Jyotisha Practice

Karma and Causality

Is it possible to adjust the Karmic Script?

"He has made everything right in its time;

but he has made their hearts without knowledge,

so that man is unable to see the works of God,

from the first to the last."

"The term 'karma' literally means 'action', and more specifically refers to the process of cause and effect, where the intention of an agent or being is involved.

So here karma means an intentional act committed or carried out by a being who possesses a sentient nature and who is also capable of having a sentient experience.

...Buddhist texts state that only a buddha's omniscient mind can penetrate the subtlest aspects of the workings of karma, and know at the most microscopic level which specific causes and conditions give rise to which specific consequences.

At our level, we can only recognise that an intimate relationship exists between the external elements of the material world and the internal elements of our mental world; and, based on that, we can learn to detect varying levels of subtlety within our mental and emotional experiences."

So when an individual has “permission” in certain areas, is that “permission” a free gift from the Universe for past good deeds, or will the “permission”, if acted upon, create a new set of karma?

Psychic validation of the permission

Otherwise the emotions that match the action may be in conflict; this can produce internal disagreement and impulsive behavior, and what sounds like permission may be a delusion of mental trickery or fraud.

Every thought is attached to an emotion. Every action carries both a thought and an emotion. The logical thought usually occurs in the form of a sentence. Logical claims are easy to recognize. However the emotions which attend every thought are not to obvious to most people. It is unexamined emotion - not faulty logic - which can so often sabotage the successful execution of self-granted permission.

Permission is revealed not demanded.

Permission is revealed in meditation or reflective thought, which is always a neutral observing state of mind. In a neutral state of mind, permission should be validated to ensure that it is self-generated and not a reaction to other people's judgment, criticism, or anger.

The moment of receiving self-granted "permission" indicates the eradication of superstitious fear = fear of terrible powers which supposedly exist outside the self. If the fear has been "paid down" the natural state of permission, freedom, abundance, and opportunity will reveal itself.

Trust wins over Fear - but slowly

By this I am saying that the natural state of spiritual consciousness is governed by Lord Guru while fear-producer Lord Shani, as powerful as He is to create lawful material structure, is not the righteous lord of truth. So once Shani's lawful karma is completed and the obligation to satisfy the material terms of incarnation (food, clothing, shelter, safety, health) has been accomplished, we finally have "permission" to attend to the higher consciousness. It's important to remember that Permission is earned from within and granted from within.

As Shani's reign of fear is slowly (slooooowly) eradicated while ignorance is consumed by increasing wisdom then the superstition of external restrictions and external punishments is exposed by the bright golden light of wisdom. One creates one's own restrictions and enforces one's own punishments in a state of fear. It doesn't happen overnight, but slowly fear can be replaced by trust . In that state of trust one may grant oneself permission to experience previously fearful things as being newly permitted and newly confirmed as positive and safe. It is fairly easy to see the fear-hope balance in the Jyotisha nativity according to graha-amsha favorable to Guru vs graha-amsha favorable to Shani.

Karma cooks the books

The term 'karma' = 'action' (kri). The word 'karma' is often to connote obligatory action, lawful action, and implicitly 'karma' often = 'reactive' action. Even in the sense of obligatory re-action (and re-re-re-action) karma can be very positive. For example, the karma following upon an act of charity is that, by law, the person acquires credit in the akashic record.

It is simply legal bookkeeping. Acts which benefit others go on the credit side of the ledger and acts which harm others go on the debit side of the ledger while acts which neither help nor hurt will carry no value in either column.

Wisdom = Faith in Divine Providence

Wisdom = having what one needs, when one needs it. Wise permission (bhaga, Guru) is elegantly simple and requires deep trust in the Divine! Negative karma is corrected when intelligence (Surya) outweighs fear (Shani). Generally this happy outcome is the result of pragmatic experience: one comes to see, after many repetitions of misfortune originating in some harmful action of a past life, that one is indeed creating the troubles.

Negative experience is perpetuated by holding a belief that those troubles are required in specific configurations (e.g., one always fails the exam. Mother always prefers the sibling. Etc.)

Expectations Exposed

As soon as the self-consciousness is sufficiently nourished by positive expectations, one may begin to (1) identify and (2) release the negative expectations. If a new level of wise permission has opened because the native has paid off a karmic debt caused by ignorant and harmful action in a past life, that is a very nice feeling of opportunity and lightness. It is slow going at first but soon there is a landslide of sparkling golden permissions!

Fear is a heavy, grey, oppressive energy and when it is lifted there is a light, golden, liberating energy revealed which was there all along and its gloriously happy in the presence of the Divine. So in this glorious enlightened state, one will act. The act is wise. It has consequences of course = karma, but the karmic effect is beneficial as wise actions increase compassion.

The key as always is consciousness of motivation. Most of the time, conscious self-granted permission is the direct result of the spiritually intentional release of fear which was temporarily obscuring the natural entitlement to live well, live free, and serve others with compassion.

Permission is revealed not demanded. However there are emotionally driven compensations masquerading as spiritual permissions, ego-driven false entitlements masquerading as permissions, and immature unwise inadequately thought-through assertions masquerading as permissions. If one seems to be granting oneself permission to do something more harmful than helpful, it is worth a second look at the internal "trust meter".

For example: the Busted Budget

I recently talked to a young woman who gave herself "permission" to dramatically overspend her modest, first-job budget in pursuit of a fashionable new wardrobe. She is not a fashion model and she does not earn income in a way that requires high fashion clothing. The period of the lagnesha, lord of 12th-from-2nd, is notorious for over-emphasizing the body appearance at the expense of the savings account!

When I asked this nice young lady what she was thinking when she went on the spending spree (which ended up damaging her bank credit) she said that she "wanted to feel good about her appearance". Right there, the "permission" motive is suspect.

True permission arises from a positive self-concept, one of generosity and abundance, not the feeling of absence and lack of self-esteem that she was reporting. In addition, she confessed to wanting to be "more attractive to partners" while also "being in the center and getting attention" from the group. Again have a look at the contradiction: balanced partnerships are naturally not sustainable when one person is always in the bright center (Surya vs Shukra).

Finally I asked her how much meditation she had done on the image of the shopping, buying, wearing, and paying the monthly charges? You won't be surprised by the answer: "none". She had not meditated on the psychic pictures to calm and smooth and validate the energy, to confirm that the whole process felt good and natural, and that no major hostile energy was present. At all.

Fakes and Frauds: impulsive compensation behavior

So, it was a case of compulsive-reactive unexamined impulse compensating for low self-esteem, material rights asserted but not validated at their roots in the astral plane, and the result was self-destructive karma of debt and frustration. The whole problem could have been cleared up in a 10-minute meditation, where permissions get validated by running the scene through the imaginative consciousness just as if one is watching a movie.

Validate, validate; meditate, meditate

Ask oneself: how do I start this scene, what actions, do I feel good doing this thing, how does it progress, and at the end of the scene, how do I feel about what just happened? Feelings are the key to validation. Every picture is tagged with a feeling. She was probably afraid to check her feelings before barging into the shops and thus her understanding of permission was profoundly untested. Oy.

The main point to understand is that true permission is revealed, as a fear lifts away. It cannot be simply asserted like a toddler demanding a sweet. It is validated in meditation or reflective awareness.

Always validate a permission for good feelings that last from beginning to end of an undertaking.

Compassion Wins

The results of properly grounded and validated acts of self-permission = always "positive karma". True freedom is granted by divine intelligence; it is both wise and compassionate. Compassionate actions are confident, sensitive, and thoughtful, and they always generate karmic merit on the "credit side" of the Big Book.

Namaste - Thanks for your great questions!

IMO - you, and "Quantum Physics" : ) are absolutely correct in asserting that "we create our own life as we go and by thinking or by thoughts". Nothing could be more true.

However the reason few people can change the flow of events in their lives is that very few people even know what their thoughts look like, let alone have done the intensive training necessary to change them!

Here's the basic "flow diagram":

• The program of action-reaction, attraction-repulsion, and all the infinitely perpetuating cycles of "karma", originates on the spiritual plane, which is the plane of pure truth. The spiritual plane doesn't have any mental stuff in it. It doesn't have any words or feelings or concepts or relationships between concepts or any "content" at all. It's just pure truth.

• If reality cannot be comprehended by the native at the level of pure truth, the information which one is supposed to work with in the current lifetime will percolate down to the next level of particulate-pattern reality.

• The next level "down" from the spiritual plane of pure truth is often called the "Causal Plane". The Causal or "mental" plane is the vast territory of our thoughts which consists of objects held in thought and the relationships between those thought-objects. This thought plane is a very busy place!

The last few centuries have seen a dramatic increase in mentalization of our species overall. Western culture in particular seems to be leading the charge. Many of us in the West are constant and compulsive thinkers, who are quite imprisoned in a world of 24/7 high-throughput thought.

Yet, despite the volume of modern thought and its remarkable complexity, very few people have time or permission to observe their own thought processes. Their thoughts are driven by survival problem-solving (make money, get social approval, find a mate, raise offspring, avoid predators, feel safe). These thoughts are neither objectively observed nor controlled by the thinker.

If the karmic mandate for action cannot be comprehended by the native on the causal level (which is almost always the case), then a person's life program script will percolate down to the next, grosser particulate level, which is called the Astral plane. (There are many other names for the astral level, but Astral meaning star-pattern, or Dream level, are good descriptors.).

The astral plane is a giant ocean of hopes, dreams, wishes, aspirations, fears, desires, loves, hates, every possible kind of emotion and psychic action-reaction is going on here. The astral plane is huge and has many sub-divisions. Compared to the clear and rarified land of the causal plane, the astral plane is a bit viscous, sort of heavy and sticky with lots of hot and cold spots, a lot like an ocean with many different changing currents, many colors and generally a huge diversity of interesting dream pictures.

If the native is not able to deal with or interpret consciously the information when it is presented on the astral plane in the form of emotions and feelings and dreams and desires, then the program will percolate down to the base level, which is the human physical-animal body. (This result is extremely common in people who are unable to feel their feelings.)

The physical plane is where "the buck stops here". The physical plane is governed by the body's flesh and instincts, controlled by the survival "reptile" brain. The physical plane is where competitive human athletic power, as well as animal hunger and fleshly disease, will "act out" the karmic script.

Since most people are not able to approach their karmic script at the thought level and very few people can compassionately accept their script at the astral level, most karma ends up "acting out" at the physical level. That's why Jyotisha readings work so well. If people were able to interrupt their karma at higher levels, they wouldn't care what the emotional or physical downstream looked like. They'd be fast and efficient, burning the seeds of karma right there on the causal plane, right there in the land of thoughts and expectations.

But, they don't. They are stuck in debris piles, left over un-dealt-with anger and bitterness from this life and before. The are stuck in trauma. Being able to change their thoughts directly is a prospect for a distant future lifetime - if ever.

You are absolutely correct that "we create our own life as we go and by thinking or by thoughts". However, very few people have much conscious awareness.. For most people, their thoughts remain mechanical, reactive to lower emotions, inherited from their ancestors, and generally not owned or operated by the native .

If you are lucky enough to get meditation training and you have lots of community support for working directly with your thoughts so that you don't slip into animal fear of starvation or abandonment, then, if you have a strong will, you can change everything you want.

Most people are sleepwalkers and most people have no conscious awareness of their thoughts, except that their thoughts repeat their desires on a mental level. E.g., "I want something" or "I need something".

Thought for the sake of thought is limited to a few philosophers. Rational philosophers are usually pretty good at manipulating their existing thoughts, although they will mainly admit that they can't control the eruption of new thoughts nor can they do much about the chronic survival thoughts like " I have to eat now" or " that person is trying to kill me, I have to run".

To the very limited extent that a skilled meditator can learn to travel in the terrain of the mind without being constantly sucked down into their astral and physical programming, the skilled meditator can indeed make intentional changes in their thought-forms directly within the causal plane. Certain mantras also can be very therapeutic for calming lower anxieties, which helps create a cleaner space for mental work.

Several religious traditions offer elaborate technologies for assisting meditation on the causal plane. There are meditation traditions in all the great religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism etc.) but the most developed toolkits reside within the Buddhist traditions (Vajrayana, Theraveda, Mahayana).

Jyotisha and "Quantum Physics", or whatever philosophy espouses the rule that thoughts determine reality, are both in complete agreement.

Karma - the mandate to action caused by *reaction to previous actions* in former lives (or the current life) - controls spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical levels.

Karma dictates a very specific script of necessary events in each lifetime.

If you have the mental skills to read the script (read all of your thoughts which are connected to that action or reaction) then you can certainly intervene and make changes in that complex of connected thoughts which set the downstream flow into the emotional and physical manifestation of the event. Most definitely, this can be done. This is what meditation is all about! Great stuff!

If you are a Dharma Warrior going in to do battle in the World of Thought, do be prepared to realize that All of your thoughts are connected to all of your other thoughts! This is a very complex surgery, to excise a single causative thought from the web of other related thoughts!

Yes, you can do it. I wish you the best. Changing even one thought, permanently and forever, requires skill and determination. However the results in terms of control over your destiny though the power of sustained consciousness, are well, well worth the effort.

Sincerely,

Barbara Pijan Lama, Jyotisha

Law of Causality

H.H. Tenzin Gyatso, Path to Bliss: A Practical Guide to Stages of Meditation.

Geshe Thubten Jinpa (Trans.), Christine Cox (Ed.).

"Sometimes we face certain situations where, although we have done something good for others,we may not be able to reap the consequences within this lifetime.

When we are talking about the law of causality, we are not limiting its operation to the confines of this life alone, but rather are taking into account both this lifetime and the future.

Karmic unfoldment

Occasionally people who do not have a proper knowledge of karmic law say that such and such a person is very kind and religious and so forth, but he always has problems, whereas so and so is very deceptive and negative, frequently indulging in negative actions, but always seems very successful. Such people may think that there is no karmic law at all.

There are others who go to the other extreme and become superstitious, thinking that when someone experiences illness, it is all due to harmful spirits....

It is also possible for very negative people to experience their positive karma ripening immaturely due to the very strong force of negative actions, and thus to exhaust the potentials of their virtuous actions.

They experience a relative success in this life, while others who are very serious practitioners, as a result of the force of their practices, bring upon this lifetime the consequences of karmic actions which might have otherwise thrown them into rebirth in lower realms of existence in the future. As a result, they experience more problems and illnesses in this life.

Just resolving not to indulge in a negative action is not enough. It should be accompanied by the understanding that it is for your own benefit and sake that you mustlive with awarenessof the law of karma.

• If you have accumulatedthe causes, you will have to face the consequences.

• If you desire a particular effect, you can work to produce its causes.

• And if yOu do not desire a certain consequence, you can avoid engaging in actions that will bring it about.

You should reflect upon the law of causality as follows:

• that there is a definite relationbetween causesand effects;

• thatactions not committedwill never produce an effect;

• And that once committed, actions will never lose their potentialitysimply through the passage of time.

So, if you wish to enjoy desirable fruits, you should work for the accumulation of the appropriate causes,

and if you want to avoid undesirable consequences, you should notaccumulate their causes....

[Karma] is a natural law like any other natural law."

Caring, compassion, inner strength, and courage

H.H. Dalai Lama, An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life.

Nicholas Vreeland (Ed.), afterword by Khyongla Rato and Richard Gere.

"There is a Buddhist practice in which one imagines giving joy and the source of all joy to other people, thereby removing all their suffering.

Though of course we cannot change their situation, I do feel that in some cases, through a genuine sense of caring and compassion, through our sharing in their plight, our attitude can help alleviate their suffering, if only mentally. However, The main point of this practice is to increase our inner strength and courage.

I have chosen a few lines that I feel would be acceptable to people of all faiths, and even to those with no spiritual belief.

When reading these lines, if you are a religious practitioner, you can reflect upon the divine form that you worship. Then, while reciting these verses, make the commitment to enhance your spiritual values.

If you are not religious, you can reflect upon the fact that, fundamentally, all beings are equal to you in their wish for happiness and their desire to overcome suffering. Recognizing this, you make a pledge to develop a good heart.

It is most important that we have a warm heart. As long as we are part of human society, it is very important to be a kind, warm-hearted person.

May the poor find wealth,

Those weak with sorrow find joy.

May the forlorn find new hope,

Constant happiness and prosperity.

May the frightened cease to be afraid,

And those bound be free.

May the weak find power,

And may their hearts join in friendship."

p>As to what might be p>As to what might be Mechanisms of Karma

Causes

~~ H.H. Dalai Lama,Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection.

Thupten Jinpa and Richard Barron (Trans.), Patrick Gaffney (Ed.),

foreword by Sogyal Rinpoche,

Snow Lion Pub. 2nd ed., 2004

" ...In the Buddhist teachings, when we search for the causes of suffering, we find what is called 'the truth of the origin of suffering', namely that negative actions--karma--and the negative emotions that induce such actions are the causes of suffering.

• Talking about causes, if we take a step further and investigate more deeply,

• we find that the cause alone is not sufficient for bringing about the results.

Causes themselves have to come in contact with co-operative circumstances or conditions.

• For instance, say we search for a material or substantial cause for this plant,

• we will find that it has a continuity stretching back into beginningless time.

Space particles

There are certain Buddhist texts that speak of space particles, existing before the evolution of this present universe. According to these texts, the space particles serve as the material and substantial cause for matter, such as this plant.

Now if the essential and substantial cause for matter is traced to these space particles, which are all the same, how do we account for the diversity that we see in the material world? It is here that the question of conditions and circumstances comes into play.

When these substantial causes come in contact with different circumstances and conditions, they give rise to different effects, that is, different kinds of matter.

So we find that the cause alone is not sufficient for bringing about a result. What is required is an aggregation of many different conditions and circumstances.

Although you can find certain differences among the Buddhist philosophical schools about how the universe came into being, the basic common question addressed is how the two fundamental principles -- external matter and internal mindor consciousness-- although distinct, affect one another.

External causes and conditionsare responsible for certain of our experiences of happiness and suffering.

Yet we find that it is principally our own feelings, our thoughts and our emotions, that really determine whether we are going to suffer or be happy."

updated:18 May 2012

Copyright © 1994-2024 by Barbara Pijan Lama - Contact * How to Request a Jyotisha Reading -- -- barbarapijan.com

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