This is what "karma" is to me

[inavalan]

From

"Seth Speaks - The Eternal Validity of the Soul"
Chapter 12
Reincarnational Relationships

Let me tell you that he who hates an evil merely creates another one.

If you hate another person, that hate may bind you to him through as many lives as you allow the hate to consume you. You draw to yourself in this existence and in all others those qualities upon which you concentrate your attention. If you vividly concern your-self with the injustices you feel have been done you, then you attract more such experience, and if this goes on, then it will be mirrored in your next existence.

You are setting the stage for your "next" life now. The thoughts you think today will in one way or another become the fabric of your next existence.

If you examine your thoughts for five minutes at various times during the day for several times a month, you will indeed receive a correct impression of the kind of life you have so far arranged for yourself in the next existence. If you are not pleased with what you discover, then you had better begin changing the nature of your thoughts and feelings.

If you hate illness you may bring upon yourself a succeeding life of illness, because the hate has drawn it to you. If you expand your sense of love, of health, and existence, then you are drawn in this life and in others toward those qualities; again, because they are those upon which you concentrate. A generation that hates war will not bring peace. A generation that loves peace will bring peace.

Now I am emphasizing the issue of hate in this chapter on reincarnation because its results can be so disastrous. A man who hates always believes himself justified. He never hates anything that he believes to be good. He thinks he is being just, therefore, in his hatred, but the hatred itself forms a very strong claim that will follow him throughout his lives, until he learns that only the hatred itself is the destroyer.

[dougdi]

Thanks, this is a perfect summary of karma.

[inavalan]

Thanks, this is a perfect summary of karma.

You're welcome 

I didn't mean for those quotes to be a summary of what I believe karma to be. They are just a few examples of the way I think about karma, found in Seth's teachings.

[Sena]

You are setting the stage for your "next" life now. The thoughts you think today will in one way or another become the fabric of your next existence.

inavalan, thanks for finding this useful quote. This is the quote in context:

"It is useless then to say, "When this life is over I will look back upon my experience and mend my ways." This is like a young man saying, "When I grow old and retire, I will use all those abilities that I am not now developing." You are setting the stage for your "next" life now. The thoughts you think today will in one way or another become the fabric of your next existence. There are no magic words that will make you wise, that will fill you with understanding and compassion, that will expand your consciousness. (9:58.) Your thoughts and everyday experience contain the answers. Any successes in this life, any abilities, have been worked out through past experience. They are yours by right. You worked to develop them. If you look about you at your relatives, friends, acquaintances, and business associates, you will also see what kind of a person you are, for you are drawn to them as they are drawn to you, through very basic inner similarities. If you examine your thoughts for five minutes at various times during the day for several times a month, you will indeed receive a correct impression of the kind of life you have so far arranged for yourself in the next existence. If you are not pleased with what you discover, then you had better begin changing the nature of your thoughts and feelings." (from "Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul (A Seth Book)" by Jane Roberts)

From the Kindle edition: http://amzn.eu/aT2flrm

[Deb]

These are wonderful quotes, thanks for putting them up! And thanks to Sena for putting up the full paragraph for context, it's one of those worth printing to keep nearby as a reminder.

This all definitely inspires me to examine my thoughts with along the line of where they might lead me. There are some things I really wouldn't want to bring on myself in another existence. Best to make peace now.

[jbseth]

Hi inavalan,

Those are very powerful quotes from Seth on the complete destructiveness of hatred and how if we don't pay attention to what we think about, we can set up our future selves up with more of the same. Thank you for sharing them.

One of my favorite quotes from Seth has to do a somewhat related statement having to do with the positive desire for creativity and love over destruction and hatred. This comes from TES9, Session 452.

In Session 452, Seth talks about how, we often don't see that we are, in fact, progressing spiritually. We tend to see the weapons and the destruction that we make, but not necessarily the other side of the coin, so to speak.


TES9 Session 452.
Now the weapons and the destruction are the obvious things that you see. The counterparts are not so evident, and yet it is the counterparts that are important. The self-discipline learned, the control, the compassion that finally is aroused, and the final and last lesson learned, the positive desire for creativity and love over destruction and hatred. When this is learned the reincarnational cycle is finished.

-jbseth

[inavalan]

This all definitely inspires me to examine my thoughts with along the line of where they might lead me. There are some things I really wouldn't want to bring on myself in another existence. Best to make peace now.

Tied into this is also the idea of the actualization. From all the probable futures, we actualize those that fit our beliefs, so to actualize what we desire we have to make sure that we change firstly our conscious and unconscious beliefs accordingly. We can't pretend only.

This is a subset of a search for probable AND actual narrowed to NoPR Chapter 15: Session 656, April 16, 1973

"[... 3 paragraphs ...]

(With a smile:) Probable dictation: What you must understand is this: Each of the events in each of your lives was "once" probable. From a given field of action, then, you choose those happenings that will be physically materialized.

This operates in individual and mass terms. Suppose that today your home was robbed. Yesterday, the theft was one of innumerable probable events. I chose such an example because more than one person would have to be involved — the victim and the robber. (Pause.) Why was your home ransacked, and not your neighbor's? In one way or another, through your conscious thought you attracted such an event, and drew it from probability into actuality. The occurrence would be an accumulation of energy — turned into action — and be brought about by corollary beliefs.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

All of your present experience was drawn from probable reality. During your life, any event must come through your creaturehood, with the built-in time recognition that is so largely a part of your neurological structure; so usually there is a lag, a lapse in time, during which your beliefs cause material actualization. When you try to change your convictions in order to change your experience, you also have to first stop the momentum that you have already built up, so to speak. You are changing the messages while the body is used to reacting smoothly, unquestioningly, to a certain set of beliefs.

[... 1 paragraph ...]

In a manner of speaking, each belief can be seen as a powerful station, pulling to it from fields of probabilities only those signals to which it is attuned, and blocking out all others. When you set up a new station there may be some static or bleed-through from an old one for a while.

Any ability you have, then, can be "brought in more clearly," amplified, and become practical rather than probable. But in such a case you must concentrate upon the attribute — not, for example, upon the fact that you have not used it well thus far.

[... 2 paragraphs ...]

Now: An artist produces a body of work in his lifetime. Each painting is but one materialization, one focused presentation, of an endless variety of probable paintings. The actual work involved in the selection of data is still made according to the beliefs in the artist's conscious mind as to who he is, how good an artist he is, what kind of artist he is, what "school" of artistic beliefs he subscribes to, his ideas of society and his place in it, and esthetic and economic values, to name but a few.

(Long pause.) The same sort of thing operates in the actualization of any event in which you are involved. You create your life, then. Inner images are of great importance to the artist. He tries to project them upon his canvas or board. Again, you are each your own artist, and your inner visualizations become models for other situations and events. The artist utilizes training and mixes his colors in order to give artistic flesh to his painting. The images in your mind draw to themselves all the proper emotional energy and power needed to fill them out as physical events.

You can change the picture of your life at any time if only you realize that it is simply the one portrait of yourself that you have created from an unlimited amount of probable ones. The peculiar aspect of your own probable portraits will still be characteristic of you, and no other.

The abilities, strengths and variants that you may want to actualize are already latent, in your terms, and at your disposal. Suppose that you are unhealthy and desire health. If you understand the nature of probabilities, you will not need to pretend to ignore your present situation. You will recognize it instead as a probable reality that you have physically materialized. Taking that for granted, you will then begin the process necessary to bring a different probability into physical experience.

[... 5 paragraphs ...]

Your present beliefs govern the actualization of events. Creativity and experience are being formed moment by moment by each individual. Period, and break.

[... 8 paragraphs ...]

To pretend to ignore your age, to act young because you fear your age, is no answer. (See the 644th session in Chapter Eleven.) In your terms your point of reality and power is, once more, in your current experience. A realization of this would allow you at any age to draw upon qualities and knowledge that "existed" in your past or "will exist" in your future. Your ages are probable [simultaneous].

[... 12 paragraphs ...]"

—NoPR Chapter 15: Session 656, April 16, 1973

[inavalan]

I would like to add this quote from: "The Magus of Strovolos: The Extraordinary World of a Spiritual Healer"

"[He] asked whether one can create, with one's mind, anything one wishes.

'Yes,' Daskalos replied, 'assuming that you are within the realm of possibilities and potentialities. A yogi may plant a seed of an orange tree and with prayers and meditations he may be able to have it grow much faster than usual. But he could not plant a seed of an orange tree and with his mind make that seed grow into a eucalyptus. You cannot work outside the world of ideas, laws, causes. You can, however, do something else. You may be able to first change the nuclear composition of a seed of an orange tree and make it into a seed of a eucalyptus and then plant it and get a eucalyptus tree. This is different. It is within the realm of possibilities and potentialities.' "