How To Quickly Burn Karma?
The emotional burdens, blocks, and challenges we face to living free, loving, and joyful lives may be refered to in the East as our “Karma.” Some consider the ‘spiritual journey’ as the path toward becoming totally free from all of its binding effects. If our true nature is divine, then perhaps true ‘spiritual growth’ may be considered more of a process of shedding what blocks our ability to abide in our true nature — rather than adding-onto what and who we already are. We’ll call this growth thruough the shedding of our blocks and burdens, “Karma Burning”!
Some of us speed forward on the spiritual path much more quickly than others. Certain people seem to be able to more easily let go of their past burdens and more easily deal with life’s challenges as they arise. I always say that small children are the world’s fastest healers … they seem to let go of their upsets and pain and grow very quickly compared to adults. Over time, however, in response to parental and society pressures which force them into learning how to repress their emotions and their reactivity, they gradually lose the natural ease and ability they were born with to release whatever bothers or upsets them. In this way, most of us forget our innate self-healing wisdom, and lose any sense of clarity about what we’re truly looking for in life.
Let’s take a look at the following methods people typically employ for facing and dealing with difficulties in their lives, and the kinds of goals they set for themsleves to achieve. You may be surprised by the greater efficacy some of these strategies have over others, depending on what desired results people aspire to reach, or what results they ultimately settle for, in their search for finding solutions to life’s pressures, challenges, and problems …
Some people live a life whose goal is trying to just be Tolerant in the midst of family, housemates, friends, or co-workers who push their buttons. Tolerance involves keeping silent without outwardly reacting to others. As such, it is a way to slowly get by and slowly ‘burn’ our karma over time. Some of us remain in the pain of Tolerating, perhaps even to the point of living on the brink of leaving challenging relationships or jobs, and we never ever become truly free of some degree of suffering. Thus, mere Tolerance is a slow "ox-cart speed" path for dealing with our emotional burdens, and it is very tedious and painful while waiting for an ‘outer solution’ to alleviate our problems someday. At least while being tolerant, and sliently hoping for a situation to change, we are not creating more karma by being outwardly reactive and inciting more anger and upset in others around us!
Other people may employ a different strategy for dealing with challenging people or situations in life. Some have found self-healing processes which can actually bring them to Peace or Tranquility, instead of merely tolerating whatever life brings. Such clearing methods are a proactive step forward, since they are looking for Peace and Tranquility from within, even if an undesirable outer situation persists and doesn’t change. These people thus start to burn their karma a little faster, using dedicated process to reach Peace or Tranquility, and this puts them on a "jogging speed path" to freedom. They find the briefer moments requiring them to tolerate life to be a little less tedious, since they do inner work to create real breaks when they manage to face and deal with thier pain more quickly. Attaining Peace or Tranquility may be considered basically equivalent to having achieved the ‘absence of upset’. In putting out the self-effort to reach such states, we’ve now taken extra steps toward freedom.
In seeking Peace and Tranquility, we have to be careful to employ true healing methods, so that we don’t just momentarily manage to forget, push away, or go above our problems. Pleasure seeking activities or using distractions, on the other hand, such as listening to music, seeking some form of entertainment, watching TV, using drugs or alcohol, sex, comfort food, and any means we have of trying to avoid our problems and occupy our minds and senses, are only short-lived solutions. Even certain forms of meditation are purely a means of “transcending” the mind, but are not a means of really “transforming” it. True transformation happens when we can face what previously pushed our buttons and disturbed us, and instead feel free of upset —to achieve this requires the use of true healing methods.
When people set and reach a loftier goal of regaining total Joy, despite the difficult people or circumstances they are facing in life, they now accelerate the progress they are making to an "automotive speed” toward total freedom. Regaining one’s joy each day assures that a much deeper level of our emotional buttons have been cleared — to the point where we can really taste and feel the inner freedom from the wounds we managed to somehow completely erase. Kid’s know how to do this innately. You don’t have to tell them when to stop crying or tantruming. They intuitively know when they’ve vented sufficiently, and their pain has been erased sufficiently, to return back to their natural state of lightheartedness and Joy.
When people won’t settle for less than Joy as a goal, the idea of merely having to “Tolerate” life’s challenges is left far behind, and settling for just Peace, as the “absence of upset”, has been recognized as just not fulfilling enough. This innate understanding is pervasive in young children. Living in Joy is a whole octave level above only ‘Peace & Tranquility’. Such a depth of emotional clearing also means people will not be repeating the same pain patterns each day, since the roots of their original wounds have been removed. This is why kids grow: since they reach Joy through their venting, this enables them to work daily on new issues — instead of partially-cleared old ones — so they become truly freer in the face of previous challenges which used to overwhelm them.
If people set their bar higher, and do a process which has the capacity to restore the love and intimacy in a Relationship, or a process for Finding Perfection and Beauty in someone or something, they are now moving at “bullet train speed” through their emotional wounds toward freedom. This is because in seeking to find joy in the moment, people don't intentionally directly confront all the characteristics of the particular person or thing they are tolerating. This allows them to be able to reach their goal of “Joy” through means of subtle or overt avoidance -- while isolating themselves in their own personal bubble. Most people can find Joy in the shelter of their own personal space, as long as they limit or avoid exposure to whomever or whatever pushes their buttons.
On the other hand, setting an intention of clearing the issues in a Relationship, or setting a goal of Finding Perfection and Beauty in someone or something, causes us to have to engage more fully with all of the characteristics of a subject which are difficult for us to fully accept and love. Finding joy while facing and feeling whatever we find to be challenging in a person, place, or thing forces us to confront layer upon layer of our emotional issues, until we find freedom through exposure to our subject and not avoidance! Methods to clear relationship issues require us to deeply hunt for much more of the buttons we normally try to avoid or deny which can lie hidden while doing our other clearing methods for Peace or Joy in isolation. After a successful Relationship clearing or process for Finding Perfection and Beauty, we achieve forgiveness, love, and return to a child-like innocent vision.
The attainment of “Love” between ourselves and others is thus a sign of much more freedom than just seeking Joy would bring us, while attempting to live more emotionally separate and distant lives. Thus, these last two goals are some of our greatest we could set for reaching freedom, since they force us to directly confront and burn our past karma while looking into what actually is a mirror of ourselves in front of us! Using effective tools to achieve these goals exceed most all other spiritual practices for karma burning, aside from the rare opportunity of obtaining direct “Darshan” with a Spiritual Master!
The gift of receiving divine blessings or “Darshan” from an Enlightened Spiritual Master has been compared to a “Jet Airplane speed” path to karmic freedom and Enlightenment. Obtaining such depth of healing and grace from someone who has already walked the entire path — and is living in a fully Enlightened state — is a rare opportunity. Only a being who is totally free can bring others to such an elevated state of freedom. A mere glance, touch, or thought directed from such a Spiritual Master can have a deeper healing effect than years spent using even the best known healing methods and tools. My teacher, Ammachi, says that “a single blessing from Her can be worth 10 years of our own intense spiritual efforts!”
So, I highly suggest that in addition to all of our spiritual and clearing practices, we find a means of somehow receiving Darshan as often as is possible, and perhaps ultimately find a Spiritual Master of our own, who can take us all the way to our greatest freedom! Please refer to the previous blog post, “Opportunities For Daily Blessings & Darshan” to learn how we can now (in the post-pandemic era) even obtain Darshan daily on-line.
Lastly, an incredible way to burn karma comes along when we have an opportunity to do Selfless Service. Such service can create merit and “good karma”, and help diminish our selfishness and “bad karma” through the act of helping others. When a Selfless Service opportunity arises to aid an Enlightened Spiritual Master or their work in the world to help humanity, it is even a greater blessing, and it helps speed us to liberation. Ammachi explained that such “Seva” or service to an Enlightened Master, is like watering the roots of the tree, instead of trying to water a few of the individual leaves. When we water the roots, countless leaves and the entire tree receives the benefit. This is because through a Master’s insight, divine understanding, and grace, projects are set up which are understood to be the most deeply beneficial to humanity, and the great work they see that is necessary for our world’s ideal evolution, as a whole. When we do Seva for a Spiritual Master, or donate money to their projects, our service and donation becomes a truly blessed offering, and the Master in turn helps us to very quickly exhaust our karma, and progress rapidly on our spiritual paths toward liberation! I highly recommend taking advantage of any volunteer opportunities we are able to find, and trying to help support the programs, organizations, or activities under the guidance of a true spiritual master.
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