Karma Doesn’t Have To Be A Bitch

We’ve all heard the term “Karma is a bitch.”

But what exactly is karma?

Most people believe that karma means that if you do something bad, something bad will happen to you, that people get what they deserve. But it’s not that simple.

“Karma is the principle of cause and effect. Your intent and actions (cause) influence your future (effect).” — Wikipedia

If you want to really understand karma, you have to look at yourself.

Every person is born with patterns that they inherit as well as conditioning that happens to you as you grow up. You are influenced by what happens to you and the environment you are surrounded by. When you identify with this conditioning and you let it rule the decisions and actions you take in your life, that is karma.

For example, let’s say you were raised in a toxic environment. There was lots of yelling, screaming, and fighting. You were treated poorly, and there were many situations where you were subjected to rage or anger. When you become an adult, you have been conditioned to look at situations with an angry disposition. This is not because you are “just an angry person,” you learned it from someone or something.

Spiritual leader and author, Eckhart Tolle, explains karma: “Your mind is conditioned by the past and if you are at the mercy of your thoughts, you will reenact the past over and over again.”

If you are not aware of your inner thoughts throughout the day or you do not have a high level of consciousness, you will repeat the same patterns that have happened to you throughout your life. This is why people say karma will come back to get you.

Karma is just energy that we give to our thoughts.

You will keep bringing about the same thoughts and problems because those are the thoughts and problems that have been conditioned in you. There are no external forces at work when it comes to karma, only your own mind.

Karma can sound scary. If you’re someone who has had a lot of “bad” karma in your life, the good news is that you can change your karma. If you always have negative things happen to you, it’s not because there is some cosmic karma energy that has destined you to a life of negativity but because YOU keep creating the negative energy within your life.

To change negative karma, it takes more than a few good deeds to bring about positive energy in your life. To overcome the negative karma in your life, you have to first figure out what created the story in your mind.

Practicing mindfulness gives you the ability to choose which thoughts you want to give your energy to and which you do not. Without being mindful of your conditioning and thoughts, you will just react based on what you have been influenced by in your life.

Meditation, journaling and breath work are great ways to practice mindfulness, as well as remaining in the present moment as much as possible. If you can become conscious enough to recognize your patterns, you can begin to change your outcome or, rather, change your karma.

Your life up until this point is just your story so far, it doesn’t have to be your story for the rest of your life. You do not have to reenact the past again and again. You have a choice in whether or not to repeat those patterns of conditioning.

Karma doesn’t have to be a bitch!