Understanding the Nature of Karma as the Seed for Our Soul’s Evolution

Posted On May 7, 2021 / Written by Dr. Linda Gadbois

The idea of Karma has been greatly misconstrued over the years due to a fundamental lack of understanding as to what its design and purpose is and how it functions as a form of “soul seed†for life. Many have been taught to think of life in terms of separate and random events that take place, seemingly without any correlation with each other. If something unfortunate happens, someone remarks saying “it must be your karmaâ€, and of course bad or hurtful situations are the ones most commonly pointed out as being due to karma, whereas good ones are thought to be “luck†or good karma, dividing it even further into “good and badâ€. It’s as if we’re either being punished and getting back what we deserve, or we’re being rewarded somehow for good behavior. We can’t seem to help the tendency to view our life in terms of a series of separate and often unrelated events that we imagine have nothing to do with each other. Yet, if we look at the most fundamental laws that govern all of nature as the basis for any “life-cycleâ€, we can realize that everything comes into being as a “seed†and “egg†that contains all the information for that being in its latent state, which is then systematically activated in a synchronized fashion as a process of growth, development, and becoming.

The entire essence that gives something all its innate characteristics, both mentally and physically, is inherent in the seed, and each latent aspect is brought into an active expression through a dynamic process of “cause and effectâ€. The outer world acts to stimulate and call forth what’s latent within us, and we begin developing it through the dynamic that ensues as a relationship with that same aspect in another. Not as “this action produces that effect or reactionâ€, where it then stops, but more of a rhythmic movement between complementary aspects of the same characteristic where the effect or reaction produced by an initial cause, then becomes the cause that produces an equivalent reaction. It then moves back and forth in a synchronized fashion as an interaction that escalates and amplifies the character trait being expressed. This back and forth movement of cause and effect, action reaction, forms a self-perpetuating system that’s also self-sustaining.

We’re always provoking a specific type of reaction in everyone and everything around us through the attitude we display as our normal behaviors. We co-produce our experience of reality with others based on how we interact as a relationship we form with corresponding aspects of ourselves in them. We act to first bring out specific aspects in them which are then mirrored back to us as our own projection, allowing us to experience ourselves “through†them. Our inner feelings, thoughts, and emotions vibrate at a specific frequency that acts as a filtering mechanism for “sorting out†the elements inherent in the outer world, using only a handful of selected aspects that we then use to reconstruct a personalized version of reality that corresponds to our thoughts about it. Reality as we’re capable of knowing it is subjective in nature and formed through our ability to perceive it. All perception is formed out of our mental paradigm and always comes as a mirror image of ourselves being projected on a larger scale that’s all-inclusive.

We only “see†in everything what matches our beliefs and expectations about it, and we interpret all activities and events to give them whatever meaning they have as a way of creating our own experiences. We are always using our “mental paradigm†as a holistic model to first project, stimulate and bring out the same properties and characteristics in everything else, and then shape our perception out of the “selected†information. We all form our paradigm initially out of our conditioning as memories, values, beliefs, preferences, and the character traits “in us†that have been developed through the dynamics played out consistently in our family situation, where we played a specific “role†in that dynamic. Whatever role we begin playing in our family pattern, forms the “story†we begin telling ourselves about who we are, how other people are, and what life is about. We are not just conditioned to the role we begin initially playing as a child, but to the entire pattern of the dynamic, where we begin relating to different roles in the same dynamic as we grow and begin maturing.

The role we played at seven, when we were a child, changes when we become fourteen, twenty, and thirty, where we begin relating to the parental role in the same overall idea. This is why children who were abused in some way tend to grow up to become the one doing the abusing. And as adults, we abuse others in the same way we were abused, because we’re still perceiving and functioning through the same dynamic. As we begin participating in the “theme†being played out by our family dynamics, we become identified with that theme as a behavioral pattern, and it forms the story we begin living as a means of knowing who we are, while also forming all kinds of natural (unconscious and automatic) behaviors because of it. These natural attitudes and behaviors developed in us as a child serve to keep us acting out the same patterns by both initiating them through unconscious behaviors, and maintaining them in different ways through all the relationships we form as a “way of being†in every area of our life.

Because we are primarily in our subconscious mind as a child, our initial programming is largely unconscious in nature, which means we form natural behaviors around it that we’re only partially aware of as we start becoming adults. What this means is we not only readily see the story of our conditioning in others and everything around us, but we also act to provoke the pattern into an active state by bringing out the necessary qualities in others for them to “act it out with usâ€. This all comes as our natural way of interacting with the world around us. We don’t realize what we’re doing because it’s our natural way of being, and we don’t even realize we’re doing it. These unconscious tendencies, innuendos and insinuations demonstrated through our demeanor and how we’re being and acting, serve as what you might think of as a “sifting process†for stimulating others to play out the dynamics with us that are ingrained in us. This is how the principle of cause and effect takes place as a rhythmic cycle through our perception as an energetic interaction. It’s not “this behavior or that behavior†which we imagine as being a random or independent act that forms karma, but the coherent state out of which our entire perception and experience of reality is formed in a completely natural way.

Through our initial conditioning as a child and young adult our paradigm as a holographic model is formed based on what parts of our character have been brought into active expression and developed through our family and social dynamics, and what parts remain dormant and undeveloped. As we mature and grow and we begin moving into new situations as we adventure out into the world, we still maintain and nurture our basic perceptions and beliefs about ourselves, and we attract to and form relationships with people who are conditioned with the same tendencies and who will play a role in acting out the same dynamics with us. While situations and events that are diverse in nature serve to facilitate our growth by stimulating and bringing out new aspects of our character that are often unfamiliar and even unknown to us and therefore require us to develop ourselves in new ways through the relationship we form with them.

Unfortunately, we tend to view change as scary and something that’s very uncomfortable and to be avoided at all costs, usually equating it with loss of some kind, and as a result growth tends to come most often through situations we find very challenging that cause a form of personal crisis to ensue that forces us to change. Or it comes as a tragedy that involves an extreme sense of loss that diminishes us with an overwhelming sense of grief that we can’t seem to move past, or something traumatizing that shatters our life and sends us into a downward spiral that seems chaotic and uncontrollable. Otherwise we choose to remain in our comfort zone, safe within our own sense of familiarity and in being able to predict what tomorrow will bring with a fair sense of accuracy, and we float along in our life living out the same habits and rituals and, as a result, never really change or grow. We just repeat the same patterns born out of our conditioning and replay the story formed out of the same group of memories we consistently replay in our mind as a way of thinking about things and knowing who we are.

Memories as a Theme for our Life

This same principle of the mind (paradigm) actually being a holistic model as a single entity, is also true of memory, which of course is also produced by the mind. While we can think we have all these different memories about things based on different events and how we experienced them in different ways, upon closer examination we can realize that all of what we perceive as being unrelated or random events were actually orchestrated through our perception and then absorbed back into our mind “through†our experience of them. We first use our mental paradigm as the means of perceiving the events of the outer world, and then we create how we experience them as the means of synthesizing them back into the same mental model that produced them as a modification of the memory itself, which acts to upgrade and evolve it. Our “perception†is formed out of our “model†as a “coherent stateâ€, which means a dynamic series of what’s called “perceptual filters†are always at play in determining what we see in any situation and use to form our experiences, and, of course, what we don’t. Our model is first used to filter out the information inherent in any situation and then use only the “selected parts†to construct a “new whole†as an interpretation that’s unique to us, and provides the means for “experiencing ourselves†through or as a whole self-constructed outer reality.

Upon further examination you can also realize that the only “actual memories†we have in terms of the ones we continue to replay and live out of throughout our life were the ones that had a strong emotional impact on us, and therefore “shaped us†due to the story we began telling by how we interpreted them to give them the meaning they had. We can further realize that we tend to use the same handful of memories to continue to create out of by consistently replaying them in the present as a means of forming the same type of interpretation out of which we create more and more of the same type of experiences. This is because these are the memories we have used to shape our identity out of. Certain events served to shape us as a person and formed the “main theme†our life took on as we became an adult. These memories that we continuously replay and live out of, are not only the template we use to structure and interpret our life in the general sense, but also as the means of shaping ourselves as a person by how we come to identify with our own story about ourselves and our life. We use these experiences as the means of “knowing who we areâ€, and how the world operates accordingly.

The emotionally impacting experiences formed what we can think of as an “internal representation†that has a theme inherent in it as “meaningâ€. We created our experience of the event based on what we decided it “meant about usâ€. Due to the fact that most of these events took place in our family dynamic and immediate environment, they all formed the same idea as a generalization that we used as a means of processing and interpreting all events and activities that were of a similar nature, making them out to be about the same thing. The meaning we gave our own self-created experiences formed the theme we then began identifying with as we grew older, and we shaped ourselves to be the main character playing the lead role in that story.

As we create experiences out of dramatic events, we associate and relate to our own self-made experiences, and form our identity out of our own creation. The meaning our life takes on is based out of what emotions we are experiencing due to the nature of the event. As a child we haven’t began developing our intellectual, reasoning mind to help us put things in their proper perspective, and so all of our initial memories are formed out of our emotional reactions and have no rational basis. These irrational emotional ideas form the basis for our mental model out of which the “reasoning mind†of our intellect is born, grows, and evolves as a correlation. By the time we become adults we’ve already established the premise for our identity to evolve out of based on how we used our imagination to form the reality of our most dominant and frequent emotions. This reality formed out of the emotions of a child in an attempt to make sense of what was happening and why, that we continue to live out of as an adult, is what’s referred to in spiritual texts as “illusions†(false realities) that become delusions because we shape ourselves and our life through them.

Due to the fact that we don’t realize the true nature and origin of our own memories, or the fact that we are the ones who actually created them, we see them as being true about us, and therefore “realâ€. Because we believe they’re real and can recall them vividly based on the emotion we were experiencing at the time we created them, we continue to use them as a form of template for producing more and more realities and experiences of the same nature. And by continuing living out of the same group of memories, we keep ourselves locked into the same emotional states. As we grow into our “thought-life†as teenagers and young adults, our habitual emotions continue to shape our perception and serve as the means for interpreting our experiences. The thoughts formed out of our emotions merely act to create more and more imaginary realities of the same kind through the internal dialogue we form as a way of using one part of ourselves to talk to another part of ourselves. Allow yourself to notice that you’re always using your conscious mind to talk to your subconscious mind, telling it how to view an idea so that it fits congruently into your ongoing story about things. Our thoughts are always running in an automatic and habitual way as a means of explaining, describing, and forming a narrative around things that serves to fit them into our mental model in a way that makes sense and constructs a consistent experience of reality.

What you want to notice about this process as an equation, is that it’s all formed in a harmonious and cohesive way as a growth process that’s always evolving and expanding on a primary idea. Our primary idea about our self and our life forms a theme as the nature of what becomes our life story, and our “identity†is shaped through the “telling†of that story. As we’re born into life as a soul within a correlated personality, the conditions, circumstances, and initial relationships and dynamics of our life activate, bring out, and develop certain parts of us, while other aspects of our character remain latent within us as “potential†for future development. While we can clearly say that we’re initially shaped by others and the circumstances we’re born into, you can only develop in someone what’s there in its latent form waiting to be developed through a “live interactionâ€. We’re all born into this life with the inner nature as characteristics that have been developed previously and attained as the memories born out of our deeds and actions. Our initial life situation and family unit establishes and set the stage for a continuation of all our previous experiences as memory of ourselves while in different personalities and life situations.

Our Karma Sets the Theme for our Life in Motion as a Continuation of the Past

As we move from one life to another and reincarnate into a new personality and situation, we bring the same character traits as memory of our “self†(soul) we created in the previous life and act it out again in a new and varied way in this life time. This is very easy to understand by simply observing how your memories formed in this life shaped you as an individual, and provide you with a thematic template for creating present and future experiences to be the same nature as the past. Notice how it is you use only a small handful of memories from your past by continuing to replay them in your imagination as the means of living the same story about yourself and the way life is, to create in the present as a continuation of the past, and as a way of predicting the future. You use your existing memory as an accumulation of similar experiences as the means of forming your expectation of future events as possibilities of the same type and kind. The principles that operate within your current life to form memories of yourself through your own creations, where the past becomes the basis for the present as a continuation, and the present becomes the means for creating the future, is the same ones that operate in all of your lifetimes.

As you go into any new relationship allow yourself to notice that you’re always using your memory of your past relationships to look for the same traits, qualities and behaviors in the new person. You form your expectation of the present relationship based on your experience of the past one by anticipating more of the same thing. This is why we always seem to end up in the same “type†of relationships with the same “type†of people, and we play out the same “type†of dynamics as our previous ones, with only an added twist or slight modification to how the same idea plays out. No matter what relationship we form it ultimately seems to leave us feeling the same way. It’s like . . . “new face, same feelingâ€. No matter where you go, there you are. And the really interesting thing is that only some become aware of playing out the same idea over and over with different people, and instead believe how the relationship goes is based on the other person.

Memories, like our mental paradigm and character, are not fixed as permanent or dead constructs. We evolve our memories each time they’re recalled based on the relationship they form with everything else and the situation or circumstances we’re using them as a mental filter for perceiving and interpreting. This is because memory, like the mind and soul producing them is a living entity that’s always in the process of evolving itself into new formations based on what it combines with. A memory formed around 7 to 10 years old, and recalled when your 15 or 16, is adapted to your level of maturity and understanding, and modified to fit with whatever it is you’re using it to think about and compare. The only thing that remains consistent about it is the general idea it represented as a theme based on the meaning it had for you. We have a whole system of memories that we use as the means of providing us with an instant interpretation of any new situation or idea based on association.

As we encounter or enter into something new our mind instantly searches our memory bank for any idea of a similar nature, instantly references it, pulls it up, and uses it as a perceptual filter for comprehending the new and similar situation by shaping it in a way that makes it “mean the same thingâ€. Our mind works by the “law of conservation†and only expends the energy necessary for creating by giving us a means of instantly interpreting and assessing any new situation. This is how we not only form all of our normal perceptions of reality as a whole, but also form all new situations and ideas to fit our existing model in a way that’s congruent and cohesive. As we modify an idea to fit our model, that same modification upgrades and evolves our model as a new variation. When we recall a memory as a perceptual filter for applying to specific situation, it’s modified to form a new variation of the same idea by the adjustment to our mental state, and haw it has to be modified to fit the new situation in a logical and meaningful way. So as we reshape our outer world to fit within the confines of our inner world, we evolve it into a new possibility for reality, and the absorption of the experience we create modifies and evolves our model by accommodating it. We’re always evolving ourselves based on our own manifestations, and how we act on those manifestations to adjust them to fit new situations that form new variations. Evolution is based on adaptation to new situations that form unique modifications that still hold true to the original idea.

One of the easiest ways to understand this is by having a conversation with someone else who was a part of the same event as you were as a child, and simply listen to how they remember it. Not only will the event itself be different in terms of how they recall the actual situation and what took place, but what was going on and what it meant to them will be almost entirely different than yours. Sometimes it can seem so different it may seem like you’re not even talking about the same thing. This is especially true of siblings, parents, family members, and close friends. While we have a tendency to think that the same events meant the same thing to everyone involved in it, this is never the case. And also allow yourself to notice that when someone else recalls it in a vastly different way than you did, that your first inclination is usually to argue or try to correct them, or convince them that your interpretation was the right one. If you refrain from arguing that point, and instead just listen to their entire story about it, it’ll give you great insight into the individual nature of experience, meaning, and memory.

This will show you that each one of us is not only forming a completely unique experience of the same thing, but then act to evolve it in a completely different way as they go through life based on how they consistently apply, adapt, and modify it. Allow yourself to also realize that your most predominant memories of an emotional and significant nature, aren’t based on what actually happened, but on your state of mind and the meaning you gave them as the means of creating how you experienced them. This same process of taking what exists as a whole memory or 3-D model and evolving it based on how you adapt and modify it congruently to fit new situations and life circumstances plays out also through reincarnation as a continuous process of growth and evolution based on the relationship formed through new series of combinations that are dynamic in nature.

Healing Karma and the Nature of Redemption

Another grave misconception about karma comes when we view it as lessons to be learned and reducing it to a psychological process as a result. There’s really no such thing as having someone else “heal us†of our perceived karmic issues, because it’s not a single trial or behavior or tendency that’s producing it, it stems from our “whole mind†as our paradigm, which is born out of our character. It’s only transformed by evolving our paradigm to a new way of being and perceiving. The lesson involved in karma is in realizing that we are the one, and the only one creating our experiences and shaping our character according to our experiences. We only change our outer world and the theme being played out by recognizing how it is we’re producing it, both through unconscious feelings, motives and behaviors, and consciously by the meaning being used to form the basis of the story we’re always in the process of telling by living it as a reality.

Karma usually stems from patterns we’re repeating habitually from a primarily unconscious state born out of our formative conditioning. It’s a “cause and effect relationship†we form with our “self†(same mindset) in everything else. Whatever character traits we possess in a well-developed state (which means they’re always active and expressing to create our perception), forms our perceptual filters as the lens we look through as a means of seeing those same qualities and traits in everything else. As we perceive them, we’re also forming the demeanor and behaviors of them as our physiology, and energetically we’re projecting them onto and activating them in everything else. Once we activate them all around us, all activity as an interaction is formed out of them to produce a joint-reality. One of the easiest ways we have of knowing what’s secretly active in our very presence, is by what traits and activities we consistently bring out in others, and the type of dynamics that play out as a result.

The problem comes when we don’t realize this, and we imagine we have nothing to do with others and how they behave towards us or treat us, and instead we imagine that everything is being done to us. We fail to comprehend that we’re perpetuating our own reality through a relationship of cause and effect. For example, a person who forms a life-theme of “not being good enoughâ€, will unconsciously produce the behaviors and tendencies that cause others to perceive them as not being good enough. They’ll literally instigate the perception that brings out and causes the other person to think they’re, once again, not good enough, or they’ll interpret any number of behaviors, no matter how well intended to “mean†they’re not good enough. Being “not good enough†becomes the theme of their life, and even when a situation that provides contradictory evidence that they “are†good enough, they’ll either interpret it in a way that feeds the feeling they secretly harbor, or they’ll outright sabotage it by unconsciously producing the behaviors associated with it, forcing it as a conclusion.

Someone who is afraid of success, for whatever reason, will either knowingly or unknowingly sabotage and produce the events that consistently ruin their chances for success. Even though there’s a part of them that knows they’re doing it on purpose, another part of them is justifying it through their belief that they can’t handle being successful. There’s always an interaction going on between different parts of ourselves as a collaboration for producing a consistent version of reality out of our beliefs about our self and our relationship to everything else. To resolve the karma involved is to realize and come to terms with the truth that we’re actually the one doing it to ourselves “through†others and how we set-up the circumstances of our life as our very perception of it, and then facilitate the activities that ensue from it by how we behave as an interaction.

Life is a School for Gaining Knowledge of Ourselves through Experience

As we finish one life and bring it to a conclusion, all our experiences as memory of ourselves attained in that life are absorbed into our soul’s essence as a kind of summary. They’re all synthesized into a single coherent state which becomes the “karmic seed†for the next life. This isn’t an exact process in terms of “an eye for an eyeâ€, but rather proportional in terms of meaning and what type of experiences we naturally form out of the meaning as a feeling about ourselves that we give things. We create through patterns that form a coherent whole, and just as we can play any role in a dynamic, and are consistently switching back and forth between complementary roles, sometimes instigating and provoking it, and other times on the receiving end of the same pattern, whatever we “put out, we get back†in the same measure. Whatever we cause through actions of some kind, which is then perceived as being the cause and produces a corresponding effect in us, causing another action that also produces an equal effect, and this back and forth movement between opposite poles of the same idea repeats indefinitely until we’re able to realize that we’re the one doing the whole thing. We’re both the cause and the effect in orchestrating the events of our own life.

The Nature of Redemption

We are never only conditioned to one role in a behavioral dynamic, but to the dynamic itself, where we can play any role in that dynamic based on how we’re associating with it, and what role other people take on in playing out the same dynamic with us. Due to the fact that this pattern is played out both consciously and unconsciously, we don’t always have a direct awareness of how it is we’re playing other roles. This is also often due to the fact that when we play the complementary role in our conditioned pattern, we tell ourselves a different story about it that makes it seem different, or justifies our right to be that way. So the same behavior “appears different†to us when we’re the one doing it based on what we’re telling ourselves about what we’re doing and why.

So based on what role we’re playing, we relate with that role which has a whole different story and perspective to it. A child being abused by a parent, for example, is conditioned with the behaviors and tendencies that cause the abuse, and plays the role of the helpless victim, yet as they grow and become an adult, they begin associating with being the parent in the same dynamic and become the one doing the abusing over the same behaviors and tendencies being displayed by their own child. When they’re doing the abusing, they tell themselves a different story about it that makes it seem different and justifies their right to be that way. At one point they’re on the receiving end and having it done to them, and in the next, they’re on the giving end doing the same thing to another, with the common denominator being the behavior that originated as being the cause. Our memory of being criticized and berated as a child due to certain tendencies we openly expressed becomes our reason for criticizing and berating our own child as an adult and parent. We mimic the behavior being demonstrated and done to us. We do unto others what was done unto us, because we’re imprinted with the “whole patternâ€.

Redemption comes in stepping outside of our unconscious tendencies altogether and becoming aware of what we’re actually doing, why we’re doing it, and how it is we’re doing it. It comes in realizing we’re not the “soft-ware†of a computer, but the “hardware†that’s running the programs through a prompt that activates and sets an operation in motion that results in a “reality†that we then form an experience out of. We can only break unconscious patterns by becoming aware of them while also realizing and owning our part in creating them. As we wake up within our own unconscious dream, we can begin directing it from a conscious and self-aware state. We don’t heal our psychological wounds from within their reality by rehashing them over and over as a means of trying to see something new in them, but by transcending them altogether through awareness. Not by trying to correct an error or turn a wrong into a right, but by observing our own inner process in order to realize its all being created and maintained by “usâ€. We’re the common denominator of all our experiences. Not as our conscious or subconscious mind, but as our “whole mindâ€, which utilizes and encompasses both of them as a means of creating itself as a reality in order to experience itself as a particular type of person.

It’s not the events themselves that shape us as a person and soul, it’s how we create our experience of those events, and then identify with our own creation. Once we realize that the outer world is a reflection of our own mind and mental paradigm, and that we only recognize the aspects of it that we’re aware of and have no problem owning, while not recognizing the hidden aspects being projected by our subconscious that we deny having and therefore disown, we can begin using it for the “self-awareness tool†it is. Once we realize that anything or anyone that we form a strong or adverse reaction to is actually a complementary role in the same pattern and necessary to instigate it and set it into motion as a reality that’s comprised of unknown aspects of ourselves, we can begin refraining from reacting while turning our attention inward to connect with that same idea within us as a feeling associated to a memory.

By looking at the memory associated with the reaction we can become aware of our own hidden traits that we’ve judged inappropriately and denied having as a result, and we can begin learning how to integrate them into our paradigm by finding an appropriate expression and use for them. There’s no such thing as a bad trait or emotion, there’s only an inappropriate use and way of expressing it that’s destructive somehow and makes it seem bad. By finding a healthy and beneficial way of expressing it, we integrate the fragmented part back into a coherent whole, and we no longer notice it in others and it no longer serves to provoke us into a reactive state where we go unconscious. Karma is formed when we create out of a primarily unconscious (or semi-unconscious) state as a reaction to our own creation, where we don’t realize that we’re actually the one creating it. When we’re able to find an appropriate means of expressing fragmented and disowned aspect of our self, we bring them back into a coherent whole where when we’re a part of the same situation, activity, or interacting with the same type of person that provoked a strong reaction in us before, we see it in a “matter of fact wayâ€, and it no longer stands out or effects us. We then lose interest in it and it fades to the background of our everyday life and sets the stage for other types of experiences.

Once this occurs, we move out of mental fragmentation that poses different parts of ourselves against each other, where we’re created in an unconscious way by our reaction to others and the events of our life, and we can resume our true role as our own creator. We can begin deciding in a moment by moment way who we are and how we’re going to be because we’re no longer pulled into a constant state of reacting. By becoming aware of our self as our internal processes that are producing our external experience of reality, we cultivate a sense of inner peace and calm, and become much more thoughtful and deliberate in our actions. We can begin making decisions for our self and utilizing our will to create our experiences in a more desirable and beneficial way. And in doing so, redeem ourselves from creating our life from an unconscious state, and truly become responsible for our own creation and begin evolving ourselves to a higher and more conscious state of awareness and being.

Dr. Linda Gadbois