Karma - what you SEED is what you get

While travelling a few months on my own, I felt the concept of Karma in the sharpest and clearest way. when you are alone, you have nobody else to blame, every thought and action of yours, receives an expression in reality immediately - I discovered how my thoughts influence almost instantly on what I experience - every time I had chaos in my head, in the internal world - troubling thoughts, little anxieties, steering and snooping in the past, worries about the future - immediately chaos followed in the external world as well, hotel bookings gone bad, money suddenly lost, an unpleasant interaction with a service provider, general Yuck. However - every time I successfully manage to keep a clear optimistic fearless thought, in reality everything was also relatively harmonious for the same periods of times - people’s patience towards me, buses arriving on time, clusters of pleasant events and inspirational encounters with people.

Karma is one of the key concepts in the principals of the east, and in yoga in particular - the direct interpretation of the word Karma from Sanskrit is Action - the idea behind the term - any action that a person performs will create an outcome that will return to him in due time as a realistic experience, so we can look at our actions as seeds which we seed the ground of reality with, which in time sprout and come back to us as fruit. We must not expect that by seeding seeds of wormwood we will receive good and juicy blueberries..the following principle applies not only to actions but thoughts as well, and yes, we cannot know in advance how and when we will experience the results of our actions - positive will return to us at some time as positive and negative as negative.

In Yoga, we have also the term Karma-Yoga - it is the day to day yoga - yoga through the means of an altruistic action. The Bhagavad Gita, one of the most known Hindu scriptures (5-2 BC), emphasizes Karma-Yoga, it is said: “The work itself is the privilege, never the fruit that derives from it. Never allow the fruits of your actions to be your motive and never cease working… give up your selfish desires, do not allow success or failure to influence you”, sounds to me like an almost impossible mission to practice Karma-Yoga on a regular basis. Perhaps flickers of pure altruism on a once a-month basis could work, I've definitely added it to my calendar.