How often have you taken an action that you failed to see turn out the way you like, but would have accepted a working solution instead of the outcome you got? A compromise? How often does refusal to compromise pan out the way we want it to?
Again, the issue at hand is not judgemental moralization. It’s really more of a pragmatic issue than anything else. There are bigger forces at play in the world than any form of human effort, and reality itself is “self-organizing” so to speak. Another way of saying it is there are a great many higher powers in the world than the human.
Now Karma yoga does not negate free will or choice though it may seem to on the surface. Though the way anything goes is more of a product of its own nature than any intention of yours, you, by your choices, by the path you “devote” yourself to, involve yourself of your own free will in whatever system you have come into contact with.
You choose your metaphorical guru, so to speak. Conversely though, there is an element of choice people often tend to overlook. Every choice you make by the nature of making a choice at all must exclude some other course of action. Help someone one moment, and someone else in that same moment was not helped. What this means is even if you don’t consciously choose to devote yourself to any pattern of thought, belief, or behaviour, you choose one anyway. This is why they say when the student is ready, the teacher appears. We make ourselves ready constantly throughout our lives, and when by our choices we reach the tipping point where things must change, then what we may think of as a new influence creeps into our lives although we were inviting it all along.
Is the practice of Karma yoga the reflection on this dynamic? In part, as well as practices to cultivate an awareness of action as its own thing. They practice using mantras, which are really just traditional memory devices, to maintain the frame of mind that will allow them to see action with the level of clarity they seek to sustain. Sort of like an affirmation, but without the effort to bolster ones mood, instead they seek to even out ones mood.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~