Question:

I am getting a feeling of missing out. What if this Karma Theory is wrong and I wake up 40 years from now realizing that I missed out on people, places and things that at least gave me short-term pleasure. Now I have to give it all up to develop discipline in my Sadhana for the long-term pursuit of joy which may not come in this lifetime. I recognize that my doubt is a form of dvesha and my feeling of missing out is a raaga. Is there anything I can do about this?

How to develop unshakable faith in this Karma Theory?

Answer:

Have you ever fallen in love? And has somebody fallen in love with you who you never loved? You must have realized that love is love. You cannot make someone love you and neither can someone make you love them. Either it happens or it doesn’t! Correct? Faith is just like that.

Let’s understand Faith in detail.

Faith is the highest kind of Love. It is DIVINE LOVE. Either faith is there or it is not there. Either you have it or you don’t. It cannot be manipulated. It cannot be cultivated. So do not try to cultivate faith.

Instead, use your intelligence to understand what reality is! Then you will see the ‘Law of Karma’ is prevailing in every atom around you. There is nothing that can operate without the existence of this Law.

An intelligent person knows if he puts his hand into the fire, it gets burnt. Putting hand into the fire is a Karma which gives the Karmaphalam of a burning hand. Similarly, any wrong action that you have done in the past, many of them gave instant fruits. Look back into your own past. Haven’t you received instant Karmaphalam? Sometimes saying something bad to somebody gave you an INSTANT punch, a break in that relationship. Hasn’t this ever happened to you?

You have experienced REALITY. Now use your intellect to understand it and come to a level where it becomes your TRUTH! Not because a Guru is saying it, not because Ekta is saying it and not because any other scripture or teacher is providing that Gnyana to you. Let it be your own Swabhava Gnyana come to you by your own experience and your own intelligence. Remember, you will have to fight Maaya in order to experience Reality. And only the weapon of ‘Awareness’ can kill Maaya.

How to increase awareness of what truth/reality is?

One must develop their Spiritual Quotient on this path. To develop Spiritual Quotient, your Intelligence Quotient must be high.

– Use intelligence to keep all your raagas and dveshas away. Why? Because raagas and dveshas tend to cloud your clarity. And you are unable to see the Truth as it is.

For example, I have a dvesha against person A. And even if the person A has just come up to me, is talking a very sensible thing, and telling me something very logically; I will think that this person is wrong again because I am operating from the past memory of Dvesha for this person and the situation. This is the path of the unwise. The wise will put his past raaga/dvesha away and see the truth/reality as it is right NOW. If right now what the person is saying is logical, the wise one will take it at face value. This is just a small example.

Observe your own life. Whenever your raagas and dveshas come up, they cloud your clarity and take away your ability to see the TRUTH AS IT IS. Once you start walking on the path of TRUTH, your SPIRITUAL QUOTIENT increases, in turn, increasing your AWARENESS; which again increases your clarity to enable you to see TRUTH as it is. It’s a beautiful cycle.

So what to do next?

Start working on yourself. Develop your Intelligence Quotient and Spiritual Quotient to an extent that you are able to perceive how you receive instant fruits of Karma which are called Karmaphalam; and how some Karmaphalam comes after a very long time and some Karmaphalam comes maybe after 40/50/60 years; and some Karmaphalam will come from nowhere without a Karma you can link it to and you keep wondering what did I ever do to receive this kind of Karmaphalam.

Observe life as it is! Not as you want it to BE! Not as you want it to NOT BE! When you see life as it is, you will see that everything is Karma. Every breath of yours is Karma. Every moment is a flow of Karma into the next moment into the next moment into the next moment. This river of life is actually a river of Karma that is constantly flowing.

May you come to your own realization. Because only your own realization brings in that deep seated FAITH which can lead you higher onto the Spiritual path. Otherwise, you are always going to be stuck. Stuck at square one. Now it totally depends on your efforts. Do you want to be stuck at square one or do you really want to reach that highest realization? The choice is yours!