don't have to prove it.  But it doesn't prove itself on your timeline. It proves itself on its own time. So we have to be patient. Let it wait and know that whatever is true will become visible. The stillness, the silence of waiting for that which is right to present itself, is a kind of trust. A trust that everything will turn out well ultimately. It’s a very special kind of faith. And this faith that we can apply, whatever is true, it will show itself. Whatever is going to happen will be very beneficial, makes our fear fade away. Because when you have a doubt and you say “what if, what if it is...but, what if it isn't?' It means that you don’t understand the laws that are operating. Because the most important thing out of all things is harmonious relationships with the other human beings. Don't you think? And so forgiveness is useful in that. Conceding defeat is useful in that. Because the point you want to prove is less important than the relationships. When you win over someone, then later they will try to win over you. When you concede defeat they will know that you have really won. But they will not try to win over you. It's a secret. You can win over someone by force but you have never really won over them. When you make somebody do something using force, using anger, using pressure, this pressure is a kind of karma that goes around and comes back, and will apply pressure on you again.

 

If you win someone's heart it can't be done by pressure. Win someone's heart by love, by truth. But no truth which contains anger. If truth is spoken with anger, it becomes false. It creates negative karma and it will come back to get you. So you can be afraid of telling the truth with force. If you tell the truth with absolutely no emotion, if you have so much patience that you wait until your heart is quiet and cool and you feel neutral and then you tell the truth as it is, with no expectation or emotion, you will be heard and you will be able to convey what you have to say. There will be communication, a communion between the parties. And the outcome of that truth will be in the relationship.
 

Sometimes you create something beautiful. You put in a lot of work.  Many people do this - put in a lot of work. Every parent puts in a lot of work to create their children, to create their children's lives. When you create something very beautiful, very valuable, very good, and someone takes that from you and they mess it up a bit and they put their name on it and make lots of money from it, you may feel cheated. But there's a law which operates. The very secret law.  You do the work someone else takes the credit.  Have you experienced someone taking the credit for your work? Yes? What do you feel at that time? Some sort of resentment, some sort of anger, some sort of desire to take revenge. Is that right? Yes? But you can’t do anything. It's not worth a law suit and probably won't work out anyway. But there’s a law. And the law says if you do the work but someone else takes the credit you will get the power. Do you know that?  What is this power? A very extraordinary power.  You do the work  and if you get the credit for that, it's a small power which is equal to the value of what you did. But someone else takes your work, takes credit for your work and if you respond according to your emotions you do not get any power and you do not get any benefit. You are only in loss and you feel bad for a long time. But if you apply this law and you say 'so be it, let it be'. Knowing that ultimately there is a good outcome, a special kind of power comes to you, a very special kind of power which brings you to a higher level of being in this world. A special kind of power which acts on circumstances and causes circumstances to become strangely favorable to you which seems to be worth several hundred times more than the actual value of what you did which somebody stole.

 

This is good to know because if you know this then you will refrain from the bad karma of taking revenge. When you take revenge, escalation happens. Instead, you take the power. The wonder is that person who took credit for your work, after sometime lets it be known that actually it's your work, so you get the credit anyway plus you got the power.  These good karmas that destroy fear, good karmas that you do knowing subtleties of the Laws of Karma are good. You understand that knowing your everyday emotional response to provocation is actually an automatic trap that puts you unnecessarily into bad karma, that disturbs relationships between humans, and between people than the natural world. It also cuts us off from the Higher Source which we may call God or the Supreme Being, Supreme Power.

 

When you do good karma in the face of adversity, which involves courage, which involves sacrifice, which involves faith and trust,  this type of action - wise action, deep action - opens up gateways and you start to have access where people want to have access. You have easy access. Someone who has easy access to the Higher Power, to the Supreme Being, they act with that power, that Being with them. You feel that One is with me. Not possible to have any fear. Though there may be fearful conditions, you feel that you can easily act with courage. When you do an act of courage, you gain self-respect. When self-respect is not there, we easily become prey to fear. When we keep ourselves close to the Divine Unseen and we take steps of courage based in wisdom, we change our circumstances. We change the atmosphere. We change conditions. And we alter, actually, the state of the world.

 

Many people are very worried about the state of the world. Is it right? Are you worried, a little bit? A person who is close to the Unseen Divine and who knows the Laws of Karma and who works with courage in the face of fear or danger, who has the courage of their convictions, who has that strength -  this person becomes a beacon. This person becomes a leader who takes people out of fear into fearlessness. Take people out of reactiveness into wise action. Slowly changing conditions in the world.  We're seeing bad conditions in the world because Mother Nature is clearly mad at humanity and because of karma. So if you think you can get into an argument with the “Pacific Ocean” , whose going to win?  Not you! So we better make sure that our relationship with the ocean is good because one big wave and that's it!  We better have a good relationship with the air because if we can’t breathe, that's it!

 

So our karma with matter, our karma with nature, the way we use the water, the earth, the bounty of nature, if it is not respectful, if it is not careful, then we have a very good reason to fear. Nature will say 'OK no more food!'  How’d you like that?  Is it right? The weather will say 'I'm not going to cooperate, I'm going to do everything that are opposite of what it's supposed to be and I will make you crazy!' Can you do anything?  And so the karma  of unthinking people has come back tapping us on the shoulder. Yes we have to face this and it makes us think of what's going on and what we have to do. 

 

Very simply, step by step make sure every thought, every word, every action is correct according to the Laws of Karma. I do correct action, I will get the results that I would like. I do incorrect action, I will pay. But another secret I would say is that if you want to do the right thing, it's very expensive. If you want to do the wrong thing, it is no less expensive. So you want to do good, it will cost you. You want to do bad, it will cost you. But there's a difference. When you do the wrong karma it will cost you and you will have nothing. You do right, it'll cost you but you will have something. That is extremely valuable, more valuable than would it cost you to get it.  And therefore you're enriched. And when you do good karma which costs you a great deal, part of what you get in return is the power to do even greater good karma. It is a very valuable investment. So some of these secrets I wanted to share with you because all of us are actually facing quite quickly a lot of consequences of karma. We need to know, okay now what to do? 

 

So I will stop there and thank you very much for your kind attention. Om Shanti.