As we make choices, we face the fruits of those choices—good or bad. These consequences are called karma. What are a few signs that bad karma is occurring or has occurred in our lives, and what are four key strategies for effectively dealing with our karma?
When starting the noble task of working on your karma—whether it be karma from this life or a past life—it can feel bewildering. By including the following four keys in your work, you will go far in facing and resolving your karma.
1. Take Inventory. First, it’s important to look at the choices and decisions you are currently making, and honestly ask yourself, what are your motives. Before resolving old karma, you want to make sure you are not creating any adverse new karma. Secondly, if you sense something going on in your life right now might be karmic, then reflect on that dynamic. Not everything is karma, and there is no concrete checklist. Possible signs of karmic situations are:
- Being faced with something that seems to have come out of the blue.
- Feeling checkmated in a situation, as if no matter what you do, you find yourself in the same condition, over and over again.
- Feeling unreasonably engaged emotionally, incensed, or obsessed with a person or situation.
- Having repeated patterns of events or behavior in your life that seem not to be of your own making.
2. Meditate and Pray. Once you have identified a potential karmic area, your most important tool is meditation and prayer welcoming the Divine into your life, as you want to resolve this “in Divine law and love for the good of all concerned” so that you will be able to effectively deal with your karma.
3. Ask “What Is My Lesson?” Karmic conditions are teachers. There is a spiritual lesson you are learning if something is karmic. This is a good time to ask, “What is my lesson?” You may not get the answer right away, but this takes you out of feeling as if you are the victim in the situation and have an important role to play. When revelation comes, it doesn’t always make things easier, but it empowers you to face the karmic lesson and be the better for it.
4. Initiate Right Action: Karma is a call to action. You cannot sit on the fence and think your good intentions alone will complete the job. You must take positive loving action to resolve karma. It will take your best efforts to succeed, but you already have the talents and abilities to do so.
