Changing Karma
Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Georgina Cannon, author of the new Your Guide to Self-Discovery.
It’s sometimes very difficult to take responsibility for where we are in life. It’s so much easier to blame. Blame your parents, your boss, the weather, your sibling, the bus for being late, your partner, the government, the traffic during rush hour. Or, when all else fails, we blame Karma.
When we do this, we don’t really understand the role and relationship of Karma. Karma literally means “action.” Karma is the law of action, and this law governs man’s consciousness. Karma may differ on the basis of the time factor—past, present, and future. Consequence is the part of the action and the consequence always comes only after the action.
Karma is a concept of Hinduism that explains a system where beneficial effects are derived from past beneficial actions and harmful effects from past harmful actions, creating a system of actions and reactions throughout a soul’s reincarnated lives forming a cycle of rebirth.
Personally, I view Karma like a hand of cards we are dealt when we are born. They can bring us into a life of abuse, joy, addiction, conflict or happiness. How we play the cards we are dealt is
up to us. Like any card game, we can either play to win, or just put up with—and complain about—the hand we are dealt. As corporate guru Stephen Covey said, “I am not a product of my circumstances; I am a product of my decisions.”
Sometimes in spiritual communities we have a tendency to talk so much about love and light that we skirt around the obvious discomforts that come with personal growth.
The fact is that our spirit loves change, but our body doesn’t. It’s set up for homeostasis. It has all kinds of regulatory processes that are meant to stay consistent, like our temperature with its reliable 98.6 degrees and our blood pressure, heart rate, and white cell count (just to name a few), all striving to stay positively consistent.
The body doesn’t like change, and the spirit doesn’t like sameness. It’s a wonder these two aspects of ourselves can even cohabit.
What this means is that our spirit is drawn into newness and growth experiences while our body will often find these things downright scary and seek to avoid them all together. So, to truly grow and evolve, we need to work with the scared, human aspect of ourselves and consistently take committed, courageous action.
In my book Your Guide to Self-Discovery, I talk about how to change Karma. In addition, I have invited other experts, both from the spiritual point of view and the corporate point of view, to bring their expertise into the pages of the book, so the reader—you—can learn to read your hands, your astrology, your numbers, your Enneagram, and how to get messages from your spirit and animal guides. It also helps you understand the benefits and opportunities of being where you are in the birth order in your family and how to interpret your dreams. And much more.
To make effective change in your life, first you need to understand yourself better. And this curated easy and fun book will help you get there.
Being a bit of a personal growth addict, I’ve stepped up a lot in my life, and I used to think that I wasn’t courageous, because when I’d step up, I’d usually be terrified. But eventually, it dawned on me: fear is not evidence that you lack courage, it’s proof that you HAVE courage. Because if you’re not scared in a situation, it doesn’t take courage to step into it. Fear is a prerequisite of courage. You must have fear or you have nothing to overcome and be courageous about. In other words, if you’re not afraid, no bravery is needed. It’s just a walk in the park. No biggie.
In my years of life coaching, so many of my clients have felt the same way—like they weren’t courageous simply because they felt afraid. And of course, as they defined themselves this way, they became less likely to take brave actions. So I want to break two myths right now: First, that spiritual growth should always be easy-breezy and filled with light and love, and second, if we feel afraid when we do something, then we aren’t being courageous. Both of those assumptions are a bunch of hooey.
Personal transformation—especially the big kind—makes you stretch. It’s based on moving into the unknown and the unknown is always harder to deal with than the familiar.
As I’ve already pointed out, you need fear to be courageous. So the more you feel fear and still choose to take action, the more courageous you are. Courage is an action more than a state of being. It is doing what you know you need to do even if it scares you.
One thing that helps me a lot on my transformational path is to remember that although something may look and feel unfamiliar on the outside, our true growth is always unfolding from within us.
Let me know what you think.
Our thanks to Georgina for her guest post! For more from Georgina Cannon, read her article “5 Tools for Your Journey to Self-Discovery.”
