He’s going to get his ‘karma’, we say.
But what is karma really?
And is it a moral thing?
Simply put, we could define ‘karma’ as cause and effect.
So it is more ‘scientific’ than moral. Hit one billiard ball into another on an even table and, knowing the angles, you can calculate where the second one will go.
Karma is just like that.
Of course, in the everyday world, you’ve got thousands of variables, so doing the calculations isn’t simple, but even if we always see karmic logic as though through a mist, it’s nonetheless there.
Shout angrily at someone, and you’ll typically provoke a reaction. Open your heart to another person, and you’ll encourage a different one. The exact nature of these reactions mightn’t be easy to predict, but energetic forces have been unleashed, and inevitably, they will have an effect.
Of course, this is all simple enough. But we can go deeper.
For instance, what caused us to shout in the first place? What caused us to open our heart?
And if everything is causal, do we have free will?
Or will karma inevitably enslave us to our past?
Are We Marionettes in the Hands of Past Energetic Forces?
To better understand karma, let's take a simple example. Imagine you're a pack-a-day smoker who hasn’t had a cigarette for several hours.
You feel the craving, the nervous tension, and everything within you aches for a smoke.
Now, you could ignore the feelings. You could go for a run or read a book or do any number of things, but truth is, you’re being energetically nudged to act in a certain way, and chances are high you'll give into this temptation and smoke a cigarette.
Similarly, with habitual actions. If you always get up and brush your teeth first thing, most likely when your alarm goes off the next day, you’ll do the same.
Nothing outrageous here, but it gets a touch more interesting when it comes to our emotions. For here, our past also tends to nudge us in certain directions.
For instance, if your partner leaves their socks lying around the bedroom even after you’ve asked them countless times to put them in the laundry basket – even after you’ve gotten upset in the past – then most likely it’s going to bug you.
What’s more, it’s going to bug you a lot more than the first time they did it.
Because this time, it isn’t simply one pair of socks. Rather, it is the accumulated memory of dozens – or maybe even hundreds – of socks irritating you.
It’s a pile of socks. A mountain of them. And their collective weight is something you are not going to tolerate!
No, they urge you to give your partner a piece of your mind, to tell them straight what you think of their slovenly habits.
Now, admittedly, you might choose to stay calm and constructive, but if you’ve gotten upset each time they have left their socks lying about before, then you’ll probably get upset again this time.
And in many ways, that is what karma is: it’s past energetic forces creating a heightened probability that something is going to happen.
It is past energetic forces pushing you to act in a certain way, forces that are hard to resist.
Energetic Residue
To be even more precise, karma (at least where it involves our personal thoughts and actions) could be seen as the influence of past energetic residue stored in our body (energy field) that pushes us to think and act in certain ways and prods us towards certain emotional states.
Buddhists had a word for these energetic forces stuck in our body: samskaras.
And the more of them that we have, the less free we will be.
Each one will nudge us in a certain direction until our freedom is bit by bit reeled in.
Samskaras create emotions within us.
These emotions lead to thoughts.
And those thoughts then urge us on to actions that reflect them.
What’s interesting is that if we pay attention, we can actually feel this energetic residue in our body.
Typically, we experience it as a kind of tension – one that can be felt in particular parts of our body (for instance, our chest, throat, or solar plexus).
And it is our attempt to ease this tension that makes us want to lash out at our partner over the socks and smoke the cigarette.
Of course, we could resist these temptations, but when the tension builds inside of us, it isn’t easy.
We want to release it, and taking action almost always seems the best way.
The Path to Freedom
So the way out of this karmic bind – as you may already have guessed – is to remove the energetic residue (samskaras) left in our energy body.
For the energetic residue left in us is what you might call our ‘buttons’.
And when those buttons get pushed, we feel a surge of emotion that clouds the way we see the present and urges us to action.
Action that often isn’t in our best interests.
But if we remove those buttons, then we don’t get the emotions and, consequently, are free to choose our actions.
This sounds nice in theory, but the question remains: how do we get rid of ‘energetic residue’?
For many years, I presumed Reiki would do the trick.
With all of the energy I could feel pouring into my body when I practised it, and with all the good I could feel it doing me, it was hard to imagine that it couldn’t fix everything!
But what I learned over the years is that while it was incredible for general things, very specific ‘hurts’ (like relationship scars, social humiliations, etc.) didn’t necessarily clear away.
Yes, my increased Reiki-calm-and-balance might hide them, but when the right trigger arose, my buttons still got pushed – buttons that spurred me to react in certain ways.
Now, admittedly, I’m talking about the ‘healing with the hands’ component of Reiki, and the complete system does have things like the ‘precept meditations’ that can clear energetic residue.
But even so, those meditations don’t tend to be ‘targeted’ at specific events from your past.
So if you want to work on the time someone you loved belittled you in public, the time your parents denied you love, or how your ex-husband emotionally abused you over a period of years, then you’ll want a new tool. One that specializes in clearing out the energetic residue left by specific events.
And what I have discovered is that the best tools for this are usually meditations.
Specific meditations that can act like surgical tools to remove energetic residue and leave you feeling light and clear.
For energetic residue won’t magically disappear by itself.
Time – despite the saying – doesn’t heal everything.
In fact, typically, it doesn’t heal a brass razoo.
All it does is bury stuff.
And yes, it can bury stuff so deep that it feels as if it no longer exists, but find the right trigger (be it a look from a new partner, an old pop song, a fragrance, a word, or whatever) and you’ll feel a surge of emotion and realize you had never truly healed from your old hurt.
Of course, the consequence of this is that over the course of your life, you will probably have stored up a near-endless amount of energetic residue.
But the good news is that you can apply the Pareto Principle (or 80/20 rule) to get rid of it.
In other words – according to this principle – 20% of issues from your past will contain 80% of the energetic residue.
And, actually, in my experience, it is probably more like 90/10 or more. So if you work on the big issues, the juicy hurts and unresolved emotions from the past, then you’ll clear out and dissolve most of the energetic residue that triggers you.
Make a List
If you want to free yourself from your past, I suggest (as a first step) making a list of all of the past incidents you can think of that have left some energetic residue.
These are the events which, when you think about them, cause an emotional reaction in you.
Typically, you’ll experience this as an energetic contraction/tightening within your body.
Look especially for relationship issues, for a lot of energetic residue stems from them.
Then, once you have a list of items, meditate on each one to dissolve the energetic residue.
If the process is successful, you should be able to think back on any incidents you’ve meditated on and find that you feel emotionally neutral about them.
This is a sign that the emotional residue has been removed/dissolved, and it means that this piece of your past will no longer propel you to think and act in certain ways.
Keep working with this process, keep dissolving the items on your ‘energetic residue list’, and bit by bit, you’ll regain your freedom.
You’ll dissolve your karma and step into a liberated world where the baggage of your past no longer determines what you feel, think, and do.
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PS Hopefully, you have some meditation tools for dissolving past energetic residue. But if you don’t have any or would like to learn more, consider joining me for my Redesigning Your Energy Body meditation course on March 22-23.
Over the weekend, I’ll teach you powerful techniques for clearing energetic residue fast!
I’ve used them for two and a half decades, taught them to hundreds of students, and am, even today, amazed at how powerful they are.
To find out more, click here.
