Tag Archive: karma


Why Do We Feel So Attracted to Some People?

Filed Under: Destiny/Higher Plan, Law of Attraction, Past Lives, Reincarnation, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Why Do We Feel So Attracted to Some People?

 

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Dear Soul Arcanum:

Why do we fall in love with someone we hardly know? Why does this sort of thing happen? If we don’t really know them, how can we love them? I find myself in this situation and it’s just not right because it breaks all social rules and conventions. I feel a very strong, happy pull towards a particular gentleman. It’s like my heart recognizes him and is so happy to hear his name and see him, but my head is telling me to stop being silly. I think he has a soft spot for me as well. Is this just some fleeting fantasy, or is his energy pulling me toward him? Are there spiritual reasons for why we feel so drawn to some people from the moment we meet them?
K.R.

Dear K.R.:

The first thing that struck me about your question is your assumption that if something breaks social rules and conventions, it’s just ‘not right.’ I believe the only way to know what is truly right is to listen to our hearts, for there are all sorts of social conventions that are pretty crazy.

There is always a reason why we feel a certain way, but that doesn’t mean we should act on all our feelings. For example, we may feel like punching someone who makes us angry or like eating a huge bag of candy, but that doesn’t mean we’re wise to act on those impulses.

Often we distract ourselves with momentary obsessions in order to avoid facing feelings or issues that are overwhelming. Many people in unhappy marriages try to distract themselves by projecting their unfulfilled desires on a third party. This allows them to focus on something that feels good while avoiding upsetting or disturbing thoughts and feelings.

Repressed desires can also spark inexplicable attractions. Many crushes are simply the result of boredom. We all crave excitement and romance, and if we are repressing our desires by not pursuing our dreams, the passion burning within us will seek release in some other way.

I’m not suggesting that all strange attractions are somehow misguided or unfounded – far from it – but in order to determine if there are good soulful reasons behind a strange attraction, it’s important to eliminate some of the more mundane possibilities. This is sort of like ghost hunting: before we attribute phenomena to something otherworldly, we’re wise to rule out common explanations.

There are many spiritual reasons we may feel strangely attracted to someone. Usually this strong pull is karmic in nature, and suggests a positive past life relationship. Since there are many reasons we may feel as we do, however, we’re wise to consider other possibilities. For example, we may fall in love with someone we didn’t know in a past life simply because they remind us of someone we once loved deeply. In these cases, we may have that familiar feeling of recognizing someone from a past life, and old feelings of love and passion may be stirred up even though the person before us is not the soul we are <q>remembering.</q>

This can also happen with people we’ve known in the past in this life. Often we are attracted to someone because they remind us of someone else. This doesn’t have to be romantic: if we meet someone who reminds us of a beloved grandfather, we may feel strongly drawn to him, especially if we haven’t fully grieved Grandpa yet. Our subconscious is forever guiding us to finish old business and resolve personal issues, so if we meet someone who stirs up something in us that needs more attention, it’s normal to feel a sense of attraction.

Our souls are also guiding us to what we need to experience in order to learn whatever we need to learn next. I often counsel women who are looking for true love, and as I peek into the future, I may see a man coming in who is not going to be a life long partner, but who will prove to be essential to her journey to fulfillment. Somehow, this relationship will help her to learn whatever she needs to learn or heal whatever she needs to heal in order to move to a higher level of experience.

The forces behind attraction are like the force of gravity: like naturally attracts like, and holes in our beings are naturally the first things to be filled as the river of time and experience washes over us. We all have deep issues that we’re not conscious of as well as desires and questions burning in our hearts, and we naturally draw into our lives the people and experiences that can help us move toward peace and fulfillment.

Further, we often mistake the soulful things we need for the people who represent them. A good example of this is the experience of transference, when someone who is seeking something profound like inner peace, happiness or healing falls in love with his therapist. The therapist represents feeling better, but in essence is just one channel through which what is needed can flow.

Something similar happens when a person symbolizes or embodies some trait or aspect we are being called to develop further ourselves. If we are drawn to someone deeply spiritual, our own inner being may be trying to get us to lean in a more spiritual direction. If we’re out of balance, we may feel strongly drawn to someone who represents the other end of the spectrum – hence the saying that opposites attract.

Attraction is energetic. When someone’s energy harmonizes well with our own, we feel like we “click.” If someone has a higher vibration than we do, it’s natural to feel drawn to them, and if someone has a lower vibration, it’s natural to feel repelled. So if being in this man’s energy field makes you feel uplifted, it’s natural for you to want to be near him.

Often we feel deeply drawn to someone because they are a soul mate � someone we’ve loved deeply in another place and time. In such cases, it’s important to remember that what we do with our loving feelings is up to us. If acting on romantic attractions would compromise our own values somehow, we can still love that person without going in a romantic direction.

Romance is a human experience: there is never a soul reason to have physical sex with someone, except for when we are destined to have a child together in order to bring a particular soul into the world. At the same time, however, there is never a soul reason NOT to have sex with someone. As long as we don’t go against our own truths and values, we are free to follow our hearts. Of course, depending on our circumstances, we are only as free as we are brave enough to break with convention.

Often this sort of situation arises as a spiritual test: Will we find the courage to honor the truth in our own hearts? Sometimes doing the right thing means one course of action, and at other times, it means something totally different. Here social rules and conventions prove to be great spiritual tools, for what we’re really doing is learning to trust our own judgment so much that we don’t need social convention to tell us what’s right anymore.

To figure out what this attraction means for you, you must first trust that there is a good reason for it. Then ask yourself what this person represents or symbolizes to you, and how he makes you feel. If this attraction was not about this individual, what might it be about for you on a deeper soul level?

I believe we’re placed in situations where we feel drawn to people and experiences that are somehow forbidden because we’re supposed to learn how to listen to and trust our own hearts. Choosing love is always the answer, but since what that means is unique to each situation, we must ask within and trust our inner knowing to guide us.

– Soul Arcanum

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The Role of Karma in Relationships

Filed Under: Destiny/Higher Plan, Karma, Past Lives, Relationships by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on The Role of Karma in Relationships

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Dear Soul Arcanum:

My question concerns karmic bondage. It is generally said that when we have unfinished karma with another person, like if there is strong hatred, anger or guilt, then after we leave this physical world, we reincarnate together to play exact opposite roles to clear up the karmic baggage of previous incarnations. Does this happen even when one has unconditional love towards the other? Can love make people reincarnate again, even if one of them has achieved self-realization? Can we stay un-affected by others’ intention to reincarnate with us? Thank you!
Muralidhar

Dear Muralidhar:

I’m sure that humankind’s understanding of karma, reincarnation, and similar subjects is very limited. As these are huge questions, I can only offer you what I’ve come to understand via some 20 years of past life readings as well as in depth study of research into these matters, such as the work of Dr. Michael Newton, Ph.D., who has regressed many subjects to the period between lives and then asked them deep questions about how incarnations are planned, as well as the research of great minds such as Dr. Brian Weiss, Dr. Ian Stevenson, Carol Bowman, etc.

It’s my understanding that when we are acting out karma in an unconscious way, we tend to do one of two things: we either act/react as you describe, or we get stuck in the same pattern over and over again. By the way, I believe this is true whether we’re talking about past lives or past experiences in our current life, so it may be easier to understand what I’m describing if we ponder how we all deal with various types of issues in a single lifetime.

Let’s take, for example, a relationship between young siblings. One child lashes out and strikes the other, at which point, the other child tends to respond by hitting back, cowering in submission, running away for help, etc. What an individual chooses to do in response to another’s actions depends on theirpersonality, social conditioning, level of spiritual development, etc. It is only when young souls mature that they begin to attempt more skillful, mindful responses.

So when we are acting out karma from an unconscious level, we do tend to either act/react or get stuck in certain patterns from one lifetime to the next. We may spend lifetime after lifetime trying to do unto others as they’ve done unto us, or playing the victim or bully over and over again in relationships. With time and experience we learn and grow, however, which leads us to change.

Please note my qualifier above that this is what happens when we act out karma from an unconscious level. When we grow conscious of why we are doing what we are doing, and we make a choice to reach for something better, we set ourselves free from this mindless karmic dance, and can then move into a higher level of experience.

When we grow more spiritually aware than your average bear and begin to consciously work from a metaphysical level, we can purposefully affect situations as desired. (We are unconsciously creating our realities all the time. The difference here is in our level of awareness: the more aware we are, the more empowered we are to break free of subconscious patterns and influences.)

So what’s missing from the simple view of karma as an endless dance of cause and effect is the truth that we are all divine creators of our own experiences, and are blessed with free will. Some people do unconsciously act and react over and over again, playing out the sort of karmic dynamics you describe, while others will purposefully break those patterns and make quantum leaps into new levels of experience instead of endlessly bouncing back and forth along the same old line.

It is thus through the cultivation of higher awareness that we attain liberation from karmic bondage. (Sound familiar?)

The way you phrased your question suggests that life on Earth is something we are better off avoiding. We must remember that our perspective on rebirth while we’re here in the physical is very different from how we may view it when we’re in Spirit and planning our next incarnation. It’s my understanding that we don’t have to reincarnate with someone if we don’t want to, but if it would be beneficial for us to do so on a soul level, then we may happily choose to do just that. From a higher spiritual perspective, this feels like a powerful opportunity, not a prison sentence.

On the flip side, love can and does lead us to reincarnate. In fact, all heartfelt desires tend to be fulfilled, so if we long to live with someone we loved in the past again, we will reincarnate in order to fulfill that wish. I often see this with people who fall in love with someone whom they can’t live with for some reason. When it’s not possible for them to be together as life partners, and they deeply desire to have this experience, then their strong desire naturally leads to a future life in which they can be together. Vows and promises are powerful soul contracts, so whether we promise someone we’ll come back to them or we vow to get even, we will play those plans out on a subconscious level until we become conscious of them and make a new choice. I view incarnating like taking a big trip or vacation: we choose to do it for the sake of the experience/adventure. Yes, traveling can be exhausting and scary and full of mishaps and inconveniences. Nevertheless, we all hunger to explore and experience something new and different, for it is our nature (as well as the nature of the Universe) to continue to expand: to spiral up and out, ad infinitum.

Also, our quality of life and our feelings about rebirth are greatly influenced by our level of spiritual development: the greater our power to consciously create what we want in the physical, the better our trips get. Thus there are people living in third world countries who long to escape this life, and there are also people who have attained a higher level of spiritual power and awareness who are signing up to go over with the Peace Corps for the sake of the experience and the opportunity to help make the world a better place. Both end up living in the same basic circumstances, but one is coming from a position of disempowerment and suffering, while the other is empowered and having a fine time.

In summary, yes: some people do mindlessly repeat the same karmic dance over and over again throughout many lifetimes as you describe. Eventually, however, we all learn and become motivated to change, which leads us to a higher level of experience. The bottom line is that our karma is personal: we are the ones who determine our level of freedom. The more we cultivate higher awareness, the freer we are to consciously choose our own course of experience.

– Soul Arcanum

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Dealing with Social Predators in a Spiritual Way

Filed Under: Emotional Well-being, Karma, Law of Attraction, Spiritual Growth by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Dealing with Social Predators in a Spiritual Way

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

My nanny of almost three years has just left and I found out that she has been stealing money from me the whole time. Just before she left she emptied my wallet, stole all my travel money and also my staff’s wages. I’m now also hearing stories of how cruel and domineering she was to my child. She came to me when my baby was two months old. I’m a single mum with no family around, and was in such a state that she was a godsend. She instantly became part of my little family. I trusted her so much that I was in complete denial and refused to believe she could be stealing even though my money seemed to be running through my fingers. In front of me she was good with my child and when my daughter didn’t want to be with her I thought it was only because she wanted to be with me. I feel so betrayed by her. I’m on a mission to be the best person I can be, and it seems like people take advantage of me and see my kindness as a weakness. My nature is to trust and I was brought up to be polite. I even gave the woman a letter of reference, and now she can go do the same to someone else! She’s certainly not the first person to pull the wool over my eyes. How do kind, sensitive people guard themselves against social predators like this? What is an appropriate spiritual way to react towards her? I have to prevent myself from visualizing her meeting a grizzly end! Your spiritual guidance is much appreciated.
Suz

Dear Suz:

You’re wise to seek a spiritual way to deal with all of this, for how you respond to this experience will greatly affect your life. If you can make peace with it and learn from it, you’ll move on to a higher level of experience; if you let it get the best of you, you’ll repeat this pattern time after time until you’ve transcended it.

In this scenario, you’re like a peaceful, gentle gazelle happily grazing in a sunny meadow. You’re living in a world that is full of all sorts of other creatures, however, like jelly fish, hornets, crocodiles and lions. If you think about all the different creatures in the world and how different even individual creatures of the same species can be from each other, it’s clear that life on Earth is rich with all sorts of colorful potentials.

If you now imagine that there are as many different sorts of people in the world as there are different types of creatures, I think you’ll quickly grasp my point: we’re all different, and we all act according to our own nature.

Where spiritual types like you are like gentle gazelles, the social predators you refer to are more like lions than lambs. They’re not evil – they’re just driven by their own needs and appetites, and doing what they believe they have to do in order to survive. If you expect everyone to behave like gazelles do, you’ll be shocked and disturbed time and time again.

Fortunately, we non-predators have been blessed with special survival instincts. If you visualize a deer grazing in a field, you’ll note that even though it can seem perfectly peaceful, it’s always alert. If it catches the scent of danger or sees something moving in the bushes, it’s ever ready to leap toward safety.

Like deer with sensitive survival instincts, highly spiritual people have very keen intuition. It’s hard to imagine a deer ignoring signs of danger, but many of us ignore our intuition all too often. We get a whiff that something isn’t right, but we talk ourselves out of listening and try to put the thought out of our minds. This effectively silences our intuition, and the more we do it, the harder it becomes to hear our inner voice.

There are lots of reasons we do this. For one, when we ponder big ideas and higher spiritual principles, we focus beyond the world of money and other practical needs. When we go through periods of deep spiritual contemplation, it’s easy to move into a dream world in our heads even though our bodies are still living in the physical.

We’re also at a tricky point where we identify more and more with our higher selves, yet we’re not totally free of the lower vibrations that could make us vulnerable to undesirable experiences. For example, we may be full of faith and trust, but if there is karma to be resolved with someone or some buried wound, fear or issue at work in our subconscious mind, we can still attract the sort of experience you describe. You say this woman was not the first person to pull the wool over your eyes. No doubt when this happened in the past, you didn’t fully resolve the feelings involved. This pattern will keep coming up for you until you do, for if you have fear or resistance to something, it will come to you if you’re not consciously manifesting something else.

We also argue with our intuition because we have been socialized to be nice to such a degree that we can’t allow ourselves to have suspicious thoughts about others even if they’re obviously true.

I’m not saying that this experience was your fault. In fact, I think it’s important that you allow yourself to feel angry. You have every reason to be enraged, and telling yourself that you should feel more spiritual about the whole thing will just keep that anger buried. Once you’ve grown tired of feeling angry, however, you can begin to make peace with all of this by accepting the following three truths:

First: Nothing can truly harm you, for you are so much more than this experience and even this lifetime, and you get infinite chances to fulfill your dreams. When you experience a major drama like this, you can be sure you’re learning something, so despite surface appearances, all is well.

Second: None of this is personal. People act according to their own natures and desires. If you don’t pay attention and consciously create what you want in your life, you may become the vulnerable, daydreaming gazelle at the back of the herd.

Third: You have divine gifts and powers that can help you. Spiritual people generally have keener intuition and a clearer connection with spiritual guidance than most. If you pay attention to your intuition, it will keep you on track with what you desire.

In addition to your intuition, your spirituality will empower you to consciously manifest what you want in your life. The good news here is that it will be relatively easy for you to financially recover and move on from this experience to something much better. To do this, however, you have to consciously work with the law of attraction.

Sometimes we are taken unawares, and then we look back and realize there were signs that we ignored. As we rush through life making countless decisions each day, we all manifest many things unconsciously. This is because in addition to all our conscious thoughts, feelings and desires, we have all sorts of subconscious influences contributing to the mix, such as buried beliefs, emotional wounds, old karma, etc.

The more we remain conscious of our own energy/vibration and what’s happening beneath the surface of our awareness, the more power we’ll have to manifest what we want. In addition, when we pay attention to our intuition and purposefully work with it to attract the sorts of people and experiences we desire, life just gets better and better.

To make peace with this experience, you must accept that not everyone in the world is like you, and that this is ultimately a good thing. If you view it from the right angle, this situation can become a springboard to a higher level of experience. I recommend you let it to motivate you to make better use of your spiritual gifts, and then focus your divine creative energy on manifesting new blessings.

– Soul Arcanum

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Karmic Consequences of Energy Healing

Filed Under: Energy/Vibration, Healing, Karma by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Karmic Consequences of Energy Healing

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Dear Soul Arcanum:
I’ve heard that it’s possible for the healer to get sick instead of those she is working on getting better, which really confuses me. If our intention is to help others, then shouldn’t we be karmically blessed by doing so? In general, how do you think energy healing works?
Brenda

Dear Brenda:

You are right that what we wish for others, we attract to ourselves, which means that in trying to heal others, we end up healing ourselves. On the surface, it may seem like we are contracting others’ problems, but in truth, we’re making new progress by uncovering something we personally need to learn, master, release or transform.

I often compare a conscious spiritual journey to putting our homes in order. Whenever we repress or deny some energy or issue, we figuratively sweep it under the rug. Once there it remains a problem or issue, but it’s no longer where we have to look at it every day. Then we must try to function without tripping or stumbling over it. Most of the time we achieve this by limiting our range of potential and experience: we avoid that area because we usually experience pain or problems when we go that way.

Consciously opening up to healing is like finding the will and courage to lift up that corner of the rug to see what’s under there, then pulling it out and releasing it or dealing with it in whatever way feels appropriate. After that, we can enjoy more of our potential because we don’t have to avoid that area anymore, and things generally go a bit more smoothly for us.

Human beings have a tremendous capacity for avoidance, repression and denial, so when we discover some new mess under the rug, our first reaction is usually to feel like we’ve been struck with a new problem or stroke of bad luck. From a higher perspective, however, discovering this mess is progressive because now we can consciously face and clean up something that has been tripping us up or limiting our potential.

As for how healing works, trust and faith play enormous roles here. First we must trust in the healing process itself and let go of our need to intellectually understand every nuance of it. The so-called issues we uncover and work through are many-layered and deeply complex, so we may never completely understand on a conscious level why we manifested everything we did or had to go through a particular experience. We must simply trust that everything happens for a good reason and do our best to consciously work through the inner and outer experiences that come up.

Even when there is nothing in particular ready to be healed right now, if on some level we are afraid that in trying to help others they may drag us down, we’ll fear or expect problems, and thus tend to manifest them. By contrast, when we’re centered in faith and trust and are consciously on top of our own issues (when our houses are in order and there is nothing hiding under our rugs), we can just relax, flow good vibes and enjoy wonderful results.

However, we can’t be attached to those wonderful results. This is where faith comes in: The more we are concerned about someone or whether or not we will be able to help them, the more ego is involved. By contrast, the greater our faith that all is well and the more faith we have in healing in general, the easier it is to do our best and at the same time surrender the results to a higher power.

It’s also important to realize that we can’t heal anyone. We can love, help, teach and support others, but ultimately, all healing is self-healing, just like all learning is self-learning. (We can teach others, but that doesn’t mean they will absorb what we have to offer because we can’t learn it for them.)

We’ve been raised in a world that tends to view doctors and healers as the ones doing the work, and as a result, it can be very easy to slip into this sort of thinking. As soon as we do this, however, we disconnect from the higher source we’re trying to tap into. Then instead of allowing healing to flow through us, we begin to try to will others to heal with our own energy. This is draining and can bring both parties down instead of lifting the one who needs help up.

Perhaps the biggest mistake I see healers making is focusing on healing as opposed to health. There are many who teach healers to look for problems and visualize them getting better in some way. In fact, I was taught this approach myself by a number of wonderful healers, but Spirit set me straight: if we focus on healing, we’ll keep healing, while if we focus on being healthy, then that is what we’ll become.

It sounds backwards, but empathy and compassion can actually be downfalls here. Instead of feeling bad for those who need healing, we must simply love them as perfect and stay in a high vibration no matter what. This is like manifesting anything else: instead of viewing a problem to be solved or healed, you have to hold a vision of what is wanted instead.

When I engage in energy healing work, I always ask Spirit to show me a vision of the person I’m working with in a perfect, radiant state of health and happiness. I ask to be shown their divine beauty, and then I simply admire them with a sense of wonder and appreciation, and I ask Spirit to send through my heart whatever energy they may need in order to reconnect with that radiant feeling themselves.

This is an intuitive or channeled process. While I�m sending this healing energy, I feel like every cell in my body is glowing with divine light. I can feel divine light on my face, flowing through me, illuminating all of my being. I feel sort of in love with whoever I’m working on, for I see nothing but beauty and perfection in them.

While I believe anyone can learn how to flow healing energy, those who are especially gifted at it are able to get into a very high vibration and hold a purely loving intention without losing it. This requires more psychic energy than you might think, for you have to leave the endless thoughts and feelings of the ego completely behind. It feels a bit like balancing on a high wire on the inside, for it requires complete focus on all levels of your being, but at the same time, a relaxed sense of trust and confidence.

On the other end of things, receiving healing is basically being reminded of how it feels to be in a state of perfect peace and well-being. For those who have never felt that wonderful before, it can be a revelation to experience feeling more blessed out and peaceful than you ever imagined was possible.

Of course, how long you maintain that higher state if up to you. Most people can only hold that soaring vibration for a little while before something happens that returns them to their habitual level of thought, and they lose it.

This doesn’t mean that energy healing is a waste of time – far from it! The more we are guided into any state of being, the easier it is for us to find our own way there. Healing itself can be powerful, but training the mind to find and maintain a very high state is even more so. This is why I developed Deep Trance Healing Therapy, which utilizes daily meditations as training sessions for your inner being. By regularly shifting into the feeling state of health, joy, peace and abundance we desire in our imagination, that state becomes more and more familiar, and when our everyday vibration changes, our outer world is naturally transformed.

– Soul Arcanum

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Karma

Filed Under: Destiny/Higher Plan, Karma, Past Lives, Reincarnation by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Karma

Copyright Soul Arcanum LLC. All rights reserved. :)
 

Dear Soul Arcanum:

I overheard someone mention the word “karma” today, and it got me thinking. What exactly is karma, anyway? Do you believe the concept of karma is legitimate, or do you think it’s an idea dreamed up by people who want an excuse to not take personal responsibility for their lives? I would much rather believe in free will and our ability to make better choices for ourselves as opposed to something like fate. Is karma real? Is it worth even talking about? If so, what can we do about it? Is karma “fair?” Who enforces karma – God? If I seem to be experiencing patterns of “bad luck” in my life, does that mean I have “bad” karma? I am a Christian who believes in reincarnation, but I am not sure that what I did in past lives can affect me now for better or for worse. What are you beliefs on this subject?
– Elena

Dear Elena:

In Sanskrit, the word karma means “action.” When we speak of karma, we are basically referring to the universal law of cause and effect, action and reaction. We might say an individual’s karma is the sum of his or her actions that are still awaiting reaction.

I was surprised at your slant on karma and responsibility, because it seems to me that believing in karma is not a cop out in which we blame our “bad luck” on some force outside of ourselves. Instead, believing in karma is taking total responsibility for whatever we’ve created in our lives, whether we created it recently or in some distant time and place. Further, believing in karma means we know we will have to “answer for” our choices in the future.

Some people believe that “God” or some other deity will enforce the law of karma and dole out rewards or punishments based on our behavior, but most people seem to share my view that it is simply a natural universal law like gravity.

Karma simply acknowledges the universal truth that “like attracts like.” If we send love into the world, love returns to us. If we are selfish because we fear lack, we get more lack. Working with karma is therefore not so much a matter of being “good” as it is choosing to embody and focus upon what we desire to experience. If we desire love, we must be loving. If we desire happiness, we must spread happiness. If we desire success, we must focus our resources on creating that success. This takes the need for any sort of moral judgment by a deity out of the equation.

If we replace the word karma with a more familiar term like “momentum,” it’s easier to see how karma is just a natural law. Then the questions many people have about karma become obvious. Do you believe in momentum? Who enforces momentum – God? Is momentum “fair?” If momentum is carrying me in a certain direction, is it because I was “bad” in a past life? Further, when we view karma as momentum, it’s easy to see that to end up somewhere other than where we seem to be heading, we need to exercise free will and choose to move in a new direction.

It is helpful to think and talk about karma because when we become conscious of the effects of our actions, we can learn to choose more wisely. We all have habitual reactions to most circumstances, and so long as we continue to react the same way, we will continue to get the same results. When we recognize that we are creating our experiences and we choose to respond in a more conscious way, we move into a higher level of experience and essentially free ourselves from that karmic pattern.

To do this, we must be able to honestly observe ourselves. Given the powerful role of the ego, this can be very hard to do. The ego naturally wants us to blame other people for our problems instead of recognizing that we have brought them upon ourselves. Even when we do realize we are creating our own experiences, getting past the ego can be very challenging.

A conscious spiritual path is one in which we begin to pay careful attention to our choices and what may result from our actions. It is a constant quest to uncover what is truly right and important, and to stretch ourselves past the ego to take right action. This requires great courage, tolerance, patience, humility, etc.

For many of us, the most challenging karma we deal with involves our closest relationships. When we have strong feelings of love or hate for someone, it’s usually a sign that there is a lot of karma between us.

If we want to improve our karma, the most powerful thing we can do is rise above the most negative emotion we feel. If there is a relationship that is very troubling, we can work on healing it. If there is someone we hold hatred for in our hearts, we can find a way to forgive them and make peace with them.

It doesn’t matter if others work with us or not. We can’t change another’s karma, and we will only feel the effects of our own anyway. If, however, we have wronged or hurt someone in some way, we must at least try to make things right or help them feel better. When we reach the point where we can love our enemies as our spiritual brothers and sisters and appreciate all we’ve learned through our interactions with them, then we have transformed a former enemy into a future friend.

There are a couple of aspects of karma that frequently confuse people. One is the matter of intention. Our intentions are paramount. If we “kill a bad guy” in order to save a bunch of innocent people, we don’t carry the karma of a murderer but of a hero, for our intention was to save innocent people. If we break a law in order to help or protect someone, and we hurt no one else by doing so, then we carry the karma of helping or protecting someone.

Another point that many people overlook is the matter of duty. Some passive types seem to believe that it is best to try to do as little as possible in life in order to avoid incurring bad karma. It’s my understanding that this is rather backwards, for failing to take appropriate action is just as bad as doing the wrong thing.

It is thus foolish to stand back and watch someone suffer when we could help, to stand in the way of someone trying to do the right thing, to fail to speak up for what’s right because we’re afraid, to fail to apologize because we’re too proud, etc. Further, we all have duties to fulfill. If we bring a child into the world, we have a duty to lovingly care for that child. If we marry someone, we swear to do and be certain things for that person, and it is our duty to fulfill our vows.

Also, from a higher perspective, having a “hard” or challenging life is not a bad thing. We do not incarnate to do nothing but party – we live in order to learn and grow. Believing that having lots of challenges must mean we have bad karma is like assuming that students who choose a challenging course of study in college must have been bad students before they got there. Instead, it suggests that they are ambitious and want to learn a lot in a short amount of time.

Finally, when it comes to karma, most people focus too much on the past – on explaining what has already happened and blaming karma for it – instead of focusing on the future and aligning with what they desire. We are wise to remember that if past mistakes can create present problems, then present wisdom can create future blessings. The law of karma teaches us that our “fate” is not out of our hands; instead, it is of our own creation.

Talking about karma reminds us that we can never really avoid anything, and it’s foolish to give up, for we will naturally have to deal with the repercussions of our choices eventually. In fact, the more we acknowledge and consciously work with the law of karma, the faster we can manifest whatever we want in our lives, whether that is a higher level of experience here on Earth, or the ultimate spiritual goal of “enlightenment.”

– Soul Arcanum

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Change Your Name, Change Your Karma?

Filed Under: Energy/Vibration, Karma by Soul Arcanum — Comments Off on Change Your Name, Change Your Karma?

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Dear Soul Arcanum:

A Tibetan Master I met two years ago told me that names contain karma, and that by changing your name, you can alter your karma and therefore your destiny. Is this true? If so, where can I find out more about the karma of certain names? I’m very curious, because over the years I have had many psychic readings, and each has stated that my karma is pretty heavy. I don’t wish to avoid it, but if I could make things simpler for myself in any way, I would like to. I am desperate to do something deeply spiritual to help others, but I feel so blocked. Any information would be greatly appreciated!

Mags

Dear Mags:

Names have long been valued as essential to our identities and our destinies. Some cultures have traditionally given children a public name and a soul name, which remained secret or was only known to those who could be trusted, for it was believed that if a sorcerer or enemy knew your “real” name, he or she would have power over you. Ancient mythological gods also kept their true names secret to prevent their enemies from gaining power over them. Even the Bible makes reference to the power of changing your name. For example, Saul was supposedly a man of violence until he changed his name to Paul.

Throughout history, people have taken new names when going through spiritual initiations or rites of passage. They might be given new names by shamans or other spiritual leaders, or choose new names themselves. Jewish Rabbis will give someone who is seriously ill a new name, the idea being that this will infuse them with new life. Some peoples have even believed that if a person didn’t have a name, he or she didn’t really exist.

All of this reflects the underlying metaphysical truth that names have energetic vibrations, and everything in the Universe is ultimately energy. First, the sound of your name carries a vibration; it’s like a mantra. There is great power associated with the spoken word, with bringing something abstract into the physical by speaking it out loud. Your name is the sound constantly associated with YOU, so if you change your name, you change what is associated with you.

Think about it: if you meet someone and his name is “Billy,” you have different associations and expectations than if he is introduced as “William.” I know that people act differently toward me if I’m introduced as “Julie” as opposed to “Soul Arcanum.” This reflects their subconscious awareness of the different vibrations of these names. Even more important is how you feel about your name, and who you feel yourself to be because of your name, for who you believe yourself to be is ultimately who you will become. What you are regularly called or call yourself is thus perhaps more important in terms of your everyday experience than your given or birth name. Nicknames usually reflect our subconscious awareness of one’s true energy, or at least their energy during the period of their lives when the nickname was used or given.

You’ll find all the information you need about this subject by studying numerology, which is an art/science that attempts to understand life and people via the energetic vibrations of numbers. The best book I’ve found on numerology is Numerology and the Divine Triangle by Faith Javane and Dusty Bunker. I’m sure there are other good ones – allow your intuition to guide you. You can also learn all the basics of numerology online; while you’re searching, try researching the Kabbalah and Pythagoras.

Numerology teaches us that the name we are given at birth reflects our life path, the energy our souls incarnated with, the blueprint for our experiences on earth. By assigning numbers to the letters of the alphabet and adding those numbers together, one can determine the numerical vibration of any word. Your Tibetan Master suggested that changing your name might change your karma. While I’m not saying this is untrue, in numerology, the day of the month we were born reflects our karma. Thus if you were born on May 3, your “karma number” would be three, and this suggests the lessons you must face and learn this lifetime. The day you were born is not something that can be changed, of course, and there is an underlying truth here about the nature of karma. Perhaps there are no “short-cuts” when it comes to the lessons we must learn; to change our karma, we must honor it as divinely appropriate for us, and consciously and patiently transmute whatever is sent to us into something higher.

Further, there are no “bad” numbers, just as there are no “bad” musical notes or colors. All is simply vibration. You will resonate with some vibrations and not with others, just as you will like some music, or look good and feel right in some colors and not others. If your mother named you Petunia and always dressed you in pink and you hated it, odds are that your mother was trying to force her own vibration on you. If you were okay with it then but aren’t now, you’ve changed. As an adult, you may realize you’d feel more like “yourself” if you wore purple and were called Dark Wolf or Dolfyndreamer or Delores.

I recommend simply that you honor what feels right to you. Do you feel that this Tibetan Master’s message to you was really from your own inner being or from Spirit? Does the way it struck you and stayed with you feel to you like you are being directed toward changing your name? If so, perhaps you have “outgrown” the vibration of your name. It may have fit you when it was given, but if you’ve profoundly changed, it may no longer feel right.

Think of your name at any given time as a “role” your are playing in life. My kids call me “Mommy,” and “Mommy” feels appropriate with them, given my role in their lives. My husband calls me “Honey,” and this also feels natural. If my kids called me “Honey” and my husband called me “Mommy,” it would feel really strange. Similarly, I can’t describe the sense of relief I felt when my first marriage ended and I was able to shed that name reclaim my maiden name. It was like I’d been underwater holding my breath for years, and could finally break through the surface and take a deep breath. These are examples of how our names reflect certain roles, and how what we’re called definitely affects us.

I encourage you to do whatever feels good to you, for that good, comfortable feeling is your inner being communicating the “rightness” of your choice. While you might like to, you don’t need to consult a numerologist; your inner being knows what’s best. Just keep in mind that you’re not going to change anything essential by changing your name. Simply switching from Mags to Matilda will not change your karma, your reputation, your sense of happiness or the way you look in a bathing suit. As a symbolic gesture of deeper personal change, however, it may feel great to you and empower you to manifest more of what you want in your life.

– Soul Arcanum :)

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