When you hear the word “karma,” what do you think of? For many it evokes a sort of balance sheet. You might imagine past mistakes as debits against you. You see yourself as “ in the red” with the universe and you never know when it will come to collect that debt. Consequently, you might live fearing that a punishment will one day catch up to you when you least expect it. Along the same line, you might also think you can build a positive credit with the universe by doing good deeds. Or maybe you think one good deed erases one bad?
Putting the whole cosmic tally sheet aside, have you ever just looked at the way you are living your life and realized you feel stuck? Have you found yourself repeating behaviors, day in and day out, without change? Gaining insight into such cycles of repetition in your life may actually have a lot more to do with understanding karma than the “balance sheet” model does. With Sadhguru’s help, we can start to examine these repetitive cycles or rhythms in our lives. Sadhguru elaborates:
“If you get into a certain rhythm which is compulsive within you, you will be just a repetition of the past. When it comes to the body, when it comes to the mind, when it comes to your emotions, and the world around you, and your activity, the whole significance of life, the beauty of life, and the efficacy of life, is in just finding the right rhythm.”
“If you listen to the outermost surface of who you are, there will be one kind of rhythm. If you delve a little deeper, there will be another kind of rhythm. “
“There is a very surface rhythm which will find expression in very fundamental needs and compulsions of who you are. If you watch yourself a little more closely, you will see, there is a psychological rhythm, which need not necessarily match with the needs and compulsions which drive you on a daily basis. If you watch with a little more sensitivity, you would notice an emotional rhythm, which is of a completely different nature than your psychological rhythm. If you watch much more keenly, you may notice a certain chemical rhythm, which could be more connected to your emotional cycles than anything else. If you watch with much more awareness, you may notice a certain energy rhythm, which will not have anything to do with any of these things, but it causes everything else. But if you look deep enough, there is no rhythm, it’s utter stillness.”
“There is nothing to do about one’s stillness. Just to take a dip is all you can do.”
“Your energies, your chemistry, your emotion, your thought, your body, your desire, and the karmic rhythms – these things need to be worked at, otherwise you will be just a repetition of the past. Nothing new will ever touch you.”
“So, to find the rhythm, and consciously to change the rhythm, to make the rhythm more profound, more complex, or more simple, above all, to be able to consciously change the rhythm, not to be like a broken record that you go on singing the same rhythm all the time, all the time, all the time…The easiest way, or the simplest way, to break the rhythms which are compulsive within you is, to start doing things that you don’t like. And after some time, you will see, your likes and dislikes are essentially your making. They are not some God-given laws as to what you should like, and what you should dislike. It’s got nothing to do with the object of your liking, or the object of your dislike; it is just your compulsiveness which draws you to certain things, and repels you from certain other things.”
“These are simplest tools, maybe drastic, but if you don’t want to waste time in your life, that’s the way to go: to just get up in the morning, and do what you don’t like.”
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