You may have noticed how everything seems to be speeding up. The changes that used to take 20 years now rip through in a single year. Last year’s cutting edge gadget is now pretty much obsolete, like my three year old computer.

Remember 78’s, 8-track, cassettes, 35 mm cameras,VHS, MS DOS, 640k limit on computer memory? Creation is happening more and more swiftly, giving the illusion that time is speeding up.

Last posting I talked about the rune UR, sometimes URUZ. In every kind of magick work there is always what we call the related Urthin acceleration effect. The student’s life seems to speed up suddenly. Your life movie goes into fast forward, and you seem to be dealing with several incarnations at once; and that is what is actually happening.

Understand it and the confusion disappears. Grasp it tightly with the look of your eyes as the rune poem says and you can deal with it. Those not into rune work will probably recognize one of these names: Prana, Chi, Ki, Shakti, Kundalini and Ruach. These are names given by different groups and cultures to the original creative energy. Because of its tight association with the rune UR runists often call it Urthin.

Every spiritual path has similar landmarks, though the labels differ. The labels I am using this time will often be those used by rune students. If you aren’t a rune student use the word that seems to apply in your particular ten or twelve step program.

When this acceleration happened to me runically I had been in occult work at what I considered to be a pretty high level for many years. I thought I knew the score, as they say.

When the Urthin factor hit me, which in my case was after the KA initiation, the sixth rune in the Armanen series, I thought that my neat, carefully architectured and organized world was falling apart. I became very sick with all sorts of stress related physical problems and even suffered from depressions, whose depths had been previously unknown to me.

Fortunately I discovered that it was a temporary phase that everyone goes through at some time, many much earlier than my own stuff. The circumstances also vary greatly from person to person, in intensity and content. You will see why this is so in the next paragraph. Right now, just consider it as dust raised up during the Urthin spring cleaning process.

In everyone there are patterns of subtle energy of stuff stored away to be dealt with in future lives. It’s not as if you have ALL the karmic balancing from hundreds of incarnations to do every time you incarnate. These patterns are contained in the subtle spine, awaiting energizing, and in ordinary circumstances they would transfer at death into what passes over and be available in the next life as unfinished business for the human concerned.

When Urthin/Kundalini/Shakti starts moving up the subtle spine it is itself so subtle that the future extremely subtle patterns are like obstacles to its progress.
The reason you can’t easily push your hand through a table top, though both are mainly empty space from the atomic point of view, is because the vibratory rate of your fleshly form is so similar to that of the table top that one is an obstacle to the other. If the vibratory rate of your body was say at the level of X-rays, things would be easier to penetrate. So the subtle energy of Urthin encounters these subtle patterns of future karma as obstacles and begins to blast its way through them, hence all the temporary problems.

The runist, or meditator with aroused Kundalini, experiences quickly, and often in dreams and physical symptoms, a running off of the energy patterns that were programmed to produce life situations further down the pike. In effect you find yourself suddenly living two or three lives at once, while still trying to deal with the one you think you are in at the moment. This is why the experiences seem so confusing to the novice and the early gate students.

A Shadow World analogy is what happens when most people get what they call a cold. Usually they say they ‘caught’ it from someone else. What is really going on is that the body is overflowing with toxins and is trying to get rid of the garbage in a helpful way. It knows exactly what to do, and begins getting rid of the stuff by turning it into mucus and sweat, and pouring it out of the body with great skill. Think of the times this is common among the population…after the stuffing of Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving and Christmas. The body has no time to do anything except try to push more food than necessary through the 30 feet or so of the intestines of the indulger. It isn’t the cold weather, it’s the over indulgence of food that makes it necessary to clean out garbage that the intestines can no longer deal with.

The average person thinks that when they have ‘caught’ a cold the thing to do is ‘cure’ it. So they take drugs to stop the uncomfortable symptoms, stop the body getting rid of the garbage, and proclaim themselves cured. The next thing that happens is more serious than the cold because the cold was not dealt with as the body intended. By continually blocking the body messages of distress with more and more powerful drugs, the body has to go into really serious mode to be noticed, and the person is told they now have a life threatening disease. The next crisis after blocking symptoms is always more severe, and of course it has a different medical name, though actually it could be called ‘second or third wake up call.’

The cycle goes on and on, with the body continually being prevented from doing what it wants and needs, and is designed to do. More and stronger drugs are used each time until death ensues, and the people who have been screwing up the works with their drugs blame the death on some disease or other.

Attending to messages

As soon as a person can take pain or discomfort as a helpful message from the body to the occupant…it can’t send a postcard…then cooperation with the body processes becomes an option, and the “disease” thing becomes transformed.

I was studying biochemistry when that insight appeared in 1947, and I’ve never had a cold or influenza since, and I don’t ever have ‘shots’ to by-pass the extremely efficient immune system that most people start with, when they are a few months old.

Similarly, if you can get the knack of looking at the apparent chaos as a naturally occurring, but speeded up clearing up process, the anxiety and tension go out of it, and you can watch the circus with interest, and see much better what is actually going on.

It is essential to the student at the level of the karma rune NOD or NAUTHIZ, in whatever spiritual path followed, that they realize that ALL the conditions of his or her life right now are determined by karma. The sudden access of extra “Dreams and Screams” as we call them here, are transformations of things that would otherwise have to be lived out at length in other lives. They are often intense but are cosmic short cuts compared to the experience that was waiting to last throughout a life. Here is the principle to bear in mind continually:

There is nothing in your life that is not there because of karma. Nothing could ENTER your life or LEAVE it unless it coincided with the karma of your life. Everything that happens in every moment of your conscious life as this person is determined by the law of karma.

What we consider mistakes, injustices, or accidents seem to be so because of our partial understanding of the grand picture. When the complete picture becomes available we can see how everything fits perfectly into the scheme of things. And remember the master sentence of the Lord Buddha. ‘None of this is happening to you.’

Most people who think about this at all don’t discriminate between comfort and perfection. They think that if they are not comfortable, healthy and rich, then the world isn’t perfect. When they see the mechanism by which they brought about their current situation they can see the perfect law in action in everything, comfortable or not.

So many New-Agers that I have met tend to label specific circumstances as good or bad karma. You would think that karma pops up in their lives maybe three times a day, and the rest of the day is theirs to play. There is no ‘rest of the day,’ it’s all karma. Our whole life is just a movie of karma being played out on the screen of consciousness.

Karma for the doer

Karmic law determines all the people we know and meet, the relationships we make and break, the ‘accidents’ of birth and fortune. It is the substance of your life.

An enlightened man once said this,” A person reaps the fruits of his own actions, no one else’s. You are the cause of your own pleasure and pain. You have to bear the consequences of previous actions. An ignorant man suffers them weeping and grumbling, while a wise man, with the eye of knowledge, sees the world as a divine play, as the light of his own soul, and enjoys it innocently.”

Now here is the NOD level proviso for initiates who may be thinking there doesn’t seem too much to do but endure, while making more garbage to face next time.

Here is the principle that makes it clear:

A person bears the karmic fruit of their actions, favorable or otherwise, ONLY as long as they identify with being the doer of those actions.

If a person thinks, “I did that,” the action goes into their karmic bill of goods as one that requires balancing…the cosmic accounting system in action. Even ‘good’ acts can produce the necessity of another lifetime as a human to ensure the balancing ‘reward/consequence’ to be applied. And this of course means forgetting, and then the early programming from parents, and starting life under the hypnosis of their limitations. Again.

This matter will become clearer as we go round the circle or spiral of our current spiritual path, whatever it is. Keep it in mind for whenever the law of equilibrium comes up in ritual work. So we come to the question…. What is the origin of karma?

Reincarnation and Karma

As soon as we can get hold of the idea that the current life is a play whose script we wrote ourselves by previous actions we will be able to see why people are born in such different circumstances of health and wealth, and yet perfect justice rules overall.

The apparent inequalities of health, wealth, religion, intelligence and opportunity and so on are determined by karma accumulated in previous lives.

Don’t get onto the fundamentalist idea of sin and punishment. Nobody is to BLAME for their situations. This isn’t sin (or crime) and punishment. It’s cause and effect. Totally impersonal. Just like gravity.

You have undoubtedly experienced hundreds of births, lifetimes and deaths. You have expressed the life force through hundreds of different bodies, with hundreds of different names, at least two genders, and many different languages and cultures. You have died as a human being hundreds of times, and here you still are, indestructible, in the latest body.

The cosmic junkyard received all your previous vehicles each time you changed a useless one for a new one. They became recycled into other bodies, plants and animals. Your countless experiences in the chain of lives have evolved into this present life.

Everything you have ever done, or thought you did or felt has led right up to the moment right now, when you are reading this paragraph.
Hundreds of lives were needed to get you to this point, and you have created the conditions of your present life from all the actions of your previous lives. No blame…just cause and effect. But when you understand karma better you can start cutting down on making any new stuff.

What reincarnates?

It’s easiest to begin with what isn’t reincarnated. You are not the body you are currently using at this stage of the cosmic play. You are actually the Self, energizing this flesh space suit and its cameras and sensory apparatus to experience this planet Earth. And you are the Self of ALL beings, not just the individual body of you.

You are like the electricity in your computer and in all other computers too, or like the radio signals that operate machines exploring other planets and moons.

The Self is not reincarnated. It is always where it has always been. It is the Self that expresses as every incarnation, but it is not restricted at all by any limitations. The Self was never born and never dies.

All the experiences of life and death are contained within the ego. The Self does not come and go, appear and disappear. Who we think we have incarnated as is the ego. Outside the play in which the ego takes part there is no birth or death. There is only continuous change.

In Norse mythology this is the ever changing fabric being woven by the Yggdrasil based Wyrd Sisters, the spirits of Create, Sustain, Destroy in female disguise. Yggdrasil is the Sacred Tree, the primal Ash tree. The Three Sisters do their weaving among its roots.

You have met Yggdrasil obliquely and disguised in the English version of Cinderella. The girl’s name actually means Daughter of the Sacred Ash, and is the story of how the male and female polarities eventually unite.

The Three Sisters are sometimes called the Fates or the Weavers. It is their job to weave the fabric of your life, as you are living it. A gifted shaman can see the threads in your fabric and help you change the patterns.

When I was a racing cyclist many decades ago, I called my hand-made road bike by the name Atrapos. She was the Greek Fate who cut the thread on the loom, ending the weaving process and the life involved.

Everything is changing before your very eyes, including the ego. Only the Real is unchanging and eternal, and that is the unaffected Self; that which observes all the lives and plays of human life and death.

Remember the woman who was jolted into witness consciousness when the Lord Buddha leaned forward, looked into her eyes as, mad with grief, she screamed out her list of miseries. He said, “But sister. None of this is happening to you.”

Her identification with the ego evaporated instantly under the influence of the Presence. Her madness vanished in a moment, like the suicidal depression of Eckhart Tolle, and she was immediately operating a female body as the witness, not the initiator of actions.

You may have already experienced the fact that your body is many layered. Only the densest layer, the physical, is available to the untrained senses. Your subtle body contains the records of what has gone before and what is going on now. It holds the complete collection of your mental images of thoughts and actions. It is in a sense the video library of your incarnation, and those who hold the key can open the archives into the library of previous incarnations.

Nearly every spiritual path that I know about contains a method of doing this after a certain amount of progress. All these images, complete with five senses records, are the well-springs of the tendencies of the ego.

Theosophists and many others, know the library as the Akashic Records. People nowadays can take courses on how to read them.

When you drop the physical body as no longer being suitable for playing the game, then the subtle body takes its video collection and leaves, at what we call death. The network of impressions and tendencies goes with it as an individualized part of the Web of Wyrd within the greater universal web.

The contents of this individual web which were constructed by an ego that thought it existed and did things, will determine what planes of existence the subtle body will stay in between incarnations, and will also determine the details of the next incarnation in physical form.

Fundamentalists, Moslems and Wiccans will experience whatever they think is in the afterlife. It was this web that Wulf was looking at when he offered to tell Brand when and how he would die, in “The Way of Wyrd”, obligatory reading in my rune groups. Brand had already arranged those details between lives. So have you.

Your place and situation of birth, and the programming you receive from your parents are merely reflections of the blueprint the ego based actions prepared beforehand. Note the difference between what I have just said and the simplistic, dualistic, New Age aphorism…‘You chose your parents’. It is not a subtle difference.

In the very last analysis it is we who condition and program ourselves. No one else can do it. The expensive coach hired by the celebrity is doing what the celebrity wants. He or she is reprogramming some aspect of life using the coach as a tool. We are each our own pack of coaches through the thread of time.

This is one of the places where free will operates, but it seems to result in lack of choice during the current life because of the natural forgetfulness of previous incarnations that is one of the rules of the game.

Motivation as a karmic key

One of the secrets discovered by those working in this field is the importance of motivation.

Paramount in the formation of new karma is what our motives are. There are many people who professionally hide their motivation. They can fool other people but they can’t fool karmic law. We reap what we sow. We have to undergo the consequences of our own actions done when we thought we were someone else, whom we have forgotten.

As the scriptures say…As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. And Jesus pointed out to the hypocrites of his day that even thinking of adultery makes it so in the mental realms and it becomes something requiring pay back if performed against an accepted code. Thoughts are things, BUT only if you identify with them as your own. Not all arrows are shot into the crowd by you.

Eliminating karma.

There are only two ways of eliminating karma. One is the way most people employ in ignorance of what is actually going on. They undergo it. This way isn’t really helpful if followed in ignorance, because while it is happening new karma is being created to be balanced later on, usually in other lives.

The other way is the way of knowledge of how to burn it off. It is the fire of knowledge that can burn off karmas, and you have already experienced this to some extent as one rune or another, or some spiritual step has brought to light some material from your individual web. Some students have eliminated material waiting in the wings to appear in dozens of lifetimes, just by going through particular initiations.

But to be able to deal with your karma consciously you have to know the three types of karma that are present and available in your current incarnation. When you understand how they relate to one another you will find it easier to accelerate to the point where you make NO more karma for the future and have only the remnants of the karma from the current life to deal with.

Three kinds of karma

Enter the Wyrd Sisters of Yggdrasil, the Three Weaving Maidens of NOD…Urdhr—that which is, Verdhandi—that which is becoming, and Skuld—that which should become.

Note that Skuld does not mean that which SHALL become. The future is not fated. We are not talking fatalism as destiny. Free will does actually apply, but only to those with knowledge of the rules of the game.

In the tradition I follow, the three karmas are named after the Three Maidens. Urdhr karma, U-karma for short is that part of the karma that was created in the past that we are now experiencing. We have no control over it. It’s what is happening now. But through the aroused energy of Urthin we can draw the strength and perspective to remain unaffected by it because we know that none of it is actually happening to our inner Self. As a very wise sage said, “ It doesn’t matter what happens TO us as long as we don’t allow it to happen IN us.”

Verdhandi karma, V-karma, is karma that was created in the past but hasn’t yet manifested. It is composed of stuff lying dormant in the web, waiting to manifest in some other life under conditions suitable for its expression. It isn’t too difficult to see that a person could make more karma in one life than could be balanced in one life. Some of our current administrators come to mind.

V-karma we do have some control over as rune students or followers of some spiritual path whose lore contains wisdom about karmic law. When you take a trip through the chakras and energize parts of the subtle body with the equilibrating energy during the exercises of your path, you are touching stuff that was in storage for other lives. By the spiritual discipline of working with the chakras, in order, and using the inner fire, these patterns are burned out.

They may manifest temporarily in physical form as sudden allergies or aches and pains that flare up and disappear as suddenly as they came. They may also manifest in extraordinary dreams during which incidents occur that you know are important and significant, without knowing why.

This kind of work can burn away stuff we would otherwise experience down the time pike. We haven’t avoided it, and we haven’t dodged it. We have balanced the books using a higher level of currency than the grossly physical, Traveller’s Cheques instead of dollars, diamonds instead of copper coins. At this level the thought of the action counts as the action, because action is the end product of the thought of an ego.

For those few students I have taught who were still Christians I recommended learning the Lord’s Prayer and its meanings in Aramaic, the language it was spoken in.

Compared with the magickal chakra cleansing power of the Lord’s Prayer in the original language of Jesus, the current translations from Greek and Latin are about as effective as reading the Moscow telephone directory aloud.

Skuld karma, S-karma, consists of the actions we are doing and the thoughts we are having now. These form subtle impressions in the Web which become V-karma and eventually manifest as U-karma in another life. This karma is under our control by thought control. When we can understand completely that the future conditions and experiences of our lives are determined by the thoughts and deeds of today, then we can take responsibility for how we live each moment.

The End of the Karmic Road

When you have contemplated this material several times and when you have done the spiritual work of your path at this level, you will find the sense of being the doer, or the experiencer of your life gradually fading away. These are manifestations of the current ego.

Things will still happen, but you will watch them like you watch a video. Eventually you will see yourself not as the doer, but as an instrument for the play of Urthin. In reality it is the Urthin that does everything, and the sense of doing something yourself or being separate from others is only the ego.

In Kashmir Shaivism the Lord Shiva is worshipped as Consciousness, and his feminine side, Shakti, is the power of Shiva. A totally enlightened devotee wrote these words:

Not a thought arises that does not constitute your will.
All acts, favorable or otherwise are always performed by the Lord himself.
Thus abiding in you I wander through the world with nothing to frustrate the festival of the worship of your spotless feet.

Look at that with care. It’s the experience of a witness consciousness without preferences, who constantly lives in the awareness of the Self. Every act or thought is Shiva in disguise.

So by transcending ego as the devotee poet did, you become free from the sense of being the doer, and then none of your actions produce S-karma. 'The Great Way is not difficult for those without preferences,' says the Zen sage. Same thing.

All that remains is to witness innocently and with interest, what goes on as the U-karma is lived out and the V-karma is drained away by your spiritual work. You will be at the viewpoint of the Self who observes your karmic play without identifying with it or experiencing it as a personal experience.

The ego says, “This is happening to me. I’m experiencing this. It is my karma. It is my life.”

But when you have identified with the Self then you don’t experience what goes on, even though the pre-set movie of the life proceeds as it did. When things pile up remember that if we are not fully established in the witness consciousness of the Urthin, we can still see that no matter how bizarre or strange life may seem to be, it is only the just manifestation of karmic law. It’s only the karma for this life draining away. It’s something we just have to finish with.

Cheerfulness

By accepting our karma cheerfully we show ourselves that we are in charge of it. It must be so, but it doesn’t have to make us miserable. Be cheerful. This is an act of high will. It is always possible to be cheerful even if it isn’t possible to be happy at some particular moment. Being cheerful and light prevents the heavy, serious attitude that inevitably produces more karma. It helps to remember that nobody can do anything to us that isn’t already present in our karma. Nobody is to blame for being the one to do what was needed by the script. Blaming people, or calling them or their deeds evil, and thereby personalizing evil is a great way to keep the karmic top spinning. Look at the Middle East.

Some cultures actually build this into the psyche of their members as a code of honour. Hence the Sicilian blood feuds, the Israelis and the Arabs, the Turks and the Greeks, the Irish Catholics and Protestants, the Dominicans and Wiccans, the Templars and the Catholic Church, and so on.

Nobody can be blamed for what happens to us. They are merely external agents to ensure karmic balancing. The blaming and revenge thing keeps people in the karmic game longer than anything.

Almost every spiritual leader has stressed the concept of forgiveness as a healing factor. And this is true. But most of the literal minded followers of these spiritual leaders interpret this as becoming a doormat, letting anyone do anything to you.

This is not what it means. To forgive someone means to acknowledge that the inner Self of that person is the same as your inner Self, and is also the inner Self of all beings. It means to impersonalize evil. It does not mean that you agree with him.

Just do not attach the action that discomforts you to the person. They are in no way to blame that your karma requires that someone does something to you. Cause and effect ensure that they too will have their reward, as scripture says, but your emotional involvement will hurt nobody but you. This works both ways. They are not to be held responsible by you for their ‘good’ deeds either. When you forgive you forgive both good and evil actions by acknowledging the source of all action as impersonal.

Gravity is impersonal. So is karmic law. By doing this you become free from any karmic consequences.

In the established witness state, which you may have experienced at least for a while in some high level, mind free moment, you are free to enjoy your life happily and spontaneously, and you will see everything as a manifestation of the Urthin in this form or that form. Nothing external to you will be able to disturb your state.

When Epictetus was being tortured he watched the proceedings with interest, and pointed out to the torturer that if he turned the screw one more turn it would break the leg. The torturer was convinced that Epictetus was in no pain because of his calmness. He turned the screw. The bone snapped. “There,” said Epictetus calmly, “ I told you that would happen.” An ultimate example of being interested in the movie, but not involved.

It may be optimum in your karmic role for you to express a fiery anger in a certain situation, but your inner self will not be touched by the outer activity. Nor will it identify with it. It will be an act that nobody would think of as an act. Karmically, it will be as if it never happened because you didn’t identify as the doer any more than the actor does who goes home after the play. It merely happened through you.

Stay in that consciousness while this life’s karma runs out and there will be no necessity for further incarnations on Earth because there will be nothing unbalanced in your karma that requires an incarnation to balance it. It is unbalanced karma that brings us back again and again.

You may be asked, or may choose to incarnate without U or V karma to help those who are still here and thinking that they are the ones living these lives.

This is regarded by some as coming into the lunatic asylum of the universe, planet Earth, to help the inmates…. spiritual social work.

You will at that stage be a novice in the First Gate God or Goddess experience with really interesting work before you. Coming events cast their shadow before. But this, though not mere speculation, is not germane to our present posting, which is to become familiar with the elementary laws and manifestations of karma.

By doing this as knowers of the system we will have a definite goal and purpose for our everyday actions which will extend beyond the realms of this current life.

It will nevertheless cause us to act efficiently in this life, as an incidental consequence of knowing how Nature has organized things for those that work with Her instead of against Her.

If you recently dropped into this site, and find what I have written interesting, you will probably enjoy the post about Karma of 7/11/2006, easily accessed via the archives.