The Law of Karma: Creating a Path to Thrive Together – Rev. Aimee Daniels
This video features the Sunday “talk” only. Watch the full service on our Facebook page.
DESCRIPTION
The law of karma (cause and effect) teaches us that every action creates an energy force that returns to us, shaping our life’s journey. By embracing mindful choices and aligning our actions with inner wisdom, we influence the direction of our lives, toward greater fulfillment. Join us as we explore how to transform our actions into deliberate steps which support us in thriving not just individually but together.
SUMMARY
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Aimee Daniels (00:01):
Okay, I have my act together now. And thank you, Connie for getting me a water. I filled my water bottle this morning and then I proceeded to leave the house without it. So, oh. Get me untangled. Okay, someday we’re going to be wireless here. I swear it’s just expensive. So nice to see so many beautiful people in the room. I feel like it’s old friends day. I have a number of old friends in the room today and I want to give a shout out. He’s going to kill me in the back row. Reverend Charles Hall visiting here, he’s responsible for me being here. He did my practitioner training many, many years ago. Well, thank you everyone for being here. So it’s an interesting time we live in right now, and this is a talk about karma, but this is also a talk about to me about what we do with where we’re at right now. So let’s dive in.
(01:09):
So who knows what this is a picture of? Give me a shout out. It’s a wonderful life and George Bailey spends his entire life helping other people, but he has some things go wrong in life and he reaches a point of despair and he is ready to jump off the bridge. And if you know the story, then Clarence shows up. Clarence is the angel who has not yet gotten his wings and he shows up to show George Bailey how his life makes a difference. And what you don’t know when the story starts is how he had all these dreams that his life was going to end up completely different, differently. He had all these dreams, he was going to leave town, but he ended up staying there and he was such a kind and helpful person that when he fell upon hard times, everyone in the town stepped up to help him. And so that to me is a great example of karma. So Deepak Chopra teaches us that when we choose actions that bring happiness and success to others, the fruit of our karma is happiness and success.
(02:18):
But what is karma? Deepak says karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. Our thoughts, our words, our deeds are the threads of the net which we throw around them. Another simple way to say it is karma is cause and effect. What we put out comes back to us and Reverend Darrell talked about this last Sunday as we talk about giving. And if you think about the first three Sundays that we’ve had including today, everything is energy. Because everything is energy. And we have the science of mind teaching symbol. For those of you who know what it is, it’s a big V. So at the top of the V is the field of all possibilities. It’s very similar to quantum physics if you know quantum physics. But for something to come into form, we need to choose it. We do that through the law. We call it the law here, but that’s also the law of cause and effect.
(03:18):
So what we put into the law manifests in form, but this idea of karma can be challenging. I think the first time I had any realization that there was karma was when I was a young person. I didn’t even know the word. I didn’t grow up in a place where anyone would use the word karma. And I noticed that when I judged someone else, I got put in the same situation where I had to make the choice they made. And even though I didn’t know what it was called, I later understood that was probably karma, right? Life teaching me. And the second time I heard about karma was probably Carolyn Mace because she said that John Lennon was killed to pay for his past life karma, which is really pretty funny if you know John Lennon because he wrote the song Instant Karma, which is all about how our karma is right now.
(04:18):
It’s not at a future point in time. And if you study karma, there’s all different ideas about it. Some people believe it’s past life, some people believe it’s now. But what I want to say is we can only control our Now. When I heard Carolyn May say that, by the way, I was terrified. I’m like, oh my God, maybe I did something terrible in my past life and there’s just some other shoe that’s going to drop now I’m in trouble. But I believe that we can change our life where we are now. And that is really what Deepak is talking about. Let’s talk about what karma is not. Karma is not punishment or reward. A lot of people think of it as punishment, don’t they? Or reward. But it’s not that karma’s neutral, it’s simply the manifestation of the law. It’s the manifestation of the law, of cause and effect.
(05:18):
Whatever you’re putting out comes back, whether that’s your thoughts, your intentions, your actions, and if something comes back, let’s say we have a bad moment and we’re not nice to someone who’s ever had that bad moment, but let’s say it comes back to us in an unpleasant way, we’re not being punished. It’s an opportunity to learn. So if I want my experience to be different, I have to be different. I have to make different choices. And it’s not fate or predestination. Thank God you can change your life. You always have the freedom to make a new choice. And when you make a new choice, you create new karma.
(06:05):
And as Krista read to us from Chopra, we’re infinite choice makers. That’s what we do all day every day. We can do it consciously or we can do it unconsciously. Karma is also, he also says karma’s not immediate. I think sometimes karma is immediate. I disagree with him on this, that’s why I put an asterisk there. But his point is that sometimes things take a while to materialize. We’re doing this class right now, and I think someone said in class the other night, or maybe it was on the Wednesday night service, just about how some people seem never to have the results of their actions come back to them. But I believe eventually they do. And I think that’s true for the positive, and I think it’s true for the ways that we’re less good, but all we can focus on is where we are right now.
(06:55):
We really need to focus on ourselves and not focus on what other people are doing. So every action creates energy that returns to us in kind. And so it’s not limited to physical actions, it’s our thoughts, it’s our belief. It’s the energy that we’re living in. I like to think about it. It’s who we’re being, right? Who are we being? And that’s how we create our karma. And this is a hard one. It’s not good or bad. We think of it as being moralistic, don’t we? It’s not good or bad. This is human to put a label on something. This is good, this is bad. The truth is we don’t really know in life when things happen, do we, if it’s good or bad, we don’t know. Sometimes the thing we think of that was the worst thing that ever happened to us, turns out to have been the best thing that happened to us. And the truth is we just don’t know. But what we want to focus on is how are we creating our karma? And it’s not external. It’s not external, it’s not an outside force, it’s not a deity, it’s it’s not the devil that makes me laugh just to say the word the devil.
(08:20):
But we experience everything internally. So when something happens, we’re choosing our reaction. Sometimes we’re activated, sometimes we’re triggered. I think this is a challenge we probably all have right now. We get triggered and we got to pull ourselves out of it because when we’re triggered, we’re not available for our conscious thought. That’s actually true in your brain. You’re not available for your conscious thought. And I think the important thing here, I think the last one is the most important thing. Karma is not unchangeable in any moment. And this is why our teaching is so great. In any moment, you can change the course of your life. You can make a different choice. So Eckhart tells us, life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. So when we make a choice, we create a ripple of energy. And so what do we do if we see if our life is showing us that we got an opportunity for growth here?
(09:30):
And I have been finding this book by Neil Donald Walsh, super helpful. If you haven’t read it, it’s a really good book for now. He wrote it a while ago. It’s called The Essential Path, overcoming Fear and Freedom in an Ever-Changing World. And he probably wrote this at least 10, 12 years ago, what he was talking about polarization because it was happening even then. And what Neil teaches us is that we’re spiritual beings physically manifesting, which right now that can be challenging. It can be challenging to pull ourselves up into our spiritual self because we’re so surrounded all the time. And I don’t know about anybody else, but my family has a constant text going of articles that I should be reading so that I can know more about what happened. I don’t know, I’m trying not to get sucked in. But what Neil encourages us to do is to focus on living our lives as one essence manifesting individually.
(10:35):
So if we all partake of the nature of spirit, the energy of spirit, whatever your word is, you like the universe better pick your word, pick God. It doesn’t matter what you pick, it’s all the same energy. But we’re one essence, we’re part of this one essence, and we’re manifesting individually. And so here’s his three practices. The first one is a question we can ask ourselves. So to remind ourselves of our spirit, our soul’s agenda, whatever word you want to pick. But when you’re faced with a choice, ask yourself this question, what does this have to do with the agenda of my soul? So if I’m making a choice, am I making a choice from my soul or my spirit’s agenda? Or am I making this from my human agenda, which I don’t know about anybody else, but when it’s my human agenda, I want to be right.
(11:31):
So that’s a pretty quick screen, but it’s also about, does I think about this question? Does this feel right to me? Sometimes I’ve had in my life several times where I felt like the hand of spirit was on my heart saying, just don’t do this right now, don’t do this. Or it could just be like you get that icky feeling in yourself. I get that icky feeling when I’m not being my best self, but that to me tells me I’m not in my spirit. So this is a great question just to bring you back. And again, everything that happens is an opportunity for us to grow spiritually. So when we’re experiencing things, it’s a great question to ask. I also like to add onto this question, does this choice reflect who I want to be? Especially right now, I’m like, if I’m in my, and I know some people maybe not ready to hear this, but if I’m in my triggered upset state about what’s happening in the world, then I’m not available to help.
(12:39):
And so my intention is to help. Do I know what that looks like right now? I have no idea. I’d have no idea. I would say what happened for me with recent events is I just felt less sure of the ground I was living in, right? We take things for granted in our life. We think things are a certain way, and right now they’re not. So what I’m doing is I’m trying to just stay centered in my spirit and it just asking for help. So this question is a good way to pull us there. I need a quick sip of water here. Bear with me.
(13:17):
Okay, the second question. This is the stretch question. Is there any part of what I’m now seeing over there that I’ve seen over here in me? I like to ask it a different way. Where does that live in me? So if I’m seeing, oh, these people are so judgmental or whatever, I’m like, well, I guess I am too, right? I don’t have to build a case against someone else in my heart just because they have a different point of view. And even going back years ago when I was younger and I was in my ambitious corporate stage, I probably had a lot of ego. I was trying to compete, I was trying to be good enough, whatever. And so when I encounter someone who’s like that, I have to say to myself, I was like that. I try not to be like that now, but I was like that. So it’s trying to recognize in us what we can’t be with.
(14:20):
And what I also want to say is I know people have had some pretty rough experiences. I heard about one the other night from someone where they were literally bullied by their family over the election, and you could see that they’re still moving through it. And I want to say if you’ve lost relationships or you’ve been bullied or something happened to you in the course of recent events or you’re just not ready to move on, that’s okay, but get some help. Get some help. Get some support. Get some prayer after service. See a practitioner, see a therapist, do whatever is going to be helpful to you. Go to a healer. I’m looking at savita here. I’m like, go to a healer. It just popped in. But give yourself time to heal and then you’ll be ready to move into doing this work. And the last one is paying continuing attention to how the idea of choosing God or spirit, if you like that word better, is being experienced as you.
(15:21):
And we’ve all acted as spirit expressing as us, whether we know it or not, because every time we offer love or compassion or care to another person, spirit is expressing through us. And I believe it’s our true nature. So we want to bring ourselves back to that, paying attention to how it’s expressing through us, paying attention to how it’s being expressed to us. I have to say, rich and I are getting married in a couple weeks and oh my God, people are showing up at our door with gifts. I mean, we’re having a micro mini wedding, but all our friends are like, oh, I brought you this card. I’m like, wow. I mean, it’s really pretty wonderful. So just noticing the nice things that are happening or the person who sits and talks to you when you need someone to listen to you. All those little things, just remembering to be grateful for them.
(16:21):
So we’re going to move a little bit into, well one more before we move into thriving together. So I want to talk to you about using your intuition to guide your choices. Deepak Chopra says that every moment you’re guided by intuition and the still small voice inside you. And when you honor this wisdom, you align with the flow of the universe. So what are your practices to align with your intuition? I know for me, meditating, having quiet time, taking walks in nature, super grounded, grounding, coming together with like-minded people, like the people sitting around you, praying with other people. These are all things that help me tap into my intuition. And in the Bible it says, where two or more are gathered there in the midst, go. And I believe that that’s true. I believe in a room like today, the spiritual energies magnified because we are all here together.
(17:25):
If someone speaks a prayer, if someone meditates, it’s all magnified. And the other thing I want to say about intuition is if you don’t know yet, it just means it’s not time. So if you’re trying to make a choice and you’re like, gosh, I really don’t know. Wait, Bible says, wait on the Lord. If I don’t feel ready to make a choice, it’s not time. And that is okay. Let yourself be where you are and take responsibility for your actions and your reactions. I added reactions. He didn’t say that, but I think right now got to take responsibility for our reactions too. And here’s some great quotes from new thought people. Ernest Holmes says, life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker, what he thinks into it. Emmett Fox says, the only thing that matters is what you’re doing now, what you are thinking now.
(18:24):
And Ralph Waldo trying said, the greatest thing we can do for the world is to take responsibility for our own lives so you can change. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in your life, you can change. What’s your life telling you right now? What’s your life calling forth for you right now? And you know what? If there’s something that’s not going well, just don’t judge yourself. The only moment we have is right now. It’s not helpful to judge yourself, do some forgiveness work, get some support. We all make mistakes, but you don’t have to work through them on your own. And that is the benefit of being in community.
(19:06):
I was going to share a story about where I needed to change. This is one that came to mind. There are millions of them of where I needed to change, but I remember it was probably right. It was in my second year of prac training. I had started to date someone, and my life experience had taught me that people weren’t reliable. Doesn’t that sound terrible to say that out loud? But the people weren’t reliable. So I had this way of being at that time where if I was in a relationship, I probably had one foot out and one foot in. So I started dating. This guy was super hopeful about, and I had guy friends. I had a couple of guy friends who were like, I wouldn’t say they were my backup plan, but they wanted to be my backup plan, and one of ’em wanted me to have his children.
(20:03):
That was a long time ago. But the reason I’m sharing this is I realized that if I wanted to have commitment, I needed to give it so I needed to change. And I had to say, guys, I’m not available to go to dinner or hang out with you anymore. I think that sends a mixed message to the person that I’m with. And so I had to change. We all have examples in our life of this. A great example from a movie is the movie Groundhog Day. That’s a great example of karma, isn’t it? He keeps having the same experience over and over again. If you remember that movie, bill Murray plays Phil and Phil’s kind of an arrogant, non-caring person, but through the course the movie, he starts to get more self-awareness and he starts to play with his choices every day. It’s a great movie, but that’s a great example of how we can change over time. He saw how what he was doing was not working and he just started to try things and then he became a better person. And then finally he woke up and it was a new day. And our life is like that. So that’s my encouragement to you. If whatever you’re experiencing is not what you want, just remember we’re in the present moment. Tomorrow is a new day.
(21:19):
So I want to talk now about how we’re going to thrive together. The first thing we have to do is recognize our interconnectedness. T Han taught us we’re here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness. That’s a lot of work right now. We’ve got to work on that one, but we must do our own work first to be available for that. And so for us individually, and we’re going to talk more about this next month because Dharma is one of the seven spiritual laws of a success, but it’s about purpose in life. And so our dharma is a unique expression. So each of us are offering our gifts to this interconnected whole, right? If you think about Cityside, our music team, they’re offering us their gifts. It’s helping create our space of being together. I have so many examples, the work that Reverend Judy does with helping us to go out and volunteer and to care for others.
(22:20):
That is her passion. And it brings all of us a gift to look at things differently, to be more giving. So we all have our dharma, and there’s no big or small in it. I remember I’ve told this story before, do you remember Krista when we went to that funeral for, why can’t I think of her name, the Hindu funeral? I cannot think of her name. Anyway, when ADA’s mom died, if anyone knows Shweta, they had this beautiful Hindu funeral, and then each of her nieces and nephews came up and they talked about her. Now, she was someone who had not worked outside of the home, I don’t think, but she was the person in your family. She was the person who got a phone call from everyone if something was wrong. So each of these beautiful nieces and nephews, they got up and they talked about how they would call auntie, and that auntie would always help sort ’em out.
(23:19):
And that’s Dharma also. So my invitation to you is figure out what yours is. What’s the gift you want to offer if you don’t already know? Because that’s how you bless the world. And thank God we all have different gifts, right? Thank God we do. Because then I love people who have the gift of being able to put things together and put things up. I don’t have that gift, right? Other people have gifts. We don’t creativity. So get in touch with what your purpose is. And then we really want to choose actions that uplift others. This is from miserable to love. Another person is to see the face of God. It’s by Victor Hugo. And it’s a beautiful story because the main character Jean Bel Jean is put in prison for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread because he’s living in poverty. And so we can all relate to the unfairness of like he goes to jail for 19 years.
(24:19):
So he gets out and he goes to stay at a monastery spending the night there and he steals some candles and he sneaks out and he gets arrested and he comes back and the bishop tells the person, the policeman, that I gave these to him. And the bishop says to him, use this silver to become an honest man. And it was a turning point in his life because what happened is then the experiences of his life brought him to a place where he really learned to love. He had that little girl that he raised. Do you remember? He really learned to love and he became a changed person. And I would argue that this love is the gift that we all have to offer to each other. It’s the most important gift. I believe that that’s what God’s spirit, the universe is, it’s love and it’s in each of us.
(25:18):
And we can know that when we look around this room, right? This is a room of people who are here to love and care for you. And so choose actions that uplift others. And the other invitation right now is to really practice present moment awareness. Eckhart told talks about this, present moment’s all we have. Make this moment the primary focus of your life, not the past. We can’t change it, sadly can’t change it. And we don’t know what the future is going to bring. And the truth is that’s always been unknown. We just thought it was more known than it is I think. So we want to be in the present moment. If I’m gripped with my fear, I’m literally unproductive. And so I need to stay focused on where I am right now and we all do. And if we truly believe that God is all there is, which is our teaching, then there is nothing to fear. It doesn’t mean nothing’s going to go wrong, but I do believe that all is ultimately well, all will be well. And it’s important for us to stay in community and stay in support of each other right now.
(26:33):
So we’re going to move into just a short little practice now, Greg, if you could come up and I just invite you to turn within if it feels comfortable just to put your hand on your heart. But just let’s take a couple deep centering breaths together now, just to bring us into the present moment. Just breathing in and breathing out, and breathing in and breathing out. And one more time just breathing in and breathing out, and let your breath just return to normal, your natural breath. And just ask your spirit right now, what does it want you to choose in this moment? Deepak Chopra says, the universe has no favorites. It only reflects back to you what you offer it. So just ask your spirit. What would your spirit choose to offer?
(28:33):
And we take all of these whisperings of spirit into prayer in this moment, just truly knowing that God’s spirit source is all there is knowing that we are one with it. We are one with this love, with this grace, with this peace, with this healing, with this goodness and love, which is seeking to unfold in as in through us. So from this place of oneness, I just speak a word for all who are hearing my voice and really for the whole world, just knowing that we are uplifted, knowing that we are finding the way forward to thrive together, knowing that each of us individually knows what is ours to do, that we are anchored and centered in our heart and in our spirit, and knowing that if we need support, that we ask for it. We’re not in this alone. So I just know and to declare for anyone who needs healing, that help is present.
(29:33):
And I know that we are perfect givers and receivers of our good. We are perfect givers and receivers of love. We are perfect givers and receivers of everything. So this is what I’m knowing and declaring for us. And I just know that we are surrounded in love in each and every moment. I know that we are safe. I know that we are well, and I know that spirit is leading the way, that there is a new way that is coming forth, a new path that is coming forth for each and every one of us. And I just know that we’re aligned with our spirits, that we are letting the spirit of love express through us, that it is us. And we know that in each and every moment. And with so much gratitude, knowing that this prayer is fulfilled, I simply say, and so it is. Amen.
Paige Kizer (30:37):
Thank you.