June 9, 2021 Wednesday Afternoon, Dharma Path Intensive, Excerpt
Yeshua Speaks on Balancing Karma
Yeshua: You balance karma first by taking the time and holding the intention to understand the karma, because it is likely that you’ve avoided such understanding perhaps for many lifetimes. “Don’t want to see that.”
It must be done without self-blame, without pity, without anger, but just with deep seeing: “Here is this cycle into which I have moved. Here is the habitual reaction to this catalyst. How would I choose to respond for the highest good?”
Again, no self-castigation, just clear seeing: “I’ve done this repeatedly. I hold the intention not to perpetuate this unwholesome energy that leads to harm for myself and others.”
Then, “I choose to see what balances it.” For example, in that situation, this small boy. (Yeshua as a boy accidentally injured a bird.) I asked my mother what I could do for balancing. She said, “Go into the woods past that stump and clear away brush in a wide enough area that no other bird can land there, where you boys are throwing your stones.” Just do that simple act, with mindful intention to avoid possibility of future harm.
Not a penance but a way of saying, “I see that I have not looked deep enough at the harm that can come from my act of throwing my stone at the target. I will act in such a way to make certain that nothing can be harmed by my mindless throwing of the stone.
Releasing the karma. Balancing the karma. In this case there were two areas of karma.
First, I was simply a very small boy. It had never occurred to me that something might be in the bush behind my target. So, the predominant karma for me and the predominant learning was not to judge myself. Not to jump into, “Oh, I’ve done something terrible!” But to stop without hatred of myself, and to hold myself and the bird equally in love.
Karma is precise, and you will find, if you look carefully, what the deep essence of that karma is about.
Releasing and. balancing. It’s not always so clear. Sometimes they seem to come together.
I want to remind you that perhaps what balances and resolves karma most fully is love, joy, and releasing the sense of a separate self. It all comes together; it’s perfect.
I have something related that I think will help you understand. Some of you have asked me before how I could not have judgment or anger when I was taken off to be crucified as Yeshua.
It would have been easy to slip into “Not fair! Don’t they know who I am?” But of course, that would do no good.
It would also have been easy to allow myself, in my own mind—and therefore, in others’ minds—to become a martyr, someone who was harmed because bad people attacked. And some people do consider that Yeshua was a martyr.
But I was not a martyr. I had no intention of being a martyr. To be a martyr there has to be somebody out there on the other side.
But there was nobody on the other side. There was simply Yeshua, the being I was, holding love, and those for whom I held deep compassion because they did not yet understand the power of love. They did not understand that they were crucifying themselves, that they were crucifying the world of love.
But that love would not be crucified. It might hang on a cross, but it could not be destroyed. They did not understand and so they suffered.
But I did not suffer; only sadness because they still didn’t understand. I loved them so much, but I could not make them understand. I could only hold out my love to them, patiently.
Q: It feels like to me what you said and what Aaron told us about the Seven Branch Meditation is to release this emotion, which I understand as a core of karma, that’s inside of us. Does that mean this word karma we are talking about is actually just the emotion or our attachment to what happened? Then, what actually happens in the event of creating the karma? Is it an event of creating the karma? Or is it only the emotion that we are attaching to the event?
Yeshua: Thank you for a very clear question. Unfortunately, I cannot answer it simply. Emotion, thought, action, even the physical body—these are all places where karma can adhere.
For there to be karma, there must be intention. If somebody says something that irritates you and you give a somewhat sharp answer—not really hurtful, not attacking them, but just a quick and abrupt answer—and you don’t see that your irritation is giving rise to that answer, that your karmic tendencies are giving rise to the abruptness of that answer, then any hurt to the other person becomes your responsibility as well as theirs.
It is their responsibility because they are still holding something that can take that abruptness personally. That’s their work.
It is your responsibility because you unintentionally— let me phrase it differently—because out of lack of mindfulness you allowed something unwholesome to go out from you.
If I knew many birds nested in that area, after injuring this first one I could not go back. There is my stump. There is the object on the stump, my target, that I’m going to keep trying to knock off. If I say I’m not going to attend to the fact that there may be other birds there, then I am responsible if I harm the bird.
If I clear the area completely or move the target, the stump, to an open field, even a big patch of dirt with no place to draw birds; if I hold my small stones and state my intention, “Now I am going to aim at this target to help myself become better at hitting the target. My intention is not to do any harm. Therefore, I ask nothing to come within range of my target and my throw”; if I throw, and just as I throw a bird comes in and I hit it, it is not my responsibility.
And yet it is important, without saying, “Oh, look what I did!” and taking blame, that I acknowledge that something that emanated from me did this damage, and I will do everything I can to help what was damaged. But it is not my karma; it is the other entity’s karma.
I don’t know if that’s clear of if it answers your question.
Emotion is part of the human experience. Physical sensation is part. Mental arising is part. There is no unwholesome karma in the arising of emotion or thought or physical sensations.
The unwholesome karma will be in using what has arisen as a way of controlling or harming, or in some way doing hurt into the world.
But since as humans you cannot live with 100% mindfulness all the time, it becomes very important, as in the Seven Branch Prayer, to work with practices wherein you hold the intention to do no harm.
You mindfully explore the places where something negative has arisen and release the negative thought or impulse or emotion, free of harm to any being.
You ask forgiveness to that which you did not throw this thought or emotion at, just acknowledging that the impulse was there. “Oh, anger!” You refrain from using the anger in ways that may do harm, but you still ask forgiveness. You forgive yourself.
You begin to live in the place where you catch this before it arises, or as it arises, feeling it as contraction. “Ah…Breathing in,” as Aaron would say, “I am aware of the contraction. Breathing out, I hold space for the contraction.”
And in this way, the karma is healed.
Does that answer your question?
Q: I understand your answer. Another part which I do not understand is, if this thing already happened, say I already hurt someone, and by doing this practice you taught us and Aaron taught us we are able to release the emotional karma that’s inside of us. But what’s happened has already happened—that behavior or hurt for the other person, it already happened. It’s also done to them, if they are going to forgive us. But what I don’t understand is, because this thing, this bad behavior already happened, while we release our emotions and our attachment to this event only, will that release all the karma, that’s been created? Thank you.
Yeshua: Thank you. I understand your question. Remember, we have both releasing and balancing of the karma.
A simple example. Barbara has learned to be very mindful—not 100%, of course, but very mindful of being careful of her words and impulses and actions, that they do not bring harm. But still, there are times when they do. She stops and asks forgiveness; offers herself forgiveness too.
Her mediumship, her dharma teaching, her care of Hal, these are all ways in which she is balancing old karma. It doesn’t free her of responsibility for that karma, but it creates a balance grounded in love, which helps to further the release of the karma.
Remember that as humans you are never going to be entirely free of every kind of karma. Even I as Yeshua was not free of karma. All I could do was be mindful of when it arose, and work to release and balance it and ask forgiveness.