Beloved Students:

It is with the joy, wonder and beauty of springtime that I greet you once again. As we again focus together, I think it is fairly obvious to most of you that you are in a time that grabs your attention. At least it should. So much is going on in the world that in one way or another it provides input to you at many levels of experiencing. For the most part, your psyches are burdened with the knowledge of the events around the world that are abhorrent to you. Indeed, you can see the effects of greed, hatred and ignorance all over the world.

This is not to simply focus on the negative attributes of the human race. If one so chooses, those can be found even in the very best of times. It is, however, a good time to understand more profoundly the force of karma; and such times give a good opportunity to look even deeper into the arising of the events you fail to understand from a spiritual perspective. In truth, there is really not much to understanding such, but it is important to see beyond the obvious level in the working out of global karmic events.

Here we must be somewhat careful, since the tendency of some is simply (and shallowly, I might add) to hold that if bad things happen to you, you must have been bad at some time in your past. Simply stated, that approach is too simple, and perhaps indicates some denial as well.

If you stop a bit and think about it, you may wonder whether having instant access to events all over the world is really a blessing. Clearly, such is pretty interesting, and it does provide a kind of assumed connection with everyone else in the world. However, upon closer scrutiny, the perceived “connection” is happening only in the mind of the individual doing the perceiving. There is no real connecting going on, since such requires an exchange of energy and awareness between at least two people. I think there are times when empathy and/or sympathy are falsely viewed as connection. I find it interesting too—not that there are so many who believe they have these global connections, but who often cannot connect in any viable way with someone seated across from them at a table!

Now in truth, there is a viable connection playing out for all Earth’s sentient beings, but it may not be exactly what you think of when you consider the matter. All are deeply connected through the force of karma that has facilitated all of you to be in physical form, sharing the experiential reference point you recognize in terms of time and space. While it is tempting (at least for the ego) to believe you are somehow different from all those “others” out there doing destructive things (like war), the truth is, you are all bound together by shared karma. Whether you are at the “front lines” or not, if you are at all sensitive, you suffer nonetheless.

I often notice how some of my well-meaning students in the U.S. (who may be quite embarrassed about their government’s actions in Iraq) actually think the war is due to the karma of those who made the decision to go to war, or those who have profited from the war. Some actually recognize this event as somehow America’s karma, but are still able to somehow think they themselves are separate in some way from this karmic event.

In truth, anything you know about, hear about, or experience (even if only via the media) falls into the realm of “your karma.” As you can clearly see, not everyone’s karma is the same, even though the connective karmic link may well be the same event. For example, the karma of a news reporter in Iraq is not the same as that of one who is fighting there. Even soldier to soldier, while one’s karma may differ significantly from another, there is still a shared karma as well. If you are a U.S. citizen, you will have some of the collective karma of “America” to dissolve, whether you actually wanted to go to war or not. If you are outside the U.S., but a Westerner, you will have some piece (although it may differ from citizens of the U.S.) of karma to dissolve regarding this war, as well. If you are an Iraqi, you too will have some piece of karma to dissolve. In the long run (at least as far as karma goes), it matters little which side is ultimately deemed “right.” What ultimately matters is that you are able to perceive the seeds of karma ripening into an event you call a “war,” and your success in dissolving the energy of war, because more is ripening within you than just those seeds of karma.

If you, like so many around you, get stuck in fixing blame to this party or that party, you have not as yet understood the karmic process. Your job is to cut through the way of seeing that allows blame, or the notion of it, to arise in the first place. How different do you think the situation might have been if the American leaders could have cut through the blaming way of seeing? Or, how different might the situation be had European leaders not needed to blame the U.S. government for the decisions it made post-9/11? Or to back up even further, how different might 9/11 have been had certain fundamentalist extremist not needed to blame the West generally and the U.S. specifically for decadent cultural influences, for greed, and the rest of the blaming list? You see, the need (or perception of the need) to blame arises from the ground of greed, hatred and ignorance. No matter which of these three energies you investigate, you will discover each comes from a particular way of seeing—seeing oneself, of course, but in a larger way, seeing the world, perhaps even the universe.

If you are truly honest with yourself, you simply cannot blame one or another way of seeing, since all are based on the force of karma from past experiencing. If you are a Westerner, you see in a way that reflects your cultural biases—both the positive side and the negative side. Of course, not all Westerners see in the same way, do they? It is likely that even in the circles closest to you, you can discover individuals who have beliefs (based on their karmic ways of seeing) that are greatly at odds with your own way of seeing. In truth, if you were to suddenly exchange your karma with theirs, you could not help but see in the way that other person sees, no matter how impossible that may sound to you, coming from your own karma.

What is really needed is for throngs of people to get out and clean up their own karmic gardens. You see, karma is like a little seed: you put it in the ground, and given the support of sufficient water and warmth, it sprouts, grows, flowers, puts forth its fruit, which in turn ripens. In like manner, let’s say you had a life in which you were a Christian who participated in the first century crusades. Perhaps you even went to war in the same area that wars are being fought today. What are the seeds that were planted that may be ripening right now? Or, let’s say you were one of the Moguls against whom a “crusade” was waged. What are the seeds that were planted that may be ripening right now? Or could you have been among the British troops that wiped out the Mogul empire in the 18th and early 19th centuries? Again, what seeds might now be ripening for you?

While you cannot escape tasting the fruits grown from the seeds of your past experiences, you can pierce the veil that constrains you to blindly repeat the past. You can awaken to how things really are, and only then can you free yourself from the old familiar suffering you have known so many times in your past.

Please join me this month in listening to the teaching I gave in Denver earlier this month, called Ripening Karma. I hope this discourse will aid you in establishing the confidence that you can, indeed, see/cut through those habituated ways of seeing and reacting. This is actually what frees you from the trap of karma. It is not that the karma goes away; nor is it that you merely “rise above it.” It will be a combination of your dedicated, committed hard work and the grace of all who have gone before you that facilitates your experience of Emptiness. You see, it takes effort— your effort—to learn another way of seeing, another way of being and experiencing. But there is one thing of which you can be sure: You will never regret having spent the time, energy and focus necessary to pierce the prevailing veils of illusion. Many around you will not cut through. This is a fact. You are most fortunate in that you have the means available to you to bring about your enlightenment. How important is it to you to have your liberation?

Djwhal Khul