What is a life of service and how does it benefit anyone? That is the question that I have always asked. The answers that I received were that it gives you an opportunity to meet new people. It gives you a chance to expand your ideas about the world. It helps you grow as you gain new insights through new conversations and experiences. Karmic Yoga connects you with the Divine through the works that you do with other human beings. This connection results in a cleansing of the soul and spirit, allowing you to move closer to a clarity that only comes through such work. It helps remove the karma of the society in which you find yourself, and makes you free by expanding your thinking capacities. This is all well and good. In theory it sounds great, but the truth is, it can do the opposite. When you work with a lot of people you often dont see the face of God, you see some very obnoxious, ignorant, arrogant, angry people. Sometimes these people are so scared for their lives and their ability to survive that they are dangerous. Sometimes they lie, cheat, steal, and justify it with the fact that they are poor. They need that color television of that camcorder. Their poverty can become an excuse for despicable behavior like spousal abuse, child abuse, sexual abuse, and more and more despicable things. You can often even find them abusing each other. What do you do when your confronted with this? When you meet a person who has done things so terrible, and continues to do things so terrible that they deserve to be put to death, what do you do? Where does the touchy feely idea of Karmic Yoga and charity go then, out the window? Do you pack up your bags and give up on social justice work and service, realizing that what all your rich friends or middle class friends said are right? What do you do? The truth is that Karmic Yoga, like any type of Yoga or spirituality, is not easy. At times it gets downright ugly. During the worse of times when you meet that horrible person that is unlovable, or when that thief steals your camcorder, or when you find out that people have been coming to your food pantry, getting food and then selling it to buy drugs to sell to other people, that is when you are engaged in Karmic Yoga. That is when you are face to face with your self and all of the social mores and norms about what you should do and what this person deserves. The struggle between the normal reaction of lashing out, and the action that comes from the greater insight that this person has been conditioned to do this by his or her life circumstances and the outcome are Karmic Yoga. It is not done in a place of comfort. It is not done with a smile on your face all of the time. You are not rested all the time when you do it. You dont even feel like doing it sometimes. This is Karmic Yoga. Like everything else, however, there is another side to it. There are people who are very thankful, loving and kind who you meet along the way. You touch their lives deeply. Some of them can pull themselves up out of hunger, poverty and crime, just because you have been working with them. It is as if you, like the hand of God, are supplying their needs and helping them to grow and become stronger. If you do Karmic Yoga this will happen to you along with the rest, along with the rotten stuff. The progress will come as you learn to let go of the negative. When you come to accept the negative as well as the positive and to realize that all of these actions, the negative and the positive, are working to polish your soul like a mirror, so that it may be a perfect reflection of God, you will have arrived. This is the lesson of Karmic Yoga. This is the outcome. You cant get to the enlightenment, however, you cant get to the large tomatoes, without spreading the manure. When you, or if you, decide to take on a life of service and to become a Karmic Yogi, remember what you must face. Remember that the good will come with the bad and remember that one day you will realize that the good and the bad all come from the same source and can have the same purpose in your life, the purpose of awakening the divine in your heart. Hold onto these beliefs throughout the glories, tumultuous ride and you will reach a place of total peace and joy in the midst of the fire. |
