Karmic Relationships, by Mabel Iam
(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)
The Elusive Notion of Karma
Karma is the law of cause and effect. It encompasses all the energetic movements brought on by people’s thoughts, actions, feelings, desires, and their relationship to their surroundings. A good illustration of this law is a stone thrown into a lake: the waves it produces extend to the shore, or get blurred in the distance.
But Karmic law in action mustn’t be confused with receiving a certain “reward” or “punishment” for a certain action. It is not about divine or human justice. Karmic law is the result of a natural law. The idea of moral justice (or reward and punishment), comes from the human conception of a superior being, a God, that passes judgment and decides what’s good and what’s evil. This idea originated in Judeo-Christian thought. Karma is part of an Eastern system of thought, by which each and every human being is responsible for what he or she creates or destroys.
The Law of Thought
The first principle of the Karmic law is based on thought. How easy it would be to change our lives by simply changing our thoughts!
But it so happens that no thought is isolated from others. One thought leads to another, and another, and yet another. This leads us to act according to them, like the waves in the water. As time goes by, we end up becoming “everything we have thought.”
Attraction or Rejection
All of our relationships are meant to teach us something. Not all relationships work, but they all enter and affect our lives for a special reason. Whenever we need to learn something, we attract people who hold the key to that teaching.
Karma is a perfect mirror for human functioning within relationships. It’s important to remember that what you love about another person, that’s you. What you reject in another person, that’s you too.
Some questions to help understand your personal needs might be:
- What do I reject in other people?
- Why do I reject that particular feature?
- Have I ever been rejected myself?
- Who does the other person remind me of?
- Do I have the same characteristics as the other person or would I like to have them?
- Would I proceed in exactly the same way as the other person?
- How could I change something about the other person or about myself?
- If I changed, would my friends and acquaintances also change?
- What makes me meet these people all the time and why can’t I avoid this?
- What does my partner reject about my personality?
We can either accept or change any characteristic about ourselves. This process helps us deepen the love and trust we have in ourselves, and helps us to stop hating any of the characteristics we previously disliked in others. As long as we pose questions, our minds find the answers in our actions. We have to pay attention to, and value, everything that’s happening around us.
What unites us to other people are our thoughts and emotions. If something negative happens between you and another person, and you do not forgive him/her, you will not be forgiving yourself either. You will negatively relate to him/her, and be negatively linked to your emotions and thoughts. Then, you will repeat that negative experience with another person, although this time it may be even more negative than before.
With the law of Karma at work, we always attract the exact type of person that corresponds with our thoughts and feelings. Perfect, isn’t that so?
For that reason, only when we know very clearly what we want for ourselves will we be able to commit in a unique, stable, harmonic, and wondrous way. Everything depends on our inner reality.
Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2004. All rights reserved.