Karma: Karma in the Flesh

By Michael Millett

"Why has this happened to me?"

 "Why am I ill?"

"Why am I suffering?"

 Often when we suffer from a physical condition either minor or severe, it is a link in a chain of sequences that began centuries ago. Some illnesses and afflictions are Karmic. Knowing the cosmic relevance if it is karmic can lead to an understanding of the disease or illness on various levels. To consciously know this alone can have a transforming effect upon our lives today. Just understanding our situation can enable us to come to terms with it, which in turn can enable us to achieve vital equilibrium at higher levels of being and integration as well.

 This is not a new idea, but an ancient one shared among many peoples and cultures in every part of the world. The spiritual world is subject to laws of cause and effect as precise as those that govern the physical world. When we experience such affliction ourselves and know its sad frustrations, we may bitterly begin to question the ways and love of God, and begin to see God as cruel. We might see God as testing us and heaven or hell as the reward or punishment that awaits us, depending on how we meet the challenge of this illness. We believe this not because we have proof of it, but because we have been taught it through the centuries.

 These are beliefs handed down and based on the strength of authority. Perhaps we blame our condition on the blind mechanism of heredity as determined primarily by the genes of our parents or secondarily by environmental influences. The reincarnation view is that suffering is only good for the soul if it teaches us how not to suffer again, and that heredity and environment are themselves the result of past life karmic determinants. Every quality of the soul is self-earned rather than parentally transmitted. Diseases and illnesses can arise from the merits and demerits of past life behavior and all suffering and pain and limitations have an educative spiritual purpose. A spiritual meaning for one's physical experience is sought.

 These deformities, afflictions and agonies can be lessons towards growth, wisdom and perfection. When it is remembered that the purpose of karma is spiritual education, it will be seen how natural and inevitable this approach to karmic therapy is. Karma is a Sanskrit word literally meaning "action." The "sin" that karma corrects is not "sin" in the superstitious primitive sense of acts that garner the disapproval of gods or spirits, or offend other mortals. Rather, "sin" here is more subtle and universally definable. It is the sin of selfishness or being separate, and the sin of self-exaltation. It can consist of violence against the will or body of another, or your own body, through over-indulgence or neglect. It can consist of pride or exclusiveness of the spirit and many other variations. It can be said that a human is spirit, not a body. "Sin" arises from the human failure to recognize this and our tendency to identify ourselves with our bodies. To change this, we must stop denying this fact and identify with spirit, our true essence.

 Such a "sin" from a past life can have an exact cause/effect, action/reaction relationship in this lifetime, even though it might not necessarily be obvious and can manifest as illness and in other ways. As Jesus said, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Newton's third law of motion states that every action has its reaction which is equal and opposite, and this applies as much to spiritual law as to the law of physics. Therefore, some human afflictions, disease and illness today are sometimes linked to specific karma and conduct in past lives. This dis-ease brings the karma into sharper and more immediate focus.

 A favorable environment and a healthy body can also be positive karmic consequence. One side of karma is that a harmful action directed toward another person yesterday can rebound to the perpetrator of the action today as an illness or limitation. A person today can create in himself suffering which he brought to others. "Judge not that ye be not judged" suddenly stands out with a new depth of psychological meaning. Other times this karma can be symbolic or metaphoric and manifest in the body in a symbolic way. The clinical findings of modern psychosomatic medicine demonstrate that some physical conditions are due to mental and emotional disturbances. This branch of medicine shows that tensions of emotional origin, when they cannot be expressed in word or action, often express themselves symbolically in the body through a kind of "organ language." If a patient suffers chronic lumbago and no organic cause can be found, for example, it may mean that there is something in the current life situation of the patient that causes the patient to feel put upon or like a martyr.

 Taking this further then, there is every implication that there is a close correspondence between the "organ language" of psychosomatic medicine and this symbolic karma. Karma is a psychological law and acts primarily in the psychological realm, the physical circumstances being merely the means whereby the psychological purpose is fulfilled. However, the retributive reaction or compensatory action that characterizes all karma is usually neither exact nor literal because we are all at our own levels of growth. In my work as a past life therapist and healer, I have had many instances of cures of physical conditions and in those cases where the karmic debt is more serious, improvements in the condition. It would appear that my work through past life therapy and healing can sometimes reestablish the equilibrium so that the physical karma can justly be withdrawn, resulting in the person becoming well. It is so important to apply the spiritual side as well as the medical side to any cure. This spiritual side which is so integral to past life healing can also help change your present day consciousness and character in a positive way, through the variety of healing work undertaken on the past life being worked on. You of course need to be open to the process of working in this way to get the most benefit out of it.

 It is important to note that there are times when karmic illness or conditions can best be helped through physical rather than psychological means, and this information often comes through in the sessions. Ultimately, healing must come from within or it cannot last. No healing method is more "spiritual," in an absolute sense than another. All healing has the same divine source. Whether the influences that act upon a body come from medicine, surgery, mechanical appliances, therapy, past life healing, body work etc, they must of necessity come from the One Source - Life itself. Of course, not all afflictions are necessarily karmic and illness and disease can be affected by many chemical, biological, mechanical, social, racial, and economic forces for which we have no inner, immediate responsibility except insofar as we must ultimately acquire the strength to be invulnerable to them.

 Man is a unit of three: Body, Mind and Spirit. Sometimes we are ignorant about the truth about ourselves. Doctors, psychologists and ministers are three tenders of the same divine fire and must work together more for the good of all. Healing does not always mean one is cured. It does mean, however, that one has changed by learning to see the creative possibilities that exist within one's limitations and by opening to the positive aspect of karmic growth. It is worth remembering that while we are undergoing the karma and energy reactions of our past lives, we are setting into motion still newer causes which in turn may impact our future lives. We extend far in one direction and far in another; it cannot be said we begin at the illusive margin that we call "birth," nor that we end at the equally illusive boundary that we call "death." There is a larger framework of existence than the world we occupy in the here and now, and a larger meaning to life, sickness and death than we have yet been able to imagine.

Michael G Millett is a certified counselor, hypnotherapist and psychotherapist. He holds certificates in Transpersonal Therapy and Past Life Healing from the London College of Transpersonal Hypnosis and Healing and is a member of APRT in the USA. He is also an NLP Practitioner approved by the Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming USA and the Association of NLP (UK).

Please visit his website at http://homepages.which.net/~michael.millett.