Thought, Self-Creation, and the Nature of Karma
Karma is the Habituated State of Mind that forms all of Our Perceptions
Many people believe that karma is something that’s incurred only through actions of some kind, or that it’s okay to think about something as long as you don’t actually “do” anything. Pure thought is subtle (invisible) and seemingly inactive on the material plane, while feelings, sensation, and emotion are active forces that serve to stimulate us physically. We imagine that we can think without actually creating any consequences to our thoughts as long as we don’t act on our thoughts in the material sense. Thought is always individual in nature, each person having their own unique thoughts in response to any form of stimulation, whereas emotions are more universal in nature in the sense that we all experience the same basic type of emotions. Yet, in reality, thought, as a subtle force, underlies and forms the basis for all of our emotions and actions. Thought is action on the spiritual plane, and forms the pattern as an idea that becomes enacted on the material plane. To think is to literally create in the most basic sense of the idea. It’s not enough to control our behavior and what outward activities we engage in, we have to also control our thoughts which forms the basis for our activities. Thoughts form the images and patterns of material form and processes, and become the template for producing an analogous outer reality through corresponding behaviors..
Thoughts that we dwell in and repeat consistently become habitual (normal), and form the basis for our karma. As we think, we become our thoughts in form, and we view our life through our thoughts and mental impressions as our “perceptual lens” that reformulates neutral elements in the outer world to match the thoughts (thematic patterns) of our inner world. As we think we perceive, and through our perceptions we reshape (recompose) the outer reality through our interpretation of it. Thought is a natural force as a vibration that has a structuring mechanism inherent in it, that reformulates light (material substance) through sympathies and antipathies, reshaping it (changing how it appears) to be of the same nature as the thoughts. Our thoughts form an idea as a mental impression or internal reality out of our paradigm (vibratory structure as a model) that becomes the perceptual lens that we look through to see the same thing outside of us that’s inside of us. This mental impression as certain type of thoughts form internal representations of the outer world that are superimposed over it as our personal perception of it, and become a form of “organizational template” that’s used to form a subjective experience in place of objective facts. In this way, we ultimately make everything “about” us by building it into our story about things.
Our internal reality of thought, organizes and forms how we experience the outer material plane, and serves to shape us because we are always one with our thoughts (the one having our thoughts), and “identifying” with our own self-created experiences. As we think and create, we’re always spawning, integrating and assimilating our own thoughts to form a greater overall matrix and becoming the summation of our thoughts as an evolutionary process of becoming, which forms our individuality as our thoughts. Thoughts are being propagated and transmitted through the astral plane or mind-field of the Earth, as universal thoughts that are adapted and modified into the individual thoughts of humanity or mass consciousness, and are picked up on by other minds of the same nature that can accommodate and utilize the same “type of thoughts” into their mental model in a congruent manner, in a subliminal fashion as thoughts that just come to us out of the blue. Whatever is of the same vibratory frequency as we are, or within near proximity, we resonate with and naturally absorb and perceive them as being our own, because they’re the same type of thoughts we normally think.
Thought also exists in universal form, as archetypes that are metaphorical in nature, and act as a prototype or model for using to create our own personal version of the same idea through an imaginary process. As we draw in and are able to conceive of an idea that’s of a universal nature, it’s steadily modified through a series of adaptation to various factors – the paradigm and mental structure of the individual, their level of development and maturity, how the idea is applied to specific conditions, circumstances, and situations pertinent to the individual, how they’re conformed to per-existing beliefs and assumptions, etc. – to produce a unique version of the same idea as a personalized version. Our karma is not only produced by our actions, but by way of our own thinking, which elicits complementary emotions and is what ultimately forms the basis for all of our actions. Our karma is the natural vibratory structure of our mind and how it naturally expresses to create our reality
Thought coming into the material mind in a pure, unadulterated form, has no emotional content or feeling (sensation) active in it, though it does contain feeling and emotion in its latent state, and acts to produce feeling as complementary sensations and emotions as its equivalent or that are of the same nature. The emotion elicited by thought, amplifies that intensifies the thought, producing the actions of the thoughts as our behaviors. All behavior is emotionally driven, and all emotions are produced by our thoughts. What we feel and think, we ultimately do, and what we do is the outer expression and activity of what we think. The mind is the soul, which in its spiritual aspect is the summation of our personal thoughts which form the basis for our perceptions and actions. These thoughts as mental impressions imprinted on our mind, that also produce the activities, experiences, and memories of the thoughts, is our karma as the patterns that determine the nature and course of our life events and what it is that we remain attached and connected to. As we think we become our thoughts and perceive the outer world through our thoughts about it, and we systematically produce the reality of our thoughts by changing how things appear to us through the story we tell ourselves about them.
We can work to develop ourselves as a soul-mind by learning how to willfully control our thoughts, and intentionally employ thoughts that will reshape our character, replace other thoughts of an undesirable and destructive nature, and align ourselves with new ideas that will serve to transform us making us able to connect with and produce a new kind of experience of reality. But we have to be able to do this while we’re still experiencing old karma, disciplining ourselves to correct our own tendencies, until the old karma runs its course, creates the experience it was designed to create, and energetically burns out. Then, the karma created by the new way of thinking can begin to take hold and transform our life experiences by way of them. So we’re always required to pay forward in terms of creating new forms of karma, knowing that they will only take effect in terms of our outer circumstances and situations once the effects of the old have passed. In some cases, as in relationships, changing our karma may only come through leaving the relationship, because we entered those relationships through “shared karma” as behavioral dynamics that the relationship will continue to hold us to, not allowing a new way of being. This is especially true when only one person in the relationship is changing and growing into new ways of being, while the other is still perceiving and acting out of the old karma..
The temptation to relapse involved in changing comes from the fact that just as our thinking and perceiving produced the outer events of our life, once the effect is produced outside of us, it then acts as the cause that stimulate in us more of the same type of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in response to it. So a self-perpetuating cycle formed as the cause that produces an effect that becomes the cause for producing another effect that becomes the cause . . . . and so on, has to be neutralized. We have to break the cycle by recognizing how we’re being effected by our own life circumstances and situations, and resist the tendency to think the way they naturally cause us to think, while consciously choosing instead to employ other thoughts and not react to the emotional charge they habitually produce. This forms the basis for what we think of as having to believe in something even though it’s not happening and therefore self-evident, while knowing that it will come, because it operates by law, and is therefore always true as a kind of guarantee. The only real question becomes, how long it will take for our old way of thinking and emoting to dissolve and exhaust itself, no longer held together through a cooperative effort, and start manifesting as the changing conditions of our life circumstances.
Many of us have been taught to use our creative power by trying to change or manipulate other people and the outer conditions of our life, which is working on the effect and not with what’s causing the effect. This is operating against law, which is why it never works. In order to change the outer world, we have to change the inner world of the mind and individual character that’s producing it as a natural expression. As long as we remain the same in terms of our thinking, perceiving, and the emotional states we live out of, we continue producing and experiencing the same type of ideas as thematic life patterns over and over. Our thoughts form the patterns of our life as a theme that weaves together all the areas of our life in a congruent and consistent manner. Because of this, no matter how drastic the changing conditions and circumstances of our life, we simply recreate the same type of ideas using new elements. This is because the mind organizes any of the outer elements into the same pattern as a reality that produces the same type of experiences in a faithful and automatic fashion.
The Golden Rule – what we sow, we also reap, what we put out comes back to us ten-fold (self-perpetuating as a cause and effect relationship). As we act on the world and others through our thoughts, we also act on ourselves by living out of the reality produced by our thoughts and gaining a sense of ourselves through our own self-created experiences. Our projections (reality created through our perceptual lens) are reflected back to us, and what we send out as our imagined thoughts (inner reality), produce a corresponding effect, that then becomes the cause of our thoughts, and we live out of the reality produced by our way of thinking as a rhythmic cycle. This self-perpetuating cycle as a cause and effect relationships forms our karma, determines our life experiences, and how they serve to continue shaping us as a product of our own creation. This cyclical effect can go on indefinitely, and is only changed through self-awareness, realization, and the disciplined use of will to change the very nature of our thoughts and our character, while still being stimulated by the return of previous thoughts tempting us to relapse into our old way of thinking. This takes commitment and devotion to a process with no immediate return, while disciplining ourselves to develop mental fortitude and moral stamina to persevere against the odds of our own making.
Integrative Health Consultant and Spiritual Mentor